Trump sets low bar for talks with Putin
HELSINKI — President Donald Trump arrived in Finland on Sunday for a closely watched one-on-one summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin, hours after telling an interviewer that he was going into the meeting on Monday with “low expectations” and naming the European Union as a top adversary of the United States.
On the way to meet with a leader who has cracked down on the press in his country, Mr. Trump tweeted that the U.S. news media is the “enemy of the people” and complained that “No matter how well I do at the Summit” he’ll face “criticism that it wasn’t good enough.”
Mr. Trump also said in the interview that he “hadn’t thought” of asking Mr. Putin to extradite the dozen Russian military intelligence officers indicted this past week in on charges related to the hacking of Democratic targets in the 2016 U.S. presidential election.
But after being given the idea by his interviewer, Mr. Trump said “certainly I’ll be asking about it” although extradition is high unlikely. The U.S. doesn’t have an extradition treaty with Moscow and can’t force the Russians to hand over citizens. Russia’s constitution also prohibits turning over citizens to foreign governments. Still, the U.S. ambassador to Russia said Sunday that the FBI
and the U.S. Embassy in Moscow will “no doubt” work on submitting a formal request.
Mr. Trump flew to Finland, the final stop on a weeklong trip that began last Tuesday, from Scotland. He and his wife, Melania, spent the weekend at a golf resort Mr. Trump owns in Turnberry. He’s set to return to the White House after Monday’s meeting with Mr. Putin in Helsinki, the Finnish capital.
Near Mr. Trump’s hotel, police roped off a group of about 60 mostly male pro-Trump demonstrators waving American flags. Big banners said “Welcome Trump” and “God Bless D & M Trump” and a helicopter hovered overhead.
Chants of “We Love Trump, We Love Trump” broke out as the president’s motorcade passed and Mr. Trump waved.
But at the same time, about 2,500 people marched in the Finnish capital Sunday behind a banner that read “Helsinki calling for human rights.” (The number of people marching was well below the 12,000 that arrangers had expected.)
For his part, Mr. Putin will arrive in Helsinki after presiding over the final game of the World Cup soccer tournament in Moscow on Sunday, and will meet a U.S. president who has spent the last week berating his NATO allies and undercutting his host in Britain, Prime Minister Theresa May.
Mr. Trump’s national security adviser, John Bolton, said on ABC’s “This Week” that it would be “pretty silly” for Mr. Trump to ask Mr. Putin to hand over the indicted Russians.
“For the president to demand something that isn’t going to happen puts the president in a weak position, and I think the president has made it very clear he intends to approach this discussion from a position of strength,” Mr. Bolton said ina separate interview.
Mr. Trump told CBS News that he’s going into the Helsinki summit with “low expectations. I’m not going with high expectations.” He declined to discuss his goals, but said such sessions are beneficial and cited his historic meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and his meetings with Chinese President Xi Jinping.
“Nothing bad is going to come out of (Helsinki), and maybe some good will come out,” Mr. Trump said.
He described the European Union, a bloc of nation’s that includes many of America’s closest allies, as a “foe,” particularly on trade.
“I think the European Union is a foe, what they do to us in trade,” Mr. Trump said, adding that “you wouldn’t think of the European Union but they’re a foe.”
That drew a swift riposte Sunday from Donald Tusk, president of the European Council, who invoked a trademark Trump phrase in a Twitter post: “America and the EU are best friends. Whoever says we are foes is spreading fake news.”
Mr. Trump also said Russia is a foe “in certain respects” and that China is a foe “economically ... but that doesn’t mean they are bad. It doesn’t mean anything. It means that they are competitive.” Mr. Trump has been reluctant to criticize Mr. Putin over the years and has described him as a competitor in recent days.
Mr. Trump sat for the interview Saturday in Scotland and CBS News released excerpts on Sunday, hours before Mr. Trump flew to Helsinki. From aboard Air Force One, Mr. Trump called the U.S. news media “the enemy of the people” and complained that he’ll face criticism regardless of the summit outcome.
“If I was given the great city of Moscow as retribution for all of the sins and evils committed by Russia over the years, I would return to criticism that it wasn’t good enough — that I should have gotten Saint Petersburg in addition!” he tweeted.
Mr. Trump also said: “Much of our news media is indeed the enemy of the people.”
Mr. Putin is regarded as having created a culture of violence and impunity that has resulted in the killing of some Russian journalists. Mr. Trump regularly criticizes American news media outlets and has called out some journalists by name.
In another interview, recorded Friday before the president left London for his golf resort in Scotland, Mr. Trump was asked if he believed Mr. Putin is a “dictator.”
“I assume he probably is,” Mr. Trump said. “But I could name others also. Look, if we can get along with Russia that’s a good thing.”
And on Sunday, Mr. Trump congratulated Mr. Putin on Twitter “for putting on a truly great World Cup Tournament — one of the best ever!”
Mr. Trump and Mr. Putin have held talks twice before. Their first meeting came last July while both attended an international summit and lasted more than two hours, well over the scheduled 30 minutes. The leaders also met last fall during a separate summit in Vietnam.
But Jon Huntsman, the U.S. ambassador to Russia, said on NBC’s “Meet the Press” that Monday’s meeting “is really the first time for both presidents to actually sit across the table and have a conversation and I hope it’s a detailed conversation about where we might be able to find some overlapping and shared interests.”
The two leaders will first meet one-on-one and then be joined by their top advisers for a working lunch. Russian officials say it was Mr. Trump who insisted holding a one-on-one meeting with Mr. Putin to start Monday’s talks.