As Donald Trump jets out to the G20 summit in Japan where he will meet with world leaders including Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping, Republicans at home worry Robert Mueller’s testimony before two congressional committees on 17 July might provide the springboard for Democrats to begin impeachment proceedings against the president.
“I hope we are not in store for ‘impeachment-by-surprise,’ as this seems to feed into the elements of the Democratic Party that are more focused on President Trump – and sort of relitigating the Mueller report – than in dealing with the humanitarian crisis at the border”, said Florida congressman Matt Gaetz in an interview with Fox News.
The opposition held their first round of debates between 2020 presidential contenders in Gaetz’s home state last night, with Elizabeth Warren dominating proceedings. Mr Trump, apparently watching from Air Force One, branded the spectacle “BORING!” in a tweet.
We’ll tell you what’s true. You can form your own view.
From
15p
€0.18
$0.18
USD 0.27
a day, more exclusives, analysis and extras.
Please allow a moment for our liveblog to load
Although he’s not even in the country, Trump is still seeking to crash the Democratic Party debates, his strategy being to buy up prime web advertising space on YouTube to catch passing traffic seeking out a livestream of the contests in Florida.
Sneaky.
This was Trump’s heartless reaction to the drowning of El Salvadoran migrants Oscar Alberto Martinez Ramirez and his daughter Valeria in the Rio Grande, a press photograph of which shocked the world when it was circulated yesterday.
His attempting to pin the blame on the Democrats a day after they had passed a $4.5bn (£3.5bn) emergency spending bill in the House of Representatives to address the border crisis was pretty rich but inevitable.
As for raising the spectre of women being raped en route through Mexico? Staggering stuff in light of the E Jean Carroll story about his own past behaviour.
Tibetan Buddhist leader the Dalai Lama has said that Donald Trump suffers from “a lack of moral principle” in a new interview with the BBC.
The spiritual figurehead, something of a Bantersauras Rex, has previously imitated the American president’s golden mane by slapping the palm of his hand against his own bald head.
Given that Trump can seldom resist firing back at his celebrity detractors on Twitter, from Meryl Streep to Spike Lee, Bette Midler and, most recently, Team USA’s Women’s World Cup co-captain Megan Rapinoe, his inevitable response to this jibe will be fascinating.
Trump will also find himself face-to-face with Putin for the first time since special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation ended without finding evidence that the Trump campaign criminally conspired with Russia during the 2016 election. It will also be their first meeting since their summit in Helsinki in July 2018, when Trump declined to side with US intelligence agencies over Putin on the question of election interference, leading to an uproar at home and abroad.
Trump told reporters as he left the White House that he expects a “very good conversation” with Putin but added that “what I say to him is none of your business.” His aides have grown worried that Trump may use the meeting to once again attack the Mueller probe, particularly since the special counsel now has a date to testify before Congress next month.
Last November, Trump canceled a planned meeting with Putin at the G20 in Argentina after Russia seized two Ukrainian vessels and their crew in the Sea of Azov, but the continued detention of the crew members does not appear to be deterring the leaders from meeting this time. Aside from Iran, the leaders are expected to discuss hotspots in Syria and Venezuela, as well as nuclear weapons.
White House officials said there are no plans for a meeting in South Korea between Trump and North Korea’s Kim Jong-un, with whom the president has restarted diplomacy-by-correspondence since their failed Hanoi summit in March. But there was speculation that the president would make another attempt to travel to the Demilitarized Zone between the Koreas after fog preventing him from taking a helicopter there in November 2017.
Trump is to speak with South Korean president Moon Jae-in about efforts to bring North Korea back to the negotiating table as the American holds out hope for an elusive legacy-making nuclear deal. Moon told the Associated Press and other news agencies Wednesday that the US and North Korea are holding “behind-the-scenes talks” to arrange a third summit between the two leaders.
With Xi, a senior administration official said, Trump’s top aim will be rebooting trade negotiations between the two countries after they collapsed earlier this year. In an interview with . Business Network on Wednesday, Trump threatened again to impose even stiffer tariffs on Chinese imports to the US if talks remain stalemated. But officials in both nations are looking for an off-ramp as concerns mount about the economic impact of the yearlong trade war.
Trump will also meet with Crown Prince Mohammed, who US intelligence services concluded ordered the grisly killing of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi, a US resident. Trump has long been loath to scold authoritarian leaders for human rights abuses. He has continued to pursue a close relationship with Saudi Arabia, a lynchpin to the US’s Middle East strategy to counter Iran, despite its role in furthering humanitarian disaster in Yemen’s civil war.
Trump’s meeting with Erdogan will be his first since announcing, and then backing off, a withdrawal of US forces from Syria. There also is a growing rift between the two NATO allies over Turkey’s planned purchase of a Russian surface-to-air missile system and a US threat to suspend planned deliveries to Turkey of the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter.
Never fully willing to pass up domestic politics, even when overseas, Trump will have to divide his attention between affairs of state and the debates. He will be in meetings with world leaders when Democratic front-runner Joe Biden and others take the debate stage on Thursday night. Trump aides believe the scheduling fluke will highlight the signature advantage of incumbency – that the president already occupies the job the Democrats want.
A day after telling . Business’s Maria Bartiromo that Japan wouldn’t have to come to America’s aid in a Third World War and could watch it at home on a “Sony television”, Trump is en route to Osaka for the G20, where his hosts would have every right to feel offended.
Heading into what is likely his most consequential overseas trip of the year, Trump will be forced to grapple with a flurry of international crises, tense negotiations and a growing global to-do list.
After the Osaka summit, he will push on to South Korea for consultations on North Korea’s nuclear programme. The agenda for his four-day trip is as laden with hazards for the president as it is light on the ceremonial pomp that marked his recent state visits to Japan and the United Kingdom.
The showdown between the US and Iran, a trade war with China and the threat of fresh election interference by Russia are just some of the issues confronting the American leader who has shown little patience for the subtleties of global interactions and whose administration has struggled to grapple with simultaneous challenges.
As he faces mounting pressures to deliver results on a lengthy roster of global concerns, the president will meet one-on-one with at least eight world leaders on the summit’s sidelines, beginning with dinner with Australian prime minister Scott Morrison just after he lands in Japan on Thursday. Trump praised the country’s hard-line illegal immigration policy on Twitter on Wednesday night.
But White House officials are playing down prospects of specific accomplishments in what is the president’s third international trip in a month, even as Trump himself said of his “competitors” from other nations: “That’s OK. We’re doing great. We’re doing better than any of them.”
His calendar in Osaka includes sit-downs with Russian president Vladimir Putin, Chinese president Xi Jinping, Turkey’s Recep Teyyip Erdogan and Saudi crown prince Mohammed bin Salman, all of whom have authoritarian tendencies, as well as disquieted allies including Germany’s Angela Merkel and more contented ones such as Japanese PM Shinzo Abe.
Before he even touched down, Trump had a very public message for another of the leaders with whom he’ll meet, India’s Narendra Modi. Trump complained that India had recently increased its tariffs against the United States, tweeting, “This is unacceptable and the Tariffs must be withdrawn!”
The president left Washington days after pulling back from the brink of armed conflict with Iran and as he trades threats over its nuclear program and support for terror groups. With Iran threatening to breach uranium enrichment limits set in the 2015 nuclear accord as soon as Thursday, Trump will be asked to articulate his strategy for containing Iran to sceptical world leaders after pulling the US from the deal last year.
“The leaders are going to be pressing the president for clarity and then to get into a unified allied approach to the challenge, and it’s just simply unclear to me whether we have that policy or that approach,” said Heather Conley, director of the Center for Strategic and International Studies’ Europe programme.
Back to Trump briefly: Republican senators Mitt Romney and Joni Mitchell have come forward to say the president should be investigated over the recent historic rape allegation made against him by writer E Jean Carroll.
Trump insists Carroll’s story about him attacking her in the changing rooms of New York’s Bergdorf Goodman department store in the mid-1990s is false because “she’s not my type”. She is, nevertheless, the 22nd person to make an accusation of sexual impropriety against the commander-in-chief.
The four key takeaways from last night’s round one in Florida, courtesy of Chris Riotta.
Here’s Andrew Buncombe and Clark Mindock on last night’s debate in Miami, where Elizabeth Warren dominated, particularly on healthcare and abortion legislation, Cory Booker showed passion on ending gun violence and transphobia and Beto O’Rourke struggled to gain traction.
Washington governor Jay Inslee made the point that the next administration faced the “last chance” to reverse the impact of climate change.
The Democrats held their first round of debates between 2020 presidential contenders in Gaetz’s home state last night, with Elizabeth Warren dominating proceedings.
Trump, apparently watching from Air Force One, branded the spectacle “BORING!” in a tweet, attacking broadcasters NBC and MSNBC over a technical fault and his advising his followers were they could read MAGA-approved fact-checking of the candidates’ statements.
He was “off to save the Free World”, he said.
Also watching was South Carolina senator Lindsey Graham…
…A man whose hypocrisy seemingly knows no bounds.
As Donald Trump jets out to the G20 summit in Osaka, Japan, where he will meet with world leaders including Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping, Republicans at home worry Robert Mueller’s testimony before two congressional committees on 17 July might provide the springboard for Democrats to begin impeachment proceedings against the president.
“I hope we are not in store for ‘impeachment-by-surprise,’ as this seems to feed into the elements of the Democratic Party that are more focused on President Trump – and sort of relitigating the Mueller report – than in dealing with the humanitarian crisis at the border”, said Florida congressman Matt Gaetz in an interview with . News.
House Judiciary Committee chairman Jerrold Nadler said yesterday it was important for the American public to hear the retired FBI special counsel describe his 22-month investigation into Russian election hacking and possible collusion with the Trump campaign (as detailed in the resulting 448-page Mueller report) from the author in his own words, despite Mueller’s contention that his work “speaks for itself”.
Hello and welcome to The Independent‘s rolling coverage of the Donald Trump administration.
