Current and former US officials sounded the alarm about President Donald Trump’s upcoming summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin. “I’m afraid,” a former…
Current and former US officials sounded the alarm about President Donald Trump’s upcoming summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
“I’m afraid,” a former State Department told The New Yorker in a story published on Friday. “Our guy here is like an amateur boxer going up against Muhammad Ali.”
“There’s no stopping him,” a senior White House official reportedly told veteran journalist and New Yorker writer Susan Glasser in June. “He wants to have a meeting with Putin, so he’s going to have a meeting with Putin.”
Citing interviews with more than a dozen former senior officials who worked for Republican and Democratic presidents, Glasser indicated there is “no historical precedent for Trump’s meeting with Putin.”
This approach to diplomacy with Russia has confounded some foreign-policy experts, as it’s happening despite the US intelligence community’s conclusion that Russia meddled in the 2016 US presidential election, and accusations that Russia carried out a nerve-agent attack in the UK in March.
Trump’s Singapore summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un in June was also met with early doubt, given the reclusive nation’s pattern of behavior and Kim’s mercurial nature.
