Angering Iran, meeting Kim and siding with Putin

In the eighth instalment of our series recapping an unprecedented presidency, Joe Sommerlad looks at madcap exploits in Tehran, Jerusalem, Singapore, London and Helsinki

Trump and Putin at the Helsinki summit on 16 July 2018 (Reuters)

Donald Trump’s overseas misadventures continued into the summer of 2018 when he announced the withdrawal of the US from the Iran nuclear deal on 8 May, which had been agreed in July 2015 under Barack Obama in harmony with the UK, France, Germany, Russia and China.

The Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action had been intended to usher the rogue state in from the international wilderness by relieving sanctions in exchange for the country curtailing its nuclear aspirations but, to Trump, it was “defective to its core” and benefited only “the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism”, a point of view he had repeated endlessly as a candidate.

His decision to withdraw dangerously destabilised the region, set back the cause of peace and trashed years of delicate diplomatic work, bringing his administration alarmingly close to war with Tehran on several occasions.

A week later, the US opened in its embassy in Jerusalem, formally recognising the city as the capital of Israel over Palestinian objections.

The president would later go even further in his friendly overtures towards Benjamin Netanyahu – himself an enemy of Iran – by signing an order the following March officially acknowledging as Israeli land the disputed territory of the Golan Heights, captured from Syria in 1967 and annexed in 1981.

Ivanka Trump, Jared Kushner and treasury secretary Steve Mnuchin joined Netanyahu for the diplomatic headquarters’ opening ceremony while protests erupted in Gaza, leading to violent clashes with Israeli forces that left at least 50 people dead.

Trump stayed away from Jerusalem but did jet over to Canada on 8 June where he fell out with Justin Trudeau at the G7, before appearing in Singapore to finally sit down with Kim Jong-un in person three days later, an event of no little media interest where everyone from eccentric Chicago Bulls star Dennis Rodman to a pair of Trump and Kim lookalikes sought their share of the spotlight.

Their meeting at the Capella Hotel in Sentosa was also attended by Rex Tillerson’s replacement as secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, plus Johns Kelly and Bolton and concluded amicably with the signing of a vague joint statement and a pledge to meet again, their past name-calling seemingly forgotten and Kim even accepting a TicTac from the president once he had been assured the breath mint was not a cyanide capsule.

Trump’s press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders later revealed in her memoir Speaking For Myself that there was much amusement in the American camp over a playful Kim apparently winking at her across the negotiating table.

“Kim Jong-un hit on you!” the president reportedly joked with her as they drove away afterwards in his limousine, the Beast. “He did! He f***ing hit on you!”

Delighted, he encouraged Sanders, in the interest of world peace, to “go to North Korea and take one for the team”, she wrote.

Back on home turf, the Trump administration came under renewed pressure that month when it emerged his “zero tolerance” immigration policy at the US-Mexico border amounted to breaking up asylum-seeking families as a deterrent, separating 1,995 frightened children from their parents and imprisoning them in detention centre cages.

This appalling revelation cast new light on the cruelty of Trump and Stephen Miller, the rabidly anti-immigration senior adviser behind the approach, who apparently felt no sympathy for the displaced despite his own family emigrating from Belarus in 1903 through Ellis Island to escape Russian pogroms.

The first lady, Melania Trump, would only make matters during this period when she visited a child detention centre on the Texas border wearing an army green Zara jacket bearing the astonishing slogan, “I really don’t care. Do U?”, apparently her own choice and intended to “drive the libs crazy” but which saw her stylist Herve Pierre attract no end of abuse for the crashing insensitivity. She did not stand up for him.

The first lady would only make matters when she visited a child detention centre on the Texas border wearing an army green Zara jacket bearing the astonishing slogan, “I really don’t care. Do U?”

The president briefly evaded the scandal, which would continue to scar his presidency, by visiting Europe for a tense Nato summit in Brussels before enjoying the red carpet treatment in London.

A black-tie dinner of Hereford beef fillet at Blenheim Palace, tea with the Queen and Prince Philip at Windsor Castle, a trip to Chequers, lawn bowls – nothing was too quaint for Donald and Melania.

The president swiftly repaid Theresa May for our lavish hospitality by telling The Sun she had “wrecked Brexit” and then denying it as “fake news” when confronted by a grinning press pack in her presence. It would later emerge that he had advised her to sue the EU over the struggle to agree Britain’s withdrawal from the trading bloc on favourable terms.

The tour was also met with angry mass protests in central London, as citizens took to the streets to express their disgust at his Muslim travel ban, withdrawal from the Paris climate agreement and treatment of asylum seekers at the border.

The be-diapered Baby Trump blimp, soon to become an international protest icon, also made his debut appearance on the world stage when he took to the skies above Parliament Square in Westminster.

Next stop on the president’s busy travel itinerary was Helsinki, which he visited on 16 July for a summit with Russian president Vladimir Putin staged at Finland’s Presidential Palace.

It would prove to be yet another pivotal moment.

The two men met entirely alone for two hours in the palace’s Gothic Hall, with only their interpreters present and no notes taken, leaving us with no way of knowing what was said, after which they emerged to give a joint press conference.

Invited to condemn Russia for interfering in the 2016 US election by Jonathan Lemire of the AP, Trump instead gave the jaw-dropping response: “My people came to me, [director of national intelligence] Dan Coats came to me and some others, they said they think it’s Russia. I have President Putin. He just said it’s not Russia. I will say this: I don’t see any reason why it would be.”

Putin, stood beside him, maintained an admirable poker face in the room but surely permitted himself a hollow laugh later at the very idea of an American president gullible enough to publicly discredit his own intelligence experts and side with the Kremlin, accepting an ex-KGB agent’s word at face value as though the Cold War had never happened.

What a triumph to be toasted over vodka and Beluga caviar.

Read the full The Trump Review series here