President Donald Trump’s tweets not only trigger worries at home. They rattle leaders around the world.
But U.S. officials reportedly tried to reassure global policy representatives at an international conference in Germany over the weekend, urging them to pay no attention to the president’s Twitter rants.
The U.S. actually is angry with the Kremlin over interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election, despite Trump’s Twitter denials, American politicians and officials told foreign policy leaders in Munich, The Washington Post reported. America also remains firmly committed to Europe. And, to be clear, the U.S. doesn’t plan on dropping a nuclear bomb on North Korea, the U.S. leaders said.
“The values are the same, the relationships are the same,” insisted Rep. Michael Turner (R-Ohio), the Post reported.
German Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel said Saturday he no idea how to judge U.S. intentions. “Is it deeds? Is it words? Is it tweets?” he asked.
The disconnect between Trump’s tweets and U.S. government leaders often has been apparent.
Last year, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson announced his commitment to diplomatic efforts to ease tensions with North Korea, even though Trump tweeted he was “wasting his time trying to negotiate with Little Rocket Man” Kim Jong Un.
National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster said at the conference Saturday that with Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s indictments against 13 Russians “the evidence is now incontrovertible” that Russia interfered in the U.S. presidential election. Trump doesn’t seem to share that position.
Trump tweeted over the weekend that McMaster “forgot” to mention that the presidential election “was not impacted” by the Russians. That’s not something Mueller’s investigation has concluded.
Trump tweeted last summer that he and Russian President Vladimir Putin were going to partner to form an “impenetrable cyber security unit so that election hacking and many other negative things, will be guarded.”
McMaster quipped at the conference in Germany: “We would love to have a cyber dialogue when Russia is sincere about curtailing its sophisticated form of espionage.”
An ominous question came from a diplomat who wished to remain anonymous, the Post reported. He wondered if people like McMaster, just as those who continued working in government during the rise of Adolf Hitler, stayed in their jobs hoping to protect the nation.