{"id":171031,"date":"2018-07-15T04:30:49","date_gmt":"2018-07-15T08:30:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/?p=171031"},"modified":"2018-07-15T04:30:49","modified_gmt":"2018-07-15T08:30:49","slug":"summit-fever-trump-reaches-for-big-moment-with-putin","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/2018\/07\/15\/summit-fever-trump-reaches-for-big-moment-with-putin\/","title":{"rendered":"Summit fever: Trump reaches for big moment with Putin"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"FILE:<\/a>
FILE: Although President Donald Trump has met with Russia’s Vladimir Putin twice before, he is eager to recreate in Finland the heady experience that he had last month with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un in Singapore: a summit that became a mass media event complete with powerful presidential images. (Photo<\/a>: Vladimir Putin\/Twitter<\/a>)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

HELSINKI \u2014 A face-to-face sitdown with a long-feared foe. Endless media hype. Huge ratings.<\/p>\n

Although President Donald\u00a0Trump\u00a0has met with Russia’s Vladimir Putin twice before, he is eager to recreate in Finland the heady experience that he had last month with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un in Singapore: a summit that became a mass media event complete with powerful presidential images. Ever the showman and insistent on establishing closer ties to Moscow,\u00a0Trump\u00a0overruled his advisers and demanded the rituals and pageantry of a formal summit.<\/p>\n

Trump\u00a0had boasted to confidants about the number of cameras in Singapore, claiming it dwarfed coverage of the Oscars, according to a person familiar with his thinking but not authorized to discuss private conversations and so spoke on condition of anonymity. Though\u00a0Trump\u00a0originally expressed concern that Helsinki was not glamorous enough and favoured hosting Putin at the White House, the president was reassured by aides that it would be an effective backdrop. And long believing in the power of personal connections, he has insisted to aides that it was essential to sit down with Putin to establish a rapport.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe’s been very nice to me the times I’ve met him. I’ve been nice to him. He’s a competitor,\u201d\u00a0Trump\u00a0said of Putin last week in Brussels. \u201cYou know, somebody was saying, ‘Is he an enemy?’ No, he’s not my enemy. ‘Is he a friend?’ No, I don’t know him well enough.\u201d<\/p>\n

Drawing on his experience as a marketer and salesman,\u00a0Trump\u00a0has long been convinced that his mastery of powerful images has been essential to his political rise. The president has told advisers that the Singapore diplomacy made him look like a take-charge president. And it was not lost on him that his poll numbers received a temporary bump after the meeting.<\/p>\n

With the same attention to detail that he devoted to campaign ads,\u00a0Trump\u00a0masterminded many of the looks for his meeting with Kim, including the two leaders’ dramatic initial greeting and handshake and, later, their one-on-one time. At one point, he startled the Secret Service by giving Kim an impromptu tour of some mighty American machinery \u2014 the presidential limousine known as \u201cThe Beast.\u201d<\/p>\n

Though the results from the North Korea summit are debatable,\u00a0Trump\u00a0has told confidants he believed it was a masterstroke, according to three outside advisers and White House officials. They spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss private conversations.<\/p>\n

Always favouring bold gambits that would separate him from his predecessors,\u00a0Trump\u00a0believed that the historic meeting with Kim was potentially his ticket for a Nobel Peace Prize and would become an essential part of his legacy. While summits with Russian leaders are far more common,\u00a0Trump\u00a0believes a similar boost would occur if he can improve relations with Moscow and get Putin to make concessions never attained by President Barack Obama.<\/p>\n

\u201cI could say: ‘Would you do me a favour? Would you get out of Syria,\u201d’\u00a0Trump\u00a0said in an interview with Fox News last month. \u201c’Would you do me a favour? Would you get out of Ukraine?\u201d’<\/p>\n

And while the imagery of Singapore made the idea of a Putin summit that much more tantalizing,\u00a0Trump\u00a0was already keen on setting up a one-on-one meeting, even with the risks entailed in meeting an experienced leader who is also a former KGB official.<\/p>\n

The president met with Putin on the sidelines of international summits last year \u2014 once in Germany, once in Vietnam \u2014 and both times he invited his Russian counterpart to the White House, according to three current and former administration officials. He reiterated the invitation on a call with Putin this spring and initially told aides that he wanted to have the meeting at the White House.<\/p>\n

He was later convinced to do it abroad, tacking the summit onto his planned visit to Belgium and Britain. Initially concerned that Helsinki was not a fitting location,\u00a0Trump\u00a0relented after being briefed on the history of U.S.-Russia summits in Finland and after seeing that it could be scheduled after a visit to one of his golf courses in Scotland, according to the three outside advisers and officials.<\/p>\n

But many in Washington are leery of the summit occurring anywhere, believing that just by agreeing to meet,\u00a0Trump\u00a0has offered further global legitimacy to Putin, who will preside over the World Cup final in Moscow the day before the summit. Aides have argued to\u00a0Trump\u00a0that the chances of substantive progress on a host of thorny issues, including Syria and Ukraine, are slim.<\/p>\n

Longtime American allies and White House aides alike have expressed concerns about the meeting. Hovering over Helsinki is the spectre of the 2016 election interference and the ongoing special counsel probe into possible collusion between\u00a0Trump\u00a0campaign officials and Russia. There were calls from Capitol Hill for the president to cancel the summit after Friday’s indictment of 12 Russian military intelligence officers accused of hacking Democrats in an effort to help\u00a0Trump.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf President\u00a0Trump\u00a0is not prepared to hold Putin accountable, the summit in Helsinki should not move forward,\u201d said Republican Sen. John McCain of Arizona.<\/p>\n

But the White House has insisted the meeting is on.\u00a0Trump\u00a0has repeatedly cast doubt on the conclusion that Russia was behind the hacking and frequently derided special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into possible links between Russia and his campaign as a \u201cwitch hunt.\u201d But he said in Britain that he would raise the election meddling with Putin even as he played down its impact.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don’t think you’ll have any ‘Gee, I did it. I did it. You got me,\u201d’\u00a0Trump\u00a0said on Friday, invoking a television detective. \u201cThere won’t be a Perry Mason here, I don’t think. But you never know what happens, right? But I will absolutely firmly ask the question.\u201d<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

HELSINKI \u2014 A face-to-face sitdown with a long-feared foe. Endless media hype. Huge ratings. Although President Donald\u00a0Trump\u00a0has met with Russia’s …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":33,"featured_media":130600,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[24157,16,17],"tags":[14087,1411],"class_list":["post-171031","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-american-news","category-news","category-news-w","tag-president-donald-trump","tag-vladimir-putin","mauthors-jonathan-lemire","mauthors-jill-colvin","mauthors-the-associated-press"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/171031","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/33"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=171031"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/171031\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/130600"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=171031"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=171031"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=171031"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}