Facing widespread condemnation for his fawning meeting with Vladimir Putin, President Donald Trump gave a shout-out to Sen. Paul Rand, who praised him for trying “to prevent us from having World War 3.”
“Thank you @RandPaul, you really get it!” Trump tweeted Tuesday morning, referring to Paul’s interview on “CBS This Morning.”
“‘The President has gone through a year and a half of totally partisan investigations — what’s he supposed think?’” he added, quoting the Kentucky Republican.
“Yes, the vast majority of the foreign policy community, the bipartisan consensus said you shouldn’t meet with Putin,” Paul said.
“They also said he shouldn’t meet with (North Korean leader) Kim (Jong Un) and this is an extraordinary thing about President Trump that should be lauded and not belittled is that he is willing to meet with adversaries to try to prevent us from having World War 3.”
Paul stood by the president’s decision to sit down with the Russian leader, saying that Trump “did a good thing” by meeting with Putin and warned his colleagues that it was a “mistake” to “try to turn this into a partisan escapade.”
The pol also compared Trump’s meeting with Putin to President Ronald Reagan’s summit with Mikhail Gorbachev when he was general secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.
“CBS This Morning” co-anchor John Dickerson pointed out that, unlike Trump, Reagan had pushed America’s moral objection to the Soviet Union during their summit.
Trump, meanwhile, held both the US and Russia responsible for the sour relationship between the two countries.
Paul countered that the assessment was “not being fair to the president,” citing Reagan’s “evil empire” comments toward the Soviet leader.
“While the rhetoric was strong, you might actually compare that with Trump’s rhetoric in North Korea, it’s been very strong. So I think there’s actually some apt comparisons between Reagan and Trump on the diplomatic front,” he said.
“We have to deal with the world as it is, not as we wish it to be, and if we’re only going to talk to people who have perfect constitutional republics, we’re going to have a very small audience and we’re going to have a lot of potential conflicts with no outlet for diplomacy,” he added.
Meanwhile, Trump also mentioned his “great meeting with NATO.”
“They have paid $33 Billion more and will pay hundreds of Billions of Dollars more in the future, only because of me,” the president tweeted.
“NATO was weak, but now it is strong again (bad for Russia). The media only says I was rude to leaders, never mentions the money!” he added.
After a contentious visit at NATO headquarters in Brussels, the president declared that all the member nations agreed to increase their defense spending.
French President Emmanuel Macron rejected that assertion, citing a 2014 agreement by the countries to increase their share to 2 percent of their gross domestic product in 10 years.
“There was a communiqué released yesterday it was very detailed and I invite you to read it … It shows the measures approved by all the member states. This communiqué is clear, it reaffirms a commitment to 2 percent in 2024. That is all,” Macron said last week.
[New York Post]
