OSAKA, Japan -- President Trump opened his most consequential trip of the year by plunging into a series of high-stakes meetings at an international summit in Japan on Friday by pushing allies on both trade and defense spending.
Trump met first with the G20 summit's host, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe. He will follow that with talks with the leaders of India and Germany before holding his first meeting with Russia's Vladimir Putin since the special counsel found extensive evidence of Russian meddling in the 2016 U.S. election.
Moments earlier, as Abe officially welcomed Trump to the summit, the president waved over his daughter Ivanka Trump and son-in-law Jared Kushner, both senior White House aides, to stand with him for the official welcome photo. Trump will then meet with India's prime minister, Narendra Modi, whom he warned on Twitter the day before about tariffs on U.S. goods, and then later German Chancellor Angela Merkel.
But the day's main event will be Trump's first public meeting with Putin since the Helsinki summit in which Trump refused to side with U.S. intelligence agencies over his Russian counterpart.
Trump said in advance he expected a "very good conversation" with Putin but told reporters that "what I say to him is none of your business." His aides have grown worried that Trump could use the meeting to once again attack Robert Mueller's probe on the world stage, particularly since the special counsel now has a date to testify before Congress next month.
Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer pressed the president to directly challenge the Russian leader on election interference and send a signal "not merely to Putin but to all of our adversaries that interfering with our election is unacceptable, and that they will pay a price -- a strong price -- for trying."
Trump has complained in recent days that the U.S. military alliance with Japan is one-sided, said Germany was taking advantage of the U.S. on support for NATO and tweeted that India's tariffs on the U.S. "must be withdrawn!" Trump also meets Friday with Brazil's President Jair Bolsonaro, whom the American leader has come to view as a populist leader in his own image.
Japanese Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga on Thursday brushed off Trump's complaints that the Japan-U.S. security pact unfairly puts the burden only on the U.S. side, calling Trump's remarks "irrelevant" and saying the obligations are balanced.
Trump's meeting with Putin will be the leaders' first extended conversation since the two met in Helsinki, Finland, nearly a year ago. That's when Trump set off an uproar by declining to say he believed the U.S. intelligence services' conclusions over Putin's denials of election interference.
Putin has denied that Russia meddled in the American election to help Trump win, even though Mueller uncovered extensive evidence to the contrary. That included a Russian military intelligence operation to break into Democratic Party emails and efforts by a "troll farm" to spread divisive rhetoric and undermine the U.S. political system by using phony social media accounts.
International on 06/28/2019