Trump Assails Critics Over His G-7 Performance
Posted: Tue Aug 27, 2019 12:25 pmWHITE HOUSE - President Donald Trump is fuming over mainstream U.S. news coverage of his attendance at the G-7 in France and defending his preference to host the leaders’ summit next year at one of his private resorts in the state of Florida.
Much of the news and editorial coverage of the U.S. president at the summit in Biarritz, which ended Monday, has not cast Trump in a good light, spotlighting misstatements, perceived gaffes and lack of cooperation with the other world leaders on critical issues such as the environment.
“The pity of the entire Group of 7 show was that it was part of a new normal in which the world’s major liberal democracies basically accept that they are out of sync with the president of the nation that should be leading their efforts to manage the world and its resources wisely and responsibly, but isn’t,” according to the editorial board of The New York Times, one of the newspapers delivered every morning to Trump's desk.
Washington Post fact-checker Glenn Kessler wrote that during the president’s lengthy news conference at the conclusion of the G-7 meeting, Trump “made numerous false, misleading or inaccurate statements on a variety of issues.”
Trump, who has repeatedly criticized both leading newspapers for its coverage of him, declared Tuesday morning on Twitter, “The G-7 was a great success for the USA and all. LameStream Media coverage bore NO relationship to what actually happened in France - FAKE NEWS. It was GREAT!.”
Former Vice President Joe Biden, one of the leading Democratic Party candidates to challenge Trump in next year’s general election, has issued a statement characterizing the president’s performance at the G-7 as “more evidence of how President Trump's disastrous foreign policy has left the United States isolated while the world moves on without us.”
Biden added, “There is no more telling metaphor for this administration's abdication of American global leadership than the empty chair at the G-7 climate meeting. When it comes to meeting the existential crisis of our time, Trump has walked away from the table — literally.”
World leaders attend a session on climate change, in Biarritz, France, Aug. 26, 2019, on the third day of the annual G-7 Summit. The empty chair was reserved for U.S. President Donald Trump.
Trump is also facing criticism for calling for Russia to be readmitted to the leaders’ summit without pre-conditions.
“No other members of the group have proposed bringing Russia back into the fold, and as he suggested it — and they resisted — Trump underlined his isolated status,” Michael D’Antonio, author of the book "The Truth about Trump," wrote in an opinion piece published on the website of CNN, another media entity Trump has frequently labeled "fake news."
Four Democratic Party senators on Tuesday sent Trump a letter expressing their strong opposition to having Russian President Vladimir Putin sitting along with the leaders of the group of industrialized democracies.
“Readmitting Putin’s Russia to the G-7 would be contrary to our values and a clear abdication of the United States’ responsibilities as the world’s leading democracy,” concludes the letter signed by Jack Reed, Charles Schumer, Robert Menendez and Mark Warner.
Trump told reporters Monday in Biarritz that next year’s G-7 summit, hosted by the United States, might be held at his private resort in Doral, Florida.
FILE - A frame from video shows the Trump National Doral, in Doral, Florida, June 2, 2017.
The president noted, among other attributes, the resort's closeness to Miami’s international airport and its ample ballrooms and parking.
Walter Shaub, former director of the U.S. Office of Government Ethics, said the president pushing his own property for the event “raises the very real possibility that a corrupting influence tainted the procurement process.”
Former Republican senator and presidential candidate Rick Santorum called the president's promotion of one of his private properties “inappropriate.”
Trump “doesn’t do himself any good by doing things like this,” Santorum said on CNN. “Please, Mr. President. Stop. Please.”
Subsequent media reports about the resort being a potential summit site pointed to a January 2017 Miami Herald article about a settlement between the Trump National Doral Miami golf resort and a business traveler who had sued, alleging his upper body was devoured by voracious bedbugs.
Trump also had a response to that on Tuesday.
“No bedbugs at Doral. The Radical Left Democrats, upon hearing that the perfectly located (for the next G-7) Doral National MIAMI was under consideration for the next G-7, spread that false and nasty rumor. Not nice!” Trump tweeted.