HELSINKI — President Donald Trump named the European Union as a top adversary of the United States and denounced the news media as the “enemy of the people” before arriving in Helsinki on Sunday on the eve of his high-stakes summit with Russia’s Vladimir Putin.
HELSINKI — President Donald Trump named the European Union as a top adversary of the United States and denounced the news media as the “enemy of the people” before arriving in Helsinki on Sunday on the eve of his high-stakes summit with Russia’s Vladimir Putin.
Trump and his top aides were downplaying expectations for today’s summit as Trump continued to rattle allies by lumping in the EU with Russia and China after barnstorming across Europe, causing chaos at the recent NATO summit and in a trip to the United Kingdom.
Trump spent the weekend in Scotland at his resort in Turnberry, golfing, tweeting and granting an interview to CBS News in which he named the EU, a bloc of nations that includes many of America’s closest allies, at the top of his list of biggest global foes.
“I think the European Union is a foe, what they do to us in trade,” Trump said, adding that “you wouldn’t think of the European Union, but they’re a foe.”
He said that Russia is a foe “in certain respects” and that China is a foe “economically … but that doesn’t mean they are bad. It doesn’t mean anything. It means that they are competitive.”
Trump set expectations for the summit low, telling CBS News, “I don’t expect anything. … I go in with very low expectations.” His national security adviser said they weren’t looking for any “concrete deliverables.”
Trump declined to discuss his goals for the summit — “I’ll let you know after the meeting,” he said — but said he believes such sessions are beneficial. He cited his historic meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un in June as a “good thing,” along with meetings he’s had with Chinese President Xi Jinping.
From aboard Air Force One, Trump complained in tweets that he wasn’t getting enough credit for his meeting with Kim and railed that “Much of our news media is indeed the enemy of the people” as he headed to sit down with Putin. Putin is regarded as creating a culture of violence and impunity that has resulted in the killing of some Russian journalists.
