By Independent News Roundup
After meeting on Oct. 22 with NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte, U.S. President Donald Trump cancelled his attempt to meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin. On Oct. 21, he had resisted the media onslaught, quietly stating that he had not cancelled his plan to meet Putin, but would announce something in the next two days. Today, the explanation that he offered was: “We cancelled the meeting with President Putin. It just didn’t feel right to me. It didn’t feel like we were going to get to the place we have to get. So, I cancelled it.” Then he added, somewhat unconvincingly: “But we’ll do it in the future.”
What he did not say was that he seems to have submitted once again to the pressure from the Russophobe crowd. Rutte explained that his NATO colleagues “want to help” Trump bring peace between Ukraine and Russia. Trump commented that today’s new sanctions against Russia’s Rosneft and Lukoil energy companies were initiated because “I just felt it was time.”
Today was a day of such mealy-mouthed expressions, referencing his feeling-states. He even offered a new explanation for his behavior last Friday, Oct. 17, when he refused Ukraine’s acting president Volodymyr Zelenskyy Tomahawk missiles. Today he offered a new reason for that decision, that it would just take too long to train Ukrainians into the system. There’s a “tremendous learning curve.”
He then talked up his trip to South Korea, in which he stated that he would have a long meeting together with China’s President Xi Jinping, where they could work out the problems, as both countries had tremendous assets. While certainly a decent plan, China has not yet confirmed such a meeting, as they continue to take their measure of developments in Washington.
His other public comments on Oct. 22 might have helped his chances to sit down with Xi. He said that he thinks the U.S. had the upper hand with China. Despite his backing down on his tariff war in the spring—when U.S. industry, especially defense and auto, could not handle the reality of the problems in the rare earth supply line—now he seems to think his threat of an additional 100% in import taxes will work. He declared: “The tariffs are much more powerful than the rare earth.”
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