Under fire from both Democrats and Republicans in Congress, Donald Trump bitterly abandoned his plan to hold the next summit of the Group of Seven industrialized nations at one of his Florida resorts. But he has another idea for the meeting that he has not given up: inviting Vladimir Putin.
It’s one of those Trump ideas that address no obvious need and would yield no likely benefit. It’s also one that pits him against most of the other members of the G-7. At the August gathering in Biarritz, France, the president insisted on pressing the issue: “I think it would be better to have Russia inside the tent than outside the tent.”
Trump says Russia was ejected from what was then the G-8 because Putin “outsmarted” Barack Obama and Obama wanted retribution. As with so many matters on which Trump comments, it’s not clear whether that statement stems from ignorance or mendacity. In either case, it’s false.
View the complete October 27 article by Steve Chapman on the National Memo website here.