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NEW YORK – President Trump sought Monday to hold the 73rd UN General Assembly around his agenda, announcing that he will soon hold another summit with North Korean Kim Jong Un and send a warning to Iran's leaders.
But even though Trump laid the groundwork for a much-anticipated speech on his worldview on Tuesday to leaders of 192 other countries, he was assailed by disruptive forces closer to home – and on his own.
Just minutes after Trump made brief remarks at an opening session aimed at combating the spread of addictive opioids, the news appeared in Washington that Deputy Attorney General Rod J. Rosenstein threatened to resign. President.
The immediate political storm quickly engulfed, then eclipsed, the president's first day on the world stage. The question was whether Trump could tame rival leaders abroad to know if he would be able to prevent another day of internal chaos in the White House.
In the middle of the afternoon, when he met with South Korean President Moon Jae-in, whose diplomatic relations with Kim last week allowed the talks to be rescheduled. nuclear, Trump was preparing to meet Rosenstein at White House. Moon was relegated to a party.
"We are going to have a meeting on Thursday when we come back," Trump said, answering questions from reporters about Rosenstein, who is overseeing Special Investigator Robert S. Mueller III's investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 elections. "Right now we meet a lot of great people, including President Moon."
Trump is both on his native soil and in enemy territory this week, back in his Trump Tower in New York – the city that made it – and surrounded by diplomats mistrustful or sometimes hostile to his "America First" nationalism ".
[For Nikki Haley, a lower profile as Trump heads back to the U.N.]
His return to the UN meeting, after a first speech last year, gave Trump a chance to advance his priorities, including his efforts to restore trade relations with his allies and rivals. Iranian leaders.
Trump said he would meet Kim in "a not too distant future," adding that "the site is being developed. The calendar is being prepared. A second meeting would mark a major change since last year, when Trump said in his speech to the United States that Kim was on a "suicide march" for his nuclear weapons program.
Trump also warned Iran last year that he would not tolerate the nation's support for terrorist organizations in the Middle East. Since then, the president has kept his campaign promise to remove the United States from the Iranian nuclear deal.
With the participation of Iranian President Hassan Rouhani in the US conference, Trump's staff reiterated their determination to confront Tehran.
"We imposed very strict sanctions on Iran. Others are coming, "said John Bolton, National Security Advisor. "What we expect from Iran is massive changes in their behavior. And until that happens, we will continue to exercise what the President has called "maximum pressure". "
[‘I’m not the president of the globe’: Trump goes it alone as he faces world leaders amid trade war against China]
White House assistants also held several bilateral meetings on Trump's first day, including Egyptian President Abdel El Sisi and French President Emmanuel Macron. Yet, if the attendees hoped that the president would remain focused, the crises in Washington created a split screen, almost as soon as the president arrived in the city Sunday night.
During the Trump dinner with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe at Trump Tower, the New Yorker reported that Supreme Court candidate Brett Kavanaugh was charged with sexual misconduct by a classmate at Yale. While Mr. Abe was pressuring the president on trade and North Korea on the occasion of a private dinner, Trump's associates issued statements and an official White House "tip sheet" denouncing new claims of Democrats.
Trump was silently unexpectedly on Twitter at dawn on Monday, but as he was entering the United Nations headquarters in the city center, the president could not help answering the question of the journalists on Kavanaugh. He called the candidate "an exceptional person" and declared that he was "with him all the way".
The charges against him, which have delayed a Senate confirmation vote, are "one of the most unfair and unjust things that has happened to a candidate," Trump said. woodwork "and" in my opinion totally political ".
Some foreign affairs analysts said Trump's concern with his national crises was the product of a president who was unable to partition his office. Trump is so engrossed in his goal of maintaining the support of his conservative political base that he considers pretty much everything through this lens, said P.J. Crowley, former Assistant Secretary of State for the Obama Administration.
Past Presidents "could solve foreign policy problems and domestic politics at some point," said Crowley. "What's different is that in the case of Trump, there is not really any difference between the domestic and the foreigner."
At a press briefing for journalists at the Midtown Hilton, Trump's top foreign policy advisers – Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, US Ambassador Nikki Haley and Bolton – announced Tuesday the speech of the American president.
Trump, they said, will expose his view that "the United States is determined to clearly involve itself in multilateral organizations where we see it," Haley said. or that encroaches on the American people. "
Bolton, who criticized the United States as the top American diplomat for the George W. Bush administration, said Trump's speech would focus on the theme of "American sovereignty."
Blocking in an impassive voice that he was "delighted" to be back in the UK, Bolton waved a pocket copy of the American chart and described Trumps' speech as a version. of American exceptionalism.
The US Constitution "is the highest authority we recognize," said Bolton, implicitly arguing that no international pact or agreement in the United States should be imposed.
However, the three key collaborators quickly dismissed questions from journalists about Rosenstein and whether they had ever participated in secret plans to invoke the 25th amendment to remove Trump from office. A New York Times report that Rosenstein discussed such a possibility last year sparked another storm at the end of last week, prompting Rosenstein to launch a public denial.
"I do not know any cabinet member who talks about it," Haley said. "It's completely and completely absurd."
Pompeo called the idea of "ridiculous".
As the three men left, just hours after the start of the first day, Pompeo, exasperated, offered a message to the press.
"Have a good week," he said sternally, causing a laugh on Bolton's part as they walked through the door.
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