Amid complaints that his aides are saying different things about Syria and his policy is confusing, President Trump emphatically cleared the air.
“We’re not going into Syria,” he told me yesterday in an exclusive interview. “Our policy is the same — it hasn’t changed. We’re not going into Syria.”
The president, speaking by phone Tuesday, called Syrian President Bashar al-Assad a “butcher” and a “barbarian” for using sarin gas on his own people, but said last week’s successful missile strike was not the start of a campaign to oust the dictator.
“Our big mission is getting rid of ISIS,” Trump said. “That’s where it’s always been. But when you see kids choking to death, you watch their lungs burning out, we had to hit him and hit him hard.”
He called the attack, which involved 59 cruise missiles fired from two Navy destroyers, “an act of humanity.”
I asked if he, as a new president, found it difficult to make the final decision, knowing the stakes.
“It’s very tough to give that final go-ahead when you know you’re talking about human life,” he said. “We went back and forth, and also back and forth about severity. We could have gone bigger in terms of targets and more of them, but we thought this would be the appropriate first shot.”
Later, he added, “We hope he won’t do any more gassing.”
The interview was scheduled to last 15 minutes, but ran nearly twice as long. Throughout, the president was gracious, energized and focused. He answered every question, and invited me to ask more as aides tried to get him to his next appointment. So I did.
How seriously does he take the threats from Russia, and does he think there is still a possibility for cooperation in the region with Vladimir Putin?
“We’re not exactly on the same wavelength with Russia, to put it mildly,” Trump answered. “Putin must see what a barbarian this guy is, and it’s a very bad symbol for Russia with this guy gassing children and using barrel bombs.”
With Secretary of State Rex Tillerson in Moscow as we spoke, Trump said he hoped for Putin’s cooperation, but added, “I don’t know.”
He was especially upset that Syria had used chemical weapons after supposedly destroying all its stockpiles under a deal President Obama signed in 2013 and repeatedly boasted about. I asked whether that fact gave him more pause about Obama’s nuclear deal with Iran.
“I don’t need more pause about Iran,” Trump said. “It was the single worst deal ever. It’s a disgrace that a deal like that was even signed. It made Iran a power from a country that was ready to fall apart.”
He wasn’t finished. “Iran won’t honor its deal. Instead of saying, ‘Thank you very much for saving our country,’ they’ve been emboldened.”
Noting those problems and North Korea’s threatening aggression, Trump said, “I knew I was left a mess, but it’s worse than I thought.”
Has he had any recent contact with Obama?
“No,” he said. “I’m very disappointed that I was surveilled and so was my campaign. That’s not supposed to be happening, but I’ve been proven right.”
Although the evidence supporting Trump’s claim that Obama “wiretapped” him is incomplete, there is no question he is the victim of dirty tricks. Numerous leaks suggest that communications involving Trump’s team were intercepted by law enforcement or intelligence agencies and given to anti-Trump media outlets to undermine the new administration.
And the admission last week by Susan Rice, Obama’s national security director, that she asked for the names of some Trump associates to be “unmasked” points to a likely political purpose involving the White House.
Although two congressional committees are probing Trump’s claim, along with whether his campaign colluded with Russian hacking during the campaign, I believe a Justice Department probe of the Obama administration’s surveillance is also needed. At the very least, the leakers of national security material gathered must be found and prosecuted.
Bannon: “A good guy, but …”
Washington’s rumor mill is working overtime on the fate of presidential aide Steve Bannon, who is said to be at the center of the rampant White House infighting. When I asked the president Tuesday afternoon if he still has confidence in Bannon, who took over the campaign in mid-August, I did not get a definitive yes.
“I like Steve, but you have to remember he was not involved in my campaign until very late,” Trump said. “I had already beaten all the senators and all the governors, and I didn’t know Steve. I’m my own strategist and it wasn’t like I was going to change strategies because I was facing crooked Hillary.”
He ended by saying, “Steve is a good guy, but I told them to straighten it out or I will.”
Media’s ‘fake sources’
President Trump remains hot about the coverage he gets in the New York Times, Washington Post and CNN. When I asked about stories that cited anonymous sources “close to the president,” Trump insisted that “many of those sources are made up and I don’t believe them. Let them reveal their sources.”
“It’s fake news and fake sources,” he insisted, adding that’s why he won’t appear on CNN. As for the Times, “they’re a failing, dead paper. Lucky for them I came along. If Hillary had won, they’d be closing up shop by now.”
He’s not impressed by commentators, either. “Pundits, they knew less than my 11-year-old son,” he said. “They have zero political instinct and zero political talent.”
Xi ‘understood immediately’
The missile strike in Syria overshadowed his two-day meeting with China president Xi Jinping, who brought his wife to meet Trump and first lady Melania Trump at Mar-a-Lago. The leaders ended their first meeting just as the first missiles were launched.
“When I explained to him what we were doing, because of the gassing of children, he understood immediately,” Trump told me.
I asked about their summit, given some of the harsh things Trump has said about China.
“I was a little surprised, we had a great chemistry, not good, but great,” Trump said. “I liked him and he liked me a lot. That doesn’t mean we’re going to get along on trade or North Korea, but we had great chemistry.”
Their meeting included a priceless interlude in which Ivanka Trump and husband Jared Kushner brought their three children to meet China’s first couple. The oldest, Arabella, who turns 6 in July, is studying Mandarin and sang a Chinese song and recited Chinese poetry in honor of the guests.
What did President Xi make of that, I asked.
“He said she was speaking absolutely perfect Chinese, he couldn’t believe it,” the proud grandfather recalled. “He said, ‘She sounds like a 5-year-old girl from Beijing.’”
Ivanka posted a video of the performance and it is a huge sensation in China, making successful diplomacy in this case a Trump family affair.