Trump: Putin backs evil

He says Russia likely knew of gas-attack plan

NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg and President Donald Trump hold a news conference Wednesday at the White House. Backtracking on past comments, Trump said NATO is “no longer obsolete” because of changes made after his criticism.
NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg and President Donald Trump hold a news conference Wednesday at the White House. Backtracking on past comments, Trump said NATO is “no longer obsolete” because of changes made after his criticism.

WASHINGTON -- President Donald Trump said Wednesday that President Vladimir Putin of Russia is partly to blame for the crisis in Syria and bears responsibility to help bring peace to the war-torn country.

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"I really think there's going to be a lot of pressure on Russia to make sure that peace happens, because frankly, if Russia didn't go in and back this animal, we wouldn't have a problem right now," Trump said, referring to Putin's support for President Bashar Assad of Syria.

"Putin is backing a person that's truly an evil person, and I think it's very bad for Russia, I think it's very bad for mankind, it's very bad for this world," Trump added during an interview with the Fox Business cable channel that aired Wednesday morning.

Later Wednesday, Trump said at a news conference at the White House with Jens Stoltenberg, secretary-general of NATO, that Russia likely knew of the Syrian government's plan to gas its own people in advance of a chemical weapon attack last week in northwestern Syria, asserting that U.S. relations with Moscow were at an "all-time low."

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"Right now, we're not getting along with Russia at all -- we may be at an all-time low in terms of relationship with Russia," Trump said. "This has built for a long period of time, but we're going to see what happens."

His comments came as Secretary of State Rex Tillerson was in Moscow for meetings with Russian leaders. Trump said his primary message to Russia was: "You should have peace in Syria; it's enough."

Trump also recounted the scene at his Mar-a-Lago club last week after he gave the order for U.S. forces to carry out the missile strike on a Syrian airfield that had launched Assad's chemical attack, then discussed it over chocolate cake with President Xi Jinping of China, who was at the Florida estate for a summit meeting.

"I said, Mr. President, let me explain something to you -- this was during dessert," Trump said. "We've just fired 59 missiles, all of which hit, by the way, unbelievable, from, you know, hundreds of miles away, all of which hit, amazing. Brilliant. It's so incredible. It's brilliant. It's genius."

"He was eating his cake," Trump said of Xi, "and he was silent."

Trump said Xi had asked his interpreter to repeat what he had said about the airstrike and then said that he approved of the move.

"Anybody that was so brutal and uses gases to do that to young children and babies, it's OK," Trump said, describing Xi's reaction. "He was OK with it."

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Trump also appeared to rule out deeper U.S. military intervention in Syria beyond retaliatory strikes.

"Are we going to get involved with Syria? No," Trump said.

White House spokesman Sean Spicer on Wednesday said the president was not ruling out another attack on Syrian government installations if Assad continued to use chemical weapons against civilians.

But Spicer said "going in and occupying Syria for the express purpose of regime change is something the president has been very clear on."

'No longer obsolete'

Trump, during his conference with Stoltenberg, made a stark reversal on NATO, which he derided as obsolete during his bid for the White House but said Wednesday had transformed into an effective alliance since he took office.

"I said it was obsolete; it's no longer obsolete," Trump said during the 30-minute appearance with Stoltenberg. He called NATO a "great alliance" and "the bulwark of international peace and security."

Trump attributed his change of heart to unspecified transformations within NATO that he said were a direct response to criticism he had leveled that the alliance was not doing enough to combat terrorism.

"I complained a long time about that," Trump said, "and they changed."

It was not clear what the president was referring to; NATO forces have been fighting alongside the United States in Afghanistan for more than a decade, an effort focused on combating terrorist groups including the Taliban.

Since Trump took office in January, he has been confronted by European allies who fear that his administration will go easy on Russia. During his 2016 campaign, Trump said he would decide whether to honor the commitment to protect the Baltic republics against Russian aggression, based on whether those countries "have fulfilled their obligations to us."

He has since made his support of NATO allies clear but has reiterated his stance that European members need to meet their end of the bargain if they are to continue benefiting from the military alliance.

The Trump administration says it is spending a disproportionate share on defense compared with its 27 partners, and that it expects action by the time Trump meets with other alliance leaders on May 25.

NATO leaders pledged in 2014 to halt defense-spending cuts and move toward a guideline target of 2 percent of gross domestic product within a decade. Only four other nations currently meet the target: Britain, Estonia, Greece and Poland.

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization is a military alliance of European and North American democracies created after World War II to strengthen international cooperation as a counter to the rise of the Soviet Union.

The United States, NATO's most powerful member, spends more on defense than all the others combined -- 3.61 percent of GDP in 2016, according to NATO estimates. U.S. spending, too, has tapered off in recent years.

Trump on Tuesday signed off on Montenegro's upcoming accession into NATO, helping pave the way for the alliance's expansion in the Balkans. Russia strongly opposes the move in a region it considers part of its strategic sphere of interest.

Wiretap claim pushed

Turning to security questions in Asia, where a U.S. Navy aircraft carrier strike group is headed toward the Korean Peninsula in a show of force intended to deter North Korea from testing a sixth nuclear weapon or launching missiles, Trump declined to discuss his strategy for reining in the North.

"You never know, do you?" he said. "We are sending an armada -- very powerful, and we have submarines -- very powerful, far more powerful than the aircraft carrier," he added, apparently referring to U.S. submarines carrying ballistic nuclear missiles.

"He is doing the wrong thing," Trump said of Kim Jong Un, the North Korean leader.

Trump also used the interview to defend his allegation that President Barack Obama tapped his phones, arguing that his unfounded accusation has been vindicated since it was discovered that Susan Rice, the former national security adviser, sought to learn the identities of Trump associates swept up in surveillance of foreign officials by U.S. spy agencies.

"When you look at Susan Rice and what's going on, and so many people are coming up to me and apologizing now," Trump said. "They say, 'You know, you were right when you said that.' Perhaps I didn't know how right I was, because nobody knew the extent of it."

Trump has said Rice's actions may have been unlawful, an assertion his allies in the news media have frequently made but for which the president has provided no evidence. Current and former intelligence officials from both Republican and Democratic administrations have said they do not believe Rice's actions were unusual or illegal.

In the interview, Trump also said James Comey, the FBI director who is leading an investigation into his campaign's potential ties with Russia, had helped Hillary Clinton, his 2016 Democratic presidential rival, avoid prosecution for her use of a private email server when she was secretary of state.

"When Jim Comey came out, he saved Hillary Clinton -- he saved her life," Trump said. "Director Comey was very, very good to Hillary Clinton. If he weren't, she would be right now going to trial."

He said he had kept Comey in his job "because I want to give everybody a good, fair chance."

Information for this article was contributed by Julie Hirschfeld Davis and Peter Baker of The New York Times and by Vivian Salama of The Associated Press.

A Section on 04/13/2017

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