FACT CHECK: Donald Trump and his real, and unreal, phone calls
In President Donald Trump‘s universe, the past week was distinguished by two phone calls that happened and two that didn’t. Leaked transcripts of Trump’s phone conversations from the early days of his presidency reveal that he did not consider his chat with Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull to be “very civil,” as he had insisted in a tweet after the Jan. 28 call. Trump actually told Turnbull the conversation was “ridiculous” before he president ended it early, the transcript shows. Transcripts of his calls with Turnbull and Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto were reported by The Washington Post on Thursday. The Associated Press had reported on a leaked excerpt of the Pena Nieto call on Feb. 2. The transcripts show that reports of tensions that Trump denounced at the time as “fake news” were largely accurate. There were minor discrepancies in wording between the excerpt reported at the time and the transcript published Thursday – “bad hombres” in the excerpt, for example, and “tough hombres” in the full version. Meantime, Trump over this past week summarized the contents of recent phone conversations with Pena Nieto and a Boy Scout leader. Neither call took place. A look at the real and phantom phone calls: TRUMP: “Thank you to Prime Minister of Australia for telling the truth about our very civil conversation that FAKE NEWS media lied about. Very nice!” – Feb. 3 tweet. THE FACTS: Civility quickly wore thin in that Jan. 28 phone call. Trump fumed about having to live up to a deal made by President Barack Obama about accepting a group of refugees held by Australia. “I do not know where they find these people to make these stupid deals,” he said. “I am going to get killed on this thing.” “You will not,” Turnbull interjected. “Yes,” said Trump, “I will be seen as a weak and ineffective leader in my first week by these people. This is a killer.” He soon grew fed up. “That is enough, Malcolm,” he said. “I have had it. I have been making these calls all day and this is the most unpleasant call all day. Putin was a pleasant call. This is ridiculous.” Trump went on: “It is an embarrassment to me, but at least I got you off the hook. So you put me back on the hook.” Turnbull assured him “You can count on me,” presumably as an ally, and the call ended with terse mutual thanks. — TRUMP: “Friendly.” – His description at a news conference of his Jan. 27 call with Pena Nieto. THE FACTS: That’s a defensible characterization, judging from the transcript. Both men were frank and forceful about their differences, but not personally hostile. Trump confided in the Mexican president that he’d put them both in a “bind” with his campaign pledge to make Mexico pay for the border wall. He said he’d stopped repeating that promise, and he wanted Pena Nieto to stop saying that Mexico would not pay. “You and I will always be friends,” Trump said at one point. “Do not worry.” Yet he was blunt about wanting to rein in the trade deficit, to stop losing jobs to Mexico and to respond with tariffs if needed: “We cannot do this and we cannot sustain like this,” he said. “We will not be the United States anymore.” It was a substantive and at times nuanced discussion. Trump did not hold his own country blameless, saying, “We are living off the success of the past – off the fat of the past – and we cannot continue to do this.” — TRUMP: “I got a call from the head of the Boy Scouts saying it was the greatest speech that was ever made to them, and they were very thankful.” – Interview with The Wall Street Journal. Politico published the transcript. THE FACTS: He got no such call. His provocative and political speech to the boys at their national jamboree later prompted Boy Scouts President Randall Stephenson and Chief Scout Executive Mike Surbaugh to apologize to members of the scouting community who were offended by Trump’s rhetoric. White House press secretary Sarah Sanders said the praise Trump described was conveyed in person, not on the phone. — TRUMP: “Even the president of Mexico called me. They said their southern border, very few people are coming because they know they’re not going to get through our border, which is the ultimate compliment.” – statement on Monday. THE FACTS: Again, no call. Again, Sanders said this was from a face-to-face conversation. Mexico’s Foreign Relations Department said Pena Nieto remarked to Trump during a meeting at the Group of 20 summit in Germany that deportations of Mexicans from the United States had fallen 31 percent between January and June, compared with 2016. Pena Nieto also said 47 percent fewer Central American migrants had entered Mexico in that period. How is that a compliment for Trump? Border enforcement and his tough talk on illegal immigration may be dissuading some people in Central America from entering Mexico and trying to sneak into the U.S. Republished with permission of The Associated Press.
Donald Trump’s cellphone diplomacy raises security concerns
President Donald Trump has been handing out his cellphone number to world leaders and urging them to call him directly, an unusual invitation that breaks diplomatic protocol and is raising concerns about the security and secrecy of the U.S. commander in chief’s communications. Trump has urged leaders of Canada and Mexico to reach him on his cellphone, according to former and current U.S. officials with direct knowledge of the practice. Of the two, only Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has taken advantage of the offer so far, the officials said. Trump also exchanged numbers with French President Emmanuel Macron when the two spoke immediately following Macron’s victory earlier this month, according to a French official, who would not comment on whether Macron intended to use the line. All the officials demanded anonymity because they were not authorized to reveal the conversations. Neither the White House nor Trudeau’s office responded to requests for comment. The notion of world leaders calling each other up via cellphone may seem unremarkable in the modern, mobile world. But in the diplomatic arena, where leader-to-leader calls are highly orchestrated affairs, it is another notable breach of protocol for a president who has expressed distrust of official channels. The formalities and discipline of diplomacy have been a rough fit for Trump — who, before taking office, was long easily accessible by cellphone and viewed himself as freewheeling, impulsive dealmaker. Presidents generally place calls on one of several secure phone lines, including those in the White House Situation Room, the Oval Office or the presidential limousine. Even if Trump uses his government-issued cellphone, his calls are vulnerable to eavesdropping, particularly from foreign governments, national security experts say. “If you are speaking on an open line, then it’s an open line, meaning those who have the ability to monitor those conversations are doing so,” said Derek Chollet, a former Pentagon adviser and National Security Council official now at the German Marshall Fund of the United States. A president “doesn’t carry with him a secure phone,” Chollet said. “If someone is trying to spy on you, then everything you’re saying, you have to presume that others are listening to it.” The caution is warranted even when dealing with allies. As German Chancellor Angela Merkel‘s learned in 2013, when a dump of American secrets leaked by Edward Snowden revealed the U.S. was monitoring her cellphone, good relations don’t prevent some spycraft between friends. “If you are Macron or the leader of any country and you get the cellphone number of the president of the United States, it’s reasonable to assume that they’d hand it right over to their intel service,” said Ashley Deeks, a law professor at the University of Virginia who formerly served as the assistant legal adviser for political-military affairs in the U.S. State Department. The practice opens Trump up to charges of hypocrisy. Throughout last year’s presidential campaign, he lambasted Democratic rival Hillary Clinton for using a private email server while she was secretary of state, insisting she should not be given access to classified information because she would leave it vulnerable to foreign foes. Presidents’ phone calls with world leaders often involve considerable advance planning. State Department and National Security Council officials typically prepare scripted talking points and background on the leader on the other end of the line. Often an informal transcript of the call is made and circulated among a select group — sometimes a small clutch of aides, sometimes a broader group of foreign policy officials. Those records are preserved and archived. The White House did not respond to questions on whether the president is keeping records of any less-formal calls with world leaders. Trump’s White House is already facing scrutiny for apparent efforts to work outside usual diplomatic channels. The administration has been fending off questions about a senior aide’s alleged attempt to set up a secret back channel of communication with Moscow in the weeks before Trump took office. White House adviser Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law, met in December with Russia’s ambassador to the U.S. and discussed whether a secret line of communication could be used to facilitate sensitive policy discussions about the conflict in Syria, according to a person familiar with the talks. The person demanded anonymity because the person was not authorized to discuss the sensitive conversation by name. The White House has said such back-channel communications are useful and discreet. Trump has struggled more than most recent presidents to keep his conversations with world leaders private. His remarks to Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto and Russian diplomats have all leaked, presumably after notes of the conversations were circulated by national security officials. It was unclear whether an impromptu, informal call with a foreign leader would be logged and archived. The Presidential Records Act of 1981, passed in response to the Watergate scandal, requires that the president and his staff to preserve all records related to the office. In 2014, the act was amended to include personal emails. But the law contains “blind spots” — namely, record-keeping for direct cellphone communications, said Jonathan Turley, a professor at George Washington University Law School, who specializes in public interest and national security law. Under Barack Obama, the first cellphone-toting president, worries about cyber intrusions — particularly by foreign governments — pulled the president’s devices deep into the security bubble. Many of the functions on Obama’s BlackBerry were blocked, and a very small handful of people had his phone number or email address, according to former aides. “Government sometimes looks like a big bureaucracy that has stupid rules, but a lot of these things are in place for very good reasons and they’ve been around for a while and determine the most effective way to do business in the foreign policy sphere,” said Deeks. “Sometimes it takes presidents longer to figure that out.” Republished with permission of The Associated Press.
Donald Trump takes aim at Dodd-Frank financial overhaul
The Latest on President Donald Trump (all times local): 1:28 p.m. President Donald Trump has signed an executive order that will direct the Treasury secretary to review the 2010 Dodd-Frank financial overhaul. It’s Trump’s first step at scaling back regulations on financial services. Trump has called the law a “disaster” and said it failed to address some of the causes of the 2008-2009 financial crisis. The president has also signed a presidential memorandum related to retirement planning. The administration’s move will delay implementing an Obama-era rule that requires financial professionals who charge commissions to put their clients’ best interests first when giving advice on retirement investments. ___ 1 p.m. The Trump administration says it has thawed its temporary freeze on contract and grant approvals at the Environmental Protection Agency, with all $3.9 billion in planned spending moving forward. A media blackout at the agency also appears to have been partially lifted, as a trickle of press releases were issued by EPA this week. However, the agency still has not posted to its official Twitter feed since President Donald Trump’s Jan. 20 inauguration. The Associated Press and other media outlets reported last week that Trump political appointees had instructed EPA staff not to issue press releases or make posts to the agency’s official social media accounts without prior approval. Contract and grant spending at the agency was also put on hold, prompting confusion and concern among state agencies expecting funding. ___ 12:05 p.m. Foreign leaders and groups are finding new ways to make known their disagreement with President Donald Trump’s policies. An international school in Bosnia announced Friday it would extend scholarships to students affected by Trump’s travel ban on citizens from seven Muslim-majority countries. The United World College’s branch in Mostar said it was motivated by its belief in equal opportunities. In Portugal, the parliament there voted to condemn the U.S. travel ban and highlighted the role of the U.S. to promote tolerance and human rights. In Sweden, Deputy Prime Minister Isabella Lovin posted on Facebook a photo of her signing the country’s new climate law while surrounded by seven female members of her staff. Swedish media say it resembles photos of Trump in the Oval office surrounded by male advisers. ___ 10:25 a.m. President Donald Trump is applauding the January jobs report, saying it shows there’s a “great spirit in the country right now.” Trump addressed last month’s job report, which showed the U.S. economy adding 227,000 jobs and the unemployment rate at 4.8 percent. The report also says that more Americans started looking for work, although not all of them found jobs immediately. Trump is joining business leaders and CEOs in the White House and also previewing some of his economic priorities. He says he expects “to be cutting a lot out of Dodd-Frank,” the financial regulations put in place in response to the Great Recession. The president says they’ll be discussing how to bring back jobs, lower taxes and reduce regulations. ___ 8:15 a.m. President Donald Trump says that a “new radical Islamic terrorist” is behind an attack outside the Louvre Museum in Paris. Trump tweeted early Friday that America needs to “get smart,” in light of the incident. He writes, “a new radical Islamic terrorist has just attacked in Louvre Museum in Paris. Tourists were locked down. France on edge again.” A knife-wielding man shouting “Allahu akbar” — “God is Great,” in Arabic — attacked French soldiers on patrol near the museum Friday in what officials described as a suspected terror attack. The soldiers first tried to fight off the attacker and then opened fire, shooting him five times. There were no immediate details about the identity of the suspect. ___ 7:40 a.m. President Donald Trump says reports of his contentious conversation with Australia’s prime minister are “fake news.” In a tweet Friday morning, Trump thanked Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull “for telling the truth about our very civil conversation that FAKE NEWS media lied about. Very nice!” Turnbull told journalists that Trump had agreed to honor a deal to resettle refugees from among around 1,600 asylum seekers. Most are in island camps on the Pacific nations of Nauru and Papua New Guinea. Turnbull also said the U.S.-Australia relationship is strong. Australia has refused to accept them and instead pays for them to be housed on the impoverished islands. Trump earlier took to Twitter to call the agreement with Australia a “dumb deal.” ___ 7:04 a.m. President Donald Trump says movie star Arnold Schwarzenegger “tried hard” to make “Celebrity Apprentice” a success, but has failed. In an early morning Twitter post Friday, the president kept alive a theme he brought up a day earlier during his first appearance at the National Prayer Breakfast. Trump, who once hosted the NBC reality TV show, took a pot shot there at Schwarzenegger, the current host and former California governor, over a ratings nosedive for the show. On Friday, Trump said in his tweet, “Yes, Arnold Schwarzenegger did a really bad job as Governor of California and even worse on the Apprentice … but at least he tried hard!” Schwarzenegger responded quickly to Thursday’s remarks in a video on his verified Twitter account, suggesting that he and Trump switch jobs. Republished with permission of The Associated Press.
Analysis: Donald Trump’s clash with Australia strains alliance
For decades, Australia and the U.S. have enjoyed the coziest of relationships, collaborating on everything from military and intelligence to diplomacy and trade. Yet an irritable tweet President Donald Trump fired off about Australia and a dramatic report of an angry phone call between the nations’ leaders proves that the new U.S. commander-in-chief has changed the playing field for even America’s staunchest allies. Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull was left scrambling to defend his country’s allegiance to the U.S. after The Washington Post published a report on Thursday detailing a tense exchange that allegedly took place during the Australian leader’s first telephone call with Trump since he became president. During the call, the Post reported, Trump ranted about an agreement struck with the Obama administration that would allow a group of mostly Muslim refugees rejected by Australia to be resettled in the United States. The newspaper said Trump dubbed it “the worst deal ever” and accused Turnbull of seeking to export the “next Boston bombers” — a reference to Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, U.S. citizens born in Kyrgyzstan who set off explosives at the 2013 Boston marathon. Though Turnbull declined to confirm the report, he also didn’t deny it, apart from rejecting one detail — that Trump had hung up on him. The prime minister insisted his country’s relationship with the U.S. remained strong, and that the refugee deal with the U.S. was still on. Yet shortly after, Trump took to Twitter to slam the agreement, tweeting: “Do you believe it? The Obama Administration agreed to take thousands of illegal immigrants from Australia. Why? I will study this dumb deal!” Australians, long accustomed to a chummy friendship with the U.S., were stunned by the drama. Not since the Vietnam War — when Australia’s then-Prime Minister Gough Whitlam criticized a series of bombings authorized by then-President Richard Nixon — has there been such obvious friction between the leaders of the two nations. “You can’t help but think the signal this sends to world leaders: That you have to be very, very careful doing business with this administration, particularly with the president and the people around him,” said Simon Jackman, CEO of the U.S. Studies Center in Sydney. “And that can’t help but put a chill on relations between allies.” Yet the only surprising thing about Trump’s reaction to the deal is that Australians were surprised at all, said Nick Economou, a political analyst at Monash University in Melbourne. Members of Turnbull’s conservative party probably assumed — perhaps naively — they still had a special relationship with conservatives in the U.S., based on the close ties the parties enjoyed during previous administrations. But if Trump has taught the world anything, Economou said, it’s that he has little patience for tradition. “I suspect that there is a feeling that, ‘Oh no, we’ve dealt with Republicans before, we were very close to George W. Bush, we should be fine with Mr. Trump and he’ll agree to this deal,’” Economou said. “But the thing is, of course he’s not going to agree to this deal! Obama entered into it and whatever Obama was for, Donald Trump is against.” Australia has long been one of America’s strongest allies. The nation has fought alongside the U.S. in every major conflict since World War I, including the Korean War, Vietnam War and, more recently, in the Middle East. Australia is also part of the “Five Eyes” intelligence-sharing program with the U.S., along with Canada, Britain and New Zealand. And while few believe the spat over the refugee deal will permanently damage those ties, it will likely prompt changes in how America’s allies approach their dealings with Washington. The businessman-turned-president’s response — lashing out at a deal that had already been on the table — could be a negotiation tactic he is borrowing from his days in real estate, said Norman Abjorensen, a political analyst at the Australian National University. And like it or not, he said, it’s a tactic Australia may need to accept. “The way of doing business — Australia’s going to have to adjust to it,” Abjorensen said. “There’s not going to be adjustments at the other end, for sure. The wind has shifted quite dramatically.” But while politicians may be able to adjust to Trump’s whims, the Australian public may not be so forgiving, Abjorensen said. “People are going to read this and think, ‘Hang on, this is something a little bit different. Doesn’t he like us? What’s changed?’” Abjorensen said. “It might bring about a gradual rethinking of the relationship, certainly at the level of the people.” Despite the drama, Turnbull insisted that his country remained loyal to the U.S, calling the relationship “rock solid.” “Our alliance is built on commitments on service, on courage, on partnership of millions of Australians and Americans going back generations,” Turnbull told Melbourne radio station 3AW. “And it will continue and strengthen during my time as prime minister and I’m sure President Trump’s time as president.” Still, despite the upbeat message Turnbull delivered publicly, most analysts suspect he — like most Australians — was left stunned by the slight. “I think Mr. Turnbull has come across something he’s probably never encountered before in his political career, his legal career or his business career. The ‘Trump experience,’ day one!” Abjorensen said with a laugh. “This is how you treat your friends? Heaven help those who are a little bit further down the list of being in favor.” Republished with permission of the Associated Press.
