Thursday on MSNBC’s “Andrea Mitchell Reports,” former Secretary of State John Kerry said President Donald Trump has “played into” Russian President Vladimir Putin’s anti-America “narrative in very, very dangerous ways” in an appearance from the Aspen Ideas Festival.
On Trump’s upcoming meeting with Putin, John Kerry said, “It depends on how prepared he is, what his agenda is, what he hopes to get out of it, whether he knows what he wants to get out of…Whether or not he can explain to people why it is that he praises Vladimir Putin while attacking our allies. That is why people are so much on the edge of their seats about this. In principle, I’m in favor of meeting with President Putin. I met with him more than anybody in the Obama Administration and for longer. We got things done.”
He continued, ” What makes this different is the G-7 meeting that just took place. The ranker within our allies, and suspicions. The deep resentment they have for the secondary sanctions that they’ve decided to impose because we’ve pulled out of the Iran deal, but all the other countries are still in the deal. And that extraterritoriality and challenge to sovereignty is really angering Macron, Merkel, May, and the leaders of the region. That is not the way to approach summit with President Putin. The way you approach the summit is to have done your homework with those nations, build up an agenda which they support and understand and go in united in way that doesn’t play in to the narrative that President Xi and President Putin have been working overtime to push, which is the liberal order of the West is coming apart, America is weak, and we are the future. That — the president has played into that narrative in very, very dangerous ways.”
Follow Pam Key on Twitter @pamkeyNEN
COMMENTS
Please let us know if you're having issues with commenting.