Fox & Friends Asks NSC Official About Trump’s Condemnation of China: ‘How Does He Identify Russia?’
National Security Council communications director Michael Anton appeared on Fox & Friends Monday morning to preview President Donald Trump’s upcoming speech outlining his foreign policy plan — and waffled on a question about how Trump will address Russia.
Fox News’s Brian Kilmeade noted that Trump will identify China as a “strategic competitor” in his speech, before asking Anton: “how does he identify Russia?”
“He identifies Russia the same way he has been talking about Russia all year,” Anton said. “I don’t know if any of you saw that he had — the president had a phone call with President Putin yesterday.”
Putin has been on something of a campaign to woo Trump this month, first praising the U.S. president for the booming stock market in his annual press conference — prompting Trump to call the Russian president to thank him for his kind words. And over the weekend, Putin returned a call to thank Trump for a tip provided by the CIA alerting Russia to a terrorist plot to attack St Petersburg.
The warm relationship between the two leaders heats up as the special investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 election and potential ties between Trump’s campaign and the Kremlin accelerates.
“It was a great example of cooperation in an area that, you know, that cooperation almost certainly saved lives,” Anton said on Fox & Friends of the CIA tip. “We still have areas of cooperation possible with Russia in Syria in fighting ISIS,” before noting that the terror group’s caliphate has been decimated in the Middle East.
Anton’s hesitation to take a hard line on Russia is in line with Trump’s typical comments — but out of step with the administration’s official foreign policy plan, a copy of which was obtained by Politico:
A draft excerpt of the document, formally known as the National Security Strategy, sternly declares that Russia, along with China, “challenge[s] American power, influence and interests, attempting to erode American security and prosperity.”
“There are areas where we are still competing with Russia,” Anton said. “This is a strategy that sees that clearly, prioritizes our interests, and will continue the president’s policy of looking for areas of cooperation while being very clear-eyed about what our interests are, and protecting them.”
Watch above, via Fox News.
[image via screengrab]
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