WASHINGTON _ Amid an escalating confrontation with American allies, President Donald Trump said Friday that Russia should be reinstated into the Group of 7 nations as he left the White House to attend the summit of the major economic powers in Canada.
"Now, I love our country. I have been Russia's worst nightmare," Trump told reporters on the South Lawn before departing for Joint Base Andrews for the flight to Quebec. "But with that being said, Russia should be in this meeting. Why are we having a meeting without Russia being in the meeting?"
Russia was expelled from the G-7 after Moscow's 2014 annexation of Crimea and actions to otherwise destabilize Ukraine. Subsequently, U.S. intelligence agencies concluded it has interfered in the 2016 presidential election, and Trump's campaign is currently under criminal investigation for possible collusion with Russia.
European Council President Donald Tusk, who wrote in The New York Times this week that the G-7 nations must stay together despite Trump's "unfortunate and worrying" actions, splashed cold water on his call to reinstate Russia during a news conference in Quebec prior to Trump's arrival.
"Let's leave seven as it is," Tusk said. "It's a lucky number."
The president's comment further strained relations between the U.S. and its closest allies, many of whom have taken a more confrontational public posture toward Trump in recent days after his decision to impose steel and aluminum tariffs on Canada, Mexico and the European Union. Tensions were already simmering over Trump's abandonment of the Paris climate accord and the multinational Iran nuclear deal.
Trump's trade fight with longtime allies has drawn uncommon attention to the usually sleepy annual G-7 summit, even as he prepares for his much more anticipated meeting on Tuesday in Singapore with North Korea's Kim Jong Un, the first such encounter between an American president and a North Korean leader.
Now the G-7 conference stands to be one of the most consequential in the 45 years since the world's major powers formed their economic alliance in response to the Arab oil embargo _ and for a once-unthinkable reason: the estrangement of the United States from its closest allies, even as Trump openly advocates for Russia and its leader, Vladimir Putin.
The White House announced late Thursday that Trump would leave the summit early on Saturday, but he also arrived late after delaying his departure from Washington, partly for a lengthy exchange with reporters outside the Oval Office. That forced the postponement of a planned bilateral meeting with French President Emmanuel Macron, with whom Trump has traded Twitter taunts this week.
White House aides said they were working to reschedule that meeting for later in the day.
Tusk, in prepared remarks opening the summit before Trump arrived, warned that the new G-7 divide plays into Putin's hands, though he did not mention the Russian president by name.
"It is clear that the U.S. president and the rest of the group continue to disagree on trade, climate change and the Iran nuclear deal," Tusk said. "What worries me most, however, is the fact that the rules-based international order is being challenged, quite surprisingly, not by the usual suspects but by its main architect and guarantor, the U.S."
"Naturally, we cannot force the U.S. to change their minds," Tusk continued. "At the same time, we will not stop trying to convince our American friends and President Trump that undermining this order makes no sense at all, because it would only play into the hands of those who seek a new post-West order where liberal democracy and its fundamental freedoms would cease to exist."
Other members of the group are Canada, France, Britain, Germany, Italy and Japan. Russia joined in 1997, several years after the fall of the Soviet Union, and was suspended in 2014 for its international aggressions.
In his remarks to reporters before departing the White House, Trump also reiterated his threat to withdraw from the two-decade-old North American Free Trade Agreement with Canada and Mexico. He said that Canada, as well as the 28-nation European Union, treat the United States "very unfairly" on trade, but added that he thought the countries might arrive at a new deal "easily."
Especially over the last 24 hours, Trump has attacked Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, the host of this year's G-7 summit, and engaged in an increasingly acrimonious Twitter back-and-forth with France's Macron over both leaders' criticisms of his recent tariffs on steel and aluminum imported into the United States.
Macron has expended perhaps more energy than other world leaders in working to build a constructive personal relationship with his unpredictable American counterpart since Trump took office 16 months ago, though Trudeau has long courted the U.S. president as well. Yet both have been disappointed as he disregarded their pleas for the Paris climate accord and the 2015 Iran nuclear deal and, lately, against protectionist tariffs.
After Macron tweeted that the leaders of the other six G-7 countries would not hesitate to sign a memorandum to work together without the American president, Trump lashed back. He complained, sometimes misleadingly, about existing trade barriers in the EU and Canada and threatened to escalate the budding trade war that began with his tariffs.
As Trump's Twitter attacks continued Thursday night, the White House announced that the president would depart the G-7 summit before it ends Saturday, leaving an aide to fill his seat.
Earlier in the week, White House economic advisor Larry Kudlow wouldn't promise that the U.S. would sign onto a joint communique with the other G-7 nations, even as he was trying to dismiss the intensifying differences among the longstanding Western allies as a momentary family dispute.
In the wide-ranging 20-minute back-and-forth with reporters, Trump also reasserted his "absolute right" to pardon himself and said that more presidential pardons are in the offing as he reviews about 3,000 candidates for clemency, including dead celebrities _ he mentioned boxing champion Muhammad Ali.
Trump also said that embattled EPA administrator Scott Pruitt is "doing a great job," though he added that Pruitt is not "blameless" in the many controversies swirling around him. The president declined to rebuke Rudy Giuliani, his public spokesman, in matters related to the Russia investigation or for attacking Stormy Daniels as less respectable and credible than other career women because of her work in the porn industry.
"Rudy is Rudy," Trump said.
