US President Donald Trump left for Vietnam on Monday, putting him out of the country for one of the most confrontational week long stretches he’s faced from the Democratic-held House.
Tue Feb 26, 2019 - Dems Set to Challenge Trump During His Foreign Trip
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While Trump gets set to meet with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, the House is expected to vote Tuesday on a measure overturning his emergency declaration to build a wall on the Mexican border, The Hill reported.
Trump is scheduled to meet Wednesday and Thursday with Kim in Hanoi, Vietnam, which is 12 hours ahead of Washington.
The next day, the House Committee on Oversight and Reform will hear testimony from Trump’s former personal lawyer Michael Cohen, setting the stage for some of the strangest split-screen cable news shots in US history.
The Cohen hearing has the potential to get under Trump’s skin. The American president has labeled his former employee a “rat” and a “weak person”, but his testimony seems poised to be a cable news bonanza.
It’s also possible it could steal attention away from Trump’s second summit with Kim — though some wonder if the president has an announcement up his sleeve in Hanoi that would be meant to take those eyeballs back.
Once upon a time, lawmakers in Congress were likely to avoid such images. The idea of politics stopping at water’s edge was meant to limit criticism of a president traveling abroad in the nation’s interest.
But that tradition has greatly eroded in the past two decades — and it seems largely forgotten in the Trump era. Trump himself has criticized rivals while overseas and been the subject of such criticism.
“In terms of Congress deferring to the White House on foreign policy issues, historically there was much more decorum, generally. But the end of that decorum happened long before Trump was elected,” said Ruth Wasem, a professor of policy practice at the LBJ School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas.
“I think this is part of a culmination of how things have been going,” added Wasem, who is an opinion contributor for The Hill.
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who will travel with Trump to Vietnam, downplayed whether it’s inappropriate for Congress to hold a hearing that could undermine the president as he holds talks with Kim.
Congress has its own authority. They can move how they choose to proceed,” Pompeo told “Fox News Sunday” anchor Chris Wallace, adding, “I know what we'll be focused on. I'm very confident that the president and our team will be focused on the singular objective that we are headed to Hanoi for.”
Democrats are likely to grill Cohen on the president’s business dealings, his foreign interests and payments to two women during the 2016 campaign who alleged they had affairs with the president.
Cohen pleaded guilty to campaign finance violations related to those payments, as well as charges of bank fraud, tax fraud and lying to Congress about the timing of negotiations on a Trump Tower Moscow. He was sentenced late last year to serve three years in jail.
The fight over Trump’s border wall will be another dominant storyline during the president’s trip.
House lawmakers will vote, likely within hours of Trump’s arrival in Hanoi, on a resolution of disapproval that would block the president’s national emergency declaration to secure funding for his long-desired wall along the Southern border.
A Democratic leadership aide told The Hill that the president’s travel plans played no role in the House floor schedule.
The resolution is expected to pass the House and shift the spotlight to the Senate, where a handful of Republicans may side with Democrats to oppose Trump’s emergency over concerns it skirts congressional authority.
The White House did not respond to a request for comment from The Hill about whether it's concerned about the timing of Cohen's testimony or the emergency declaration vote.
There's little talk of Congress easing up its challenges to Trump while he is in North Korea.
Wasem highlighted that former Presidents Nixon and Clinton didn't get a reprieve from adversarial lawmakers amid investigations during their terms, and that conservative critics regularly chastised former President Obama during foreign trips.
She noted that both Trump's talks with Kim and Democrats' push to undo the president's emergency declaration are time sensitive, and Congress shouldn't be expected to hold its fire as a result.
“The severity of what’s going on is not to be minimized,” she said, adding, “In terms of both the negotiations with Korea and dealing with the declaration of a national emergency, those are both very serious things. Neither business should stop because of the other.”
Trump on Monday sought to shore up support for his emergency declaration before leaving the country.
“I hope our great Republican Senators don’t get led down the path of weak and ineffective Border Security,” Trump tweeted, noting, “Be strong and smart, don’t fall into the Democrats ‘trap’ of Open Borders and Crime!”
North Korean leader Kim Jong Un arrived in Vietnam on Tuesday for a summit with U.S. President Donald Trump where they will try to reach agreement on how to implement a North Korean pledge to give up its nuclear weapons.
February 26, 2019 - North Korea's Kim awaits Trump in Vietnam for Second summit
North Korea's Kim awaits Trump in Vietnam for second summit
North Korea's leader Kim Jong Un arrives at the Dong Dang railway station, Vietnam, at the border with China, February 26, 2019. REUTERS/Athit Perawongmetha
Trump is due in the Vietnamese capital, Hanoi, at about 9 p.m. (1400 GMT).
They will meet for a brief one-on-one conversation on Wednesday evening, followed by a dinner, at which they will each be accompanied by two guests and interpreters, White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders told reporters on Air Force One.
The two leaders would meet again on Thursday, she said.
Their talks come eight months after their historic summit in Singapore,
the first between a sitting U.S. president and a North Korean leader.
U.S. President Donald Trump will meet North Korean leader Kim Jong Un for an initial one-on-one meeting on Wednesday evening in Vietnam followed by dinner with advisers, White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders told reporters on Air Force One.
February 26, 2019 - Trump will have initial meeting with North Korea's Kim on Wednesday Evening
Trump will have initial meeting with North Korea’s Kim on Wednesday...
U.S. President Donald Trump walks to board Air Force One for travel to a second summit meeting with North Korea's Kim Jong Un in Hanoi, Vietnam from Joint Base Andrews, Maryland, U.S., February 25, 2019. REUTERS/Leah Millis
Trump is slated to arrive in Vietnam late Tuesday local time. On Wednesday morning he will hold a meeting with Vietnamese leaders before the start of the summit with North Korea that evening. Follow-up meetings with Kim will take place on Thursday.
President Donald Trump said Monday the US and China are "very, very close" to reaching an agreement on a trade deal one day after he announced he would delay additional tariffs on Beijing.
Tue Feb 26, 2019 - Trump: Trade Deal with China 'Very, Very Close'
Farsnews
Speaking to a group of governors at the White House, Trump stated that Chinese representatives would likely be coming back "quickly" for more negotiations, The Hill reported
"I told you how well we did with our trade talks in China, and it looks like they’ll be coming back quickly again," Trump stressed, adding, "And we’re going to have another summit. We're going to have a signing summit, which is even better."
"So hopefully we can get that completed, but we’re getting very, very close," he noted.
Trump tweeted Sunday evening that the two countries had made "substantial progress" in trade talks. As a result, he said, the US would delay a tariff hike that was set to go into effect on Friday.
"Assuming both sides make additional progress, we will be planning a Summit for President Xi and myself, at Mar-a-Lago, to conclude an agreement," Trump added.
While top officials from both countries have met multiple times over the last few weeks, Trump has long indicated that he and Chinese President Xi Jinping would need to sign off on any final agreement.
The US and China have been engaged in a tit-for-tat trade dispute over the past several months, with each side levying billions of dollars in tariffs on the other.
Trump and Xi agreed during the Group of 20 summit late last year to a truce that would prevent tariffs on Chinese goods from increasing from 10 percent to 25 percent until March 1, giving the two sides room for negotiations.
The president had signaled in recent weeks that the March 1 date could be flexible, telling reporters at various times that it was not a "magical date", and that moving it would "not be inappropriate".
White House adviser Jared Kushner, giving a broad outline of a U.S. peace plan for the Middle East, said it will address final-status issues of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, including establishing borders.
February 26, 2019 - Kushner, in Gulf, says US Mideast Peace Plan addresses Borders issue
Kushner, in Gulf, says U.S. Mideast peace plan addresses borders issue
FILE PHOTO - White House adviser Jared Kushner looks on during the Middle East summit in Warsaw, Poland, February 14, 2019. REUTERS/Kacper Pempel
In an interview broadcast on Monday on Sky News Arabia during a visit to U.S.-allied Gulf Arab states, Kushner made no specific mention of a Palestinian state, whose creation had been at the foundation of Washington’s peace efforts for two decades.
But he said the long-awaited peace proposal would build on “a lot of the efforts in the past”, including the 1990s Oslo accords that provided a foundation for Palestinian statehood, and would require concessions from both sides.
U.S. officials said that Kushner, who is President Donald Trump’s son-in-law, is expected to focus on the economic component of the plan during the week-long trip.
But in the interview, Kushner said the proposal also contained a “political plan, which is very detailed” and “really about establishing borders and resolving final-status issues”.
Kushner said Washington would present the plan only after the April 9 vote.
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