When Donald Trump wasn’t pounding Megyn Kelly softballs all over the park Tuesday, the presumptive Republican nominee took a few minutes to go rogue all on his own during a policy sit-down with Reuters. The candidate took the opportunity to expound upon his ever-evolving thinking on what he has previously said out loud, and during the 30-minute interview Trump added a few more lead balloons to his already quixotic arsenal of policy prescriptions.
The most notable of Trump’s revelations is that he signaled his willingness to hold direct negotiations with North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un over his country’s nuclear program. “I would speak to him, I would have no problem speaking to him,” Trump said of Kim. This would amount to a significant foreign policy change because at present the Obama administration has relied on senior administration officials (and Dennis Rodman) to conduct talks with an adversarial Pyongyang. Trump said he’d get China to help in the negotiating process.
Trump also pumped the breaks ever-so-slightly on his burgeoning strongman-lovefest with Russia’s Vladimir Putin. “The fact that he said good things about me doesn’t mean that it’s going to help him in a negotiation. It won’t help him at all,” Trump told Reuters. That’s a relief.
Trump also waded into climate politics saying “at a minimum” he will be renegotiating the COP21 Paris Agreement negotiated last year. The landmark climate agreement was seen alternatively as a “historic turning point” and a “major leap for mankind,” depending on your level of enthusiasm for future humans. Trump, on Tuesday, indicated he basically didn’t know what the agreement was, but that he didn’t like it. Here’s more from Reuters:
Trump said he is “not a big fan” of the Paris climate accord, which prescribes reductions in carbon emissions by more than 170 countries. He said he would want to renegotiate the deal because it treats the United States unfairly and gives favorable treatment to countries like China. “I will be looking at that very, very seriously, and at a minimum I will be renegotiating those agreements, at a minimum. And at a maximum I may do something else,” he said. A renegotiation of the pact would be a major setback for what was hailed as the first truly global climate accord, committing both rich and poor nations to reining in the rise in greenhouse gas emissions blamed for warming the planet.
Another Trump hit during the interview: Dodd-Frank would go, but Fed Chair Janet Yellen can stay. And that just about wraps up the current state of play in Trump’s head, but we’ll see what happens tomorrow, there’s still plenty of time to walk back any of these ideas as a “suggestion” as is Trump’s custom.
