President Trump decided to land in Warsaw, Poland a day before heading to the international meeting of the G20 summit in Hamburg, Germany (via NBC News):
The president will give what National Security Advisor H.R. McMaster billed last week as a “major speech” to the Polish people Thursday in Krasinski Square. He is expected to commemorate the Polish people’s bravery during World War II, while calling for allies to confront today’s challenges with the same courage.
That speech was still in the works when the president's plane landed Wednesday night, White House Principal Deputy Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders told reporters on board.
While in Warsaw, Trump will also meet with Polish President Andrzej Duda and attend a roundtable for the Three Seas Initiative, focusing on infrastructure development and energy security.
Trump is expected to meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Friday, which I’m sure will raise the attention of the tin foil hat wearers who think officials with the billionaire real estate magnate’s 2016 campaign colluded with Kremlin to sink Hillary Clinton. Yet, CNN, who has been tripping up endlessly in their coverage of the president, specifically on the Russia story, reported that the reason why German Chancellor Angela Merkel picked Hamburg was to ensure anti-Trump protesters showed up at the event. CNN’s John King made a note that demonstrations are going to be held closer to the event site, which is something we haven’t seen in recent memory.
Nic Robertson, the network’s International Diplomatic Editor, reported yesterday “Angela Merkel has chosen to hold this summit in an environment, in a location, that can be surrounded by protesters. It’s not as we see some summits, on a remote hilltop that the whole village or the town around it is secure.”
He said there were quite a few protesters gathered here Tuesday night, where police had to deploy water cannons to disperse around 1,000 of them. It was not a violent spray, a mere showering as Robertson put it.
“Angela Merkel is in a re-election campaign this year. The protesters will be able to get close so that, in part, President Trump can hear the voices of dissent here in Germany, here in Europe,” he added.
Robertson also said that this situation marks the difference Trump and Merkel have on trade, where Merkel says Germany sees win-win concerning globalization, which is rejected by the Trump White House who are not shy to say that there are winners and losers in this rigged economic game.
Over the past few months, relations between Germany and the U.S. seemed to have become more strained, with Merkel saying that Europe couldn’t rely on America anymore back in May. She also no longer lists the U.S. as a “friend” in her campaign platform (via Reuters):
In their campaign program for the German election, Chancellor Angela Merkel's conservatives have dropped the term "friend" in describing the relationship with the United States.
Four years ago, the joint program of her Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and its Bavarian sister party, the Christian Social Union (CSU), referred to the United States as Germany's "most important friend" outside of Europe.
The 2013 program also described the "friendship" with Washington as a "cornerstone" of Germany's international relations and talked about strengthening transatlantic economic ties through the removal of trade barriers.
But the words "friend" and "friendship" are missing from the latest election program - entitled "For a Germany in which we live well and happily" - which Merkel and CSU leader Horst Seehofer presented on Monday ahead of a Sept. 24 election.
Instead, the United States is described as Germany's "most important partner" outside of Europe. CDU officials were not immediately available to comment on the change in wording.
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