President Donald Trump employed "wrecking ball diplomacy" at the recent NATO summit and has blamed the United States for the problems with Russia, Ohio Gov. John Kasich said Monday, while questioning the president's procedures for meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
"We have Putin who has taken Crimea, invaded Ukraine and then engaged in poisoning people," Kasich, who campaigned for the presidential nomination against Trump in 2016, told CNN's Anderson Cooper.
"The national intelligence director under President Trump [Dan Coats] has said that the 'blinking lights are turning red' in terms of constant cyberattacks on us."
However, Trump also raised questions with his words about the United States, including a tweet Monday claiming the United States' relationship with Russia has never been worse "thanks to many years of U.S. foolishness and stupidity" and the "witch hunt" of a probe into Russian interference in the election.
"What I would hope they would get out of the summit is an agreement to sit down and continue arms control discussions," said Trump. "We believe the Russians cheated on that as well. But it is in all of our interest, the world's interest for the two powers that control 90 percent of the nuclear weapons to sit down and re-engage in arms control."
Kasich told Cooper he also thinks Putin is looking for a reason to take himself out of Ukraine, as it "doesn't make a lot of sense" to be there. Further, he said Putin is interested in leaving Syria, but if they leave too quickly, "you can see a beginning of a civil war again there."
He added that he finds it "really amazing" that his own party, the Republicans, said nothing about how Trump was approaching Putin.
"I was there when [Ronald] Reagan was negotiating with [Mikhail] Gorbachev," said Kasich. "It was always, they were the 'Evil Empire.' We didn't get any of that. We had attacks on the DNC and some of these other things, but maybe we'll be surprised and maybe something really good will come from this."
Meanwhile, NATO has kept the world's peace for 70 years, said Kasich, but when one sees what happened at last week's summit, including "missed meetings and lectures and one-on-one bullying, it just bothers me as an American."
Kasich said he wasn't bringing up the issues because of politics, but because he's "worried about the stability of the West."
"It's fraying, it's fraying," said Kasich. "I don't know why we want to fray an alliance, I'm sure we want to upgrade it and want the Europeans to do more and want to have good trade deals, I understand all of that, but that gets done in a normal diplomatic way."
With Trump, though, "people say throw that out the window and go in there and try to operate from moment to moment," said Kasich. "I don't think that's the right way to operate. I do not like the rhetoric and I think it weakens the alliance."
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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