NEW YORK – President Donald Trump arrived at the United Nations on Monday to discuss urgent global crises, but wound up focused mostly on his own.
As he was whisked through Manhattan for meetings with world leaders, events in Washington yanked the president back into domestic concerns – facing questions about the future of Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein and new sexual misconduct allegations against his Supreme Court nominee, Brett Kavanaugh.
"There’s a chance that this could be one of the single most unfair, unjust things to happen to a candidate for anything," Trump said of the new allegations of assault leveled against Kavanaugh. “In my opinion, it’s totally political.”
Trump came to New York prepared to reaffirm his “America first” foreign policy, condemn Iran’s nuclear ambitions and sign a landmark trade agreement with South Korea. He focused on the global drug trade during his first speech Monday morning, imploring other nations to do more to “defeat drug addiction.”
But less than two hours after he delivered that address, the president’s message was overtaken by the Russia probe as cable television carried live images from the White House, where Rosenstein had been called to a meeting.
Rosenstein, who is overseeing the Russia probe, was expecting to be removed from his post days after reports emerged that he talked about wearing a wire while meeting with Trump and possibly invoking the 25th Amendment to remove him from office.
Instead, Trump spoke with Rosenstein by phone and then set up a follow up meeting for Thursday.
But that didn’t quiet questions about what initially caused Rosenstein’s trip to the White House. As he sat for a meeting with South Korean President Moon Jae-in, reporters repeatedly asked Trump about Rosenstein. Trump suggested Rosenstein’s fate would be determined at the meeting later this week.
“We’ll be meeting at the White House and we’ll be determining what’s going on," Trump told reporters before he and Moon held private talks that were supposed to focus on North Korea and trade. "We want to have transparency, we want to have openness and I look forward to meeting Rod at that time."
As senior diplomats in Trump’s administration briefed reporters about the U.S. agenda, they were peppered with questions about what they knew about Rosenstein and whether they had ever been involved in a conversation about the 25th Amendment
Reports surfaced, Friday, that Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein discussed invoking the 25th Amendment and suggested wearing a wire during encounters with the President Donald Trump. Rosenstein, who oversees the special counsel investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election, has withstood the dangers of his firing for months. Here Rosenstein attends the Religious Liberty Summit at the Department of Justice on July 30, 2018. WIN MCNAMEE/GETTY IMAGES
Nikki Haley, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, said she had “never once” been in a conversation about removing the president from office. Haley described it as “completely and totally absurd.”
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo described the question as “ludicrous.”
“I’ve never heard anyone talk about it, joke about it or whisper about it in any way,” Pompeo said.
Neither spoke directly on reports of Rosenstein leaving the administration.
Trump had a limited morning schedule, but was expected to meet with South Korean President Moon Jae-in in the afternoon to sign a trade deal. He also had meetings scheduled with French President Emmanuel Macron and Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi.
Analysts said they are concerned about the U.S. diplomatic effort at the UN if Trump is distracted by events in Washington.
“This is the leading opportunity for the president to present his case to all countries,” said Carey Cavanaugh, a former U.S. ambassador and a professor at the University of Kentucky’s Patterson School of Diplomacy and International Commerce. “You rarely get a chance to have this many countries sitting in one room.”