Washington,
\nUS President Donald Trump has said \u201cnobody has been tougher\u201d on Russia than him even as he expressed hope that having a good relationship with his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin would be a \u201cgreat thing\u201d.<\/p>\n
Trump\u2019s comments came on Tuesday during a meeting with leaders of the Baltic states–Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania–a day after the White House confirmed the President invited Putin to the Oval Office for a potential meeting.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think we\u2019ll be able to have great dialogue, I hope. And, if we can\u2019t, you\u2019ll be the first to know about it. Nobody\u2019s been tougher on Russia than I have,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Trump was asked if he considered Putin a friend or a foe.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s a real possibility that I could have a good relationship. And remember this: Getting along with Russia is a good thing. Getting along with China is a good thing. Getting along with other countries, including your three countries, is a good thing, not a bad thing,\u201d Trump told reporters at a White House joint news conference with Baltic leaders.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo I think I could have a very good relationship with Russia and with President Putin. And if I did, that would be a great thing. And there\u2019s also a possibility that won\u2019t happen. Who knows?\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Trump noted that the US is \u201cvery strong\u201d on energy, which he said, is not good for Russia.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re essentially now energy-independent. We\u2019re an exporter of energy. That is not a positive for Russia. But it\u2019s certainly a positive for the United States,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
His administration, Trump said, had just passed a USD 700 billion military budget.<\/p>\n
\u201cNext year, USD 716 billion, the largest ever passed. We are going to have a military stronger than we\u2019ve ever had before, by far. Now, that\u2019s not exactly a great thing for Russia. But that\u2019s the way it is. We\u2019re going to have the strongest military that we ever had,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
The US President reiterated the non-payment of bills by some NATO member countries.<\/p>\n
\u201cNATO was delinquent. They were not paying their bills. They were not paying, a lot of states, as we discussed. They were not–they were not paying what they should be paying,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Trump said since he came in, many billions of dollars additional had been paid by countries that weren\u2019t paying, and now they\u2019re paying.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd they will have to pay more, frankly. They\u2019re going to have to pay more,\u201d Trump said<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Washington, US President Donald Trump has said \u201cnobody has been tougher\u201d on Russia than him even as he expressed hope that having a good relationship with his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin would be a \u201cgreat thing\u201d. Trump\u2019s comments came on Tuesday during a meeting with leaders of the Baltic states–Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania–a day after […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":26877,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[87],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-26876","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26876","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26876"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26876\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":26878,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26876\/revisions\/26878"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/26877"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26876"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26876"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26876"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}