President Trump Visits France; President Trump Criticizes French President on Twitter Ahead of Arrival in France
PAUL: It's 14 minutes past the hour. President Trump is in Paris right now. A short time he and first lady, Melania Trump, of course, left the palace after lunch with their French counterparts. President Trump and the French president Macron held talks earlier today after President Trump had blasted President Macron over NATO payments, he did it over Twitter. President Trump is in Paris with other world leaders to commemorate 100 years since end of the First World War.</s>BLACKWELL: CNN White House correspondent Kaitlan Collins is live from Paris for us this morning. Kaitlan, good morning. The president set the agenda before he actually stepped onto French soil there.</s>KAITLAN COLLINS, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: He did. It was about three minutes after Air Force One landed here. President Trump had not even gotten off Air Force One yet when he sent the tweet criticizing the French president, Emmanuel Macron, for something he said in a radio interview several days ago, something that clearly bothered President Trump. Now, President Trump, this of course the backdrop of this, just to get the viewers up to speed, announced that the U.S. is going to withdraw from the INF treaty. That is that nuclear arms pact that President Ronald Reagan signed with Russia back in the 1980s. and President Trump decided we're withdrawing from it, the U.S. And President Macron was critical of that, saying the person that is the most victimized from that is Europe and its security. He says they are laid bare from that, and because of that decision from President Trump, he was going to need to build up the European military and make it more robust. That's clearly something that bothered President Trump when he sent the tweet late last night shortly after he landed here in Paris, saying he took offense to that, and then bringing up that NATO spending, something that he has criticized several European leaders of during his two years almost as the U.S. president. Of course, that essentially set the stage for conflict this morning. That tweet right there, "President Macron of France has just suggested Europe build up its own military in order to protect itself from the U.S., China and Russia," clearly saying that "perhaps if Europe should first pay its fair share of NATO which the U.S. subsidizes greatly." That really set the stage for those first talks this morning, meeting one on one, that very awkward interaction where there was no warmth between these two leaders, even though typically there's a lot of backslapping. President Trump once remarked in the Oval Office that he thought President Macron was perfect. That is not what we saw this morning. Instead it was a stiffer interaction, much more wooden, between those two leaders. Now, we are told by sources that they did discuss those comments during the bilateral meeting later one on one and then when their staffs, and that they tried to clear the air there. This afternoon, President Trump is supposed to visit a cemetery where Americans are buried after World War I. But instead the White House has cancelled that, citing the bad weather here in Paris because he was supposed to take a helicopter. So instead, he has got about a seven hour stretch between that luncheon with the French president and before dinner tonight. So we could expect some tweets during that period.</s>PAUL: All right.</s>BLACKWELL: Kaitlan Collins for us there, thank you so much.</s>PAUL: CNN national security analyst Samantha Vinograd with us right now. Samantha, good to see you. President Trump, as we said, tweeted on arrival in Paris there about NATO, and then of course you also saw the meeting between President Trump and President Macron. Reconcile those two moments for us and how you -- where do you go from there?</s>SAMANTHA VINOGRAD, CNN NATIONAL SECURITY ANALYST: I wish the wi-fi hadn't worked on Air Force One when he landed on the tarmac, because criticizing your host when you arrive for a commemoration celebration definitely sets the wrong tone for meetings going forward. Unfortunately at this point I think Emmanuel Macron was probably expecting President Trump to play his greatest hits when he arrived on European soil. And one of those greatest hits continues to be misrepresenting how NATO spending and how the NATO budget is funded. NATO members are supposed to pay two percent GDP. The U.S. chooses to spend more than two percent of our GDP on NATO spending because we have other priorities around the world. That, again, is our choice. There's something that Macron said that's getting a little bit less attention, though, Christi, that President Trump references in his tweet, which is Macron grouped the United States with Russia and China as threats. Imagine that France, one of our allies in World War I, World War II, and through the present day, is grouping us with Russia and China. Russia just tried to murder someone using chemical weapons on European soil, China is described by the White House itself as one of our rival power, so France is no longer sensibly considering us an ally they can depend on. They're putting us in the same bucket as Russia China.</s>PAUL: Is there indication that that is because of the U.S. as a whole or is that a reflection of this administration?</s>VINOGRAD: I think it seems to be a reflection of this administration. It's worth nothing that according to recent polling, President Trump has a 10 percent approval rating in France. President Obama had dramatically higher numbers than that, so it does seem like French perceptions of the United States have gone down. And there are a lot of policy differences. The Macron- Trump meeting earlier I hope touched on some of those, whether it be Iran policy, whether it be climate change, or any number of issues that we still have so much distance on. I think that Macron and other European leaders are very concerned that we're not reliable and very concerned about the nationalism that President Trump espouses at a time when Macron has been speaking out about the rise of nationalism in Europe. He just met with someone, the president of the United States, who has self-described himself as a nationalist. That definitely is creating a schism.</s>PAUL: Correct me if I'm wrong here, but President Macron doesn't exactly have great approval ratings in his country either. I think he's at 20 percent. So with that said, how important is this interaction right now between both presidents?</s>VINOGRAD: It is interesting, because from a political perspective, and you know that I look at national security, but in a lot of ways President Macron criticizing President Trump could score him some points back home. President Trump is not popular, and President Macron at the beginning of his administration when he was more popular invested a lot in his relationship with Trump. President Trump visited Europe. Macron went to the White House. And then President Trump made disparaging statements about him and trade deals and that sort of thing. So Macron could get some bit of a bump from the President Trump interaction.</s>PAUL: Sam Vinograd, always appreciate your insight, thank you.</s>VINOGRAD: Thanks, Christi.</s>BLACKWELL: Still no winners in a couple of really important races in the state of Florida. The two major races plagued by voter irregularities still yet to be decided. A live report on what happens next.</s>PAUL: And families in the Thousand Oaks community in California are demanding tougher gun control after that mass shooting that killed a dozen people. We'll have more on that.