Donald Trump met behind closed doors Wednesday with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the latest world leader to meet with the president this year without facing a torrent of reporters’ shouted questions.
Rather than bring in journalists, Trump opted for a social media post to summarize the meeting, which he dubbed “very good,” albeit shy of any agreement or progress.
“There was nothing definitive reached other than I insisted that negotiations with Iran continue to see whether or not a Deal can be consummated. If it can, I let the Prime Minister know that will be a preference,” Trump wrote after the nearly three-hour session. Officials from the U.S. and Iran met in Oman last week for indirect talks over Tehran’s nuclear program, and further bilateral discussions are expected.
“Last time Iran decided that they were better off not making a Deal, and they were hit with Midnight Hammer — That did not work well for them,” the president added, referring to U.S. bomber strikes he ordered last year. “Hopefully this time they will be more reasonable and responsible.”
The tenuous situation in Gaza was among other topics the duo discussed, according to Trump, who included his signature sign-off as a large group of journalists milled about the White House’s press area and north driveway: “Thank you for your attention to this matter!”
During his first year back in office, the former reality television star spent much more time in front of media cameras than the opening year of his first term, according to data tabulated by CQ Roll Call’s Factba.se.
Rowdy Oval Office scenes featuring American and foreign reporters crowded around uncomfortable-looking aides to Trump and other global leaders became a staple of the first 12 months of his second term. But since Trump returned from a holiday vacation in South Florida, the White House has shifted its strategy.
As protesters gathered near the White House and law enforcement officers moved among massive dump trucks that acted as blast-absorbing safeguards on 17th Street Northwest, Netanyahu became the third major world figure to visit the West Wing this year. And, for a third time, all the day’s press pool (journalists from rotating outlets who are assigned to track the president’s movements and remarks) could do was sit and wait.
There was no photo op with Trump and Netanyahu in the gold-plated Oval Office, seated in the familiar yellow chairs in front of the wood-stacked fireplace. And there was no cacophony of shouted questions or Trump, as he has done this year in other settings, taking verbal swipes at reporters and their employers.
The same was the case on Feb. 3, when Colombian President Gustavo Petro met privately with Trump. The day’s “daily guidance” email from the White House’s press office listed that meeting as occurring in the Oval Office, just like Wednesday’s Netanyahu one-on-one.
Journalists also were kept away on Jan. 15, when Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado visited. That day’s White House guidance listed the Machado meeting as a working lunch in the president’s private West Wing dining room.
There were reasons why Machado and Petro were kept away from reporters and cameras — both came to the White House amid disagreements with Trump.
Petro has criticized the U.S. commander in chief, even after Trump publicly praised him following a telephone conversation. That chat followed Trump warning Petro that the U.S. military operation in Venezuela to capture and arrest President Nicolás Maduro could be replicated in Bogota.
Machado came to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue with a desire for Trump to declare her or someone from her political party the rightful leader of Venezuela. That did not occur, with White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt telling reporters that her boss had not changed his assessment that Machado lacked the popular support to take over.
‘Essential principles’
Wednesday’s closed-door diplomatic meeting came as Trump and Netanyahu hadn’t done much to disguise a disagreement about the shape of a potential deal with Iran.
Trump has talked about something similar to the scrapped Obama-era nuclear pact, but Netanyahu, whose relationship with the president has had its ups and downs, came pushing for something broader — and likely to be rejected by Iran.
“I will present to the president our outlook regarding the principles of these negotiations — the essential principles which, in my opinion, are important not only to Israel, but to everyone around the world who wants peace and security in the Middle East,” Netanyahu reportedly said Tuesday before boarding his flight to the United States.
Netanyahu moved up his visit by one week amid Trump’s recent vacillation between threatening new strikes on Iran and cutting a deal with its embattled government. (During his first term, Trump removed the United States from the 2015 nuclear agreement.)
Meanwhile, the U.S. commander in chief has sent an aircraft carrier strike group, which he dubbed a “massive flotilla,” to the Persian Gulf region and has threatened to deploy a second.
“We’ll see what happens. I think they want to make a deal,” Trump told Fox Business in an interview that aired Tuesday. “I think they’d be foolish if they didn’t. We took out their nuclear power last time, and we’ll have to see if we take out more this time.”
Senate Intelligence Vice Chairman Mark Warner told “Fox News Sunday” he agreed that Trump had to “keep all the options on the table” when it comes to Iran.
“But I would point out that a few weeks back when the Iranian people were out in the street en masse, the president said, ‘Hey, don’t worry. We’re going to come help you.’ He couldn’t — or chose not to — because we didn’t have … our full fleet there because the aircraft carrier that would normally be in the Mediterranean was off the coast of Venezuela being part of that [energy] blockade,” the Virginia Democrat said.
“Our potential other allies in the region, the Europeans, who have relations with Iran, could have been putting enormous pressure on the Iranians, but they were too busy focused on Greenland and preserving NATO,” Warner added. “So all of these incidents are interrelated, and I sometimes feel like the president doesn’t appreciate that we are stronger with a sense of allies around us.”
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