US President Donald Trump said he intends to run for re-election in 2020 because “everybody wants me to” and there are no Democratic candidates who could defeat him, the Mail on Sunday newspaper reported.
Asked by British journalist Piers Morgan in an interview given on Friday whether he was going to run in 2020, Trump was quoted by the Mail on Sunday as saying: “Well I fully intend to. It seems like everybody wants me to.”
Trump said he did not see any Democrat who could beat him: “I don’t see anybody. I know them all and I don’t see anybody.” Before leaving Britain for a summit in Finland with Russian President Vladimir Putin, Trump breached British royal protocol by publicly disclosing the details of a conversation he had with Queen Elizabeth about the complexities of Brexit.
When asked if he discussed Brexit with the monarch when they met for tea at Windsor Castle on Friday, Trump said: “I did. She said it’s a very - and she’s right - it’s a very complex problem, I think nobody had any idea how complex that was going to be... Everyone thought it was going to be ‘Oh it’s simple, we join or don’t join, or let’s see what happens.” Speaking of the
92-year-old queen, Trump was quoted as saying: “She is an incredible woman, she is so sharp, she is so beautiful, when I say beautiful - inside and out. That is a beautiful woman.”
Asked if Trump felt the queen had liked him, he said: “Well I don’t want to speak for her, but I can tell you I liked her.
So usually that helps. But I liked her a lot.” “Just very elegant.
And very beautiful. It was really something special,” Trump said of the meeting. “She is so sharp, so wise, so beautiful. Up close, you see she’s so beautiful. She’s a very special person.”
During an uproarious trip to Europe, Trump has harangued members of the NATO military alliance, scolded Germany for its dependence on Russian energy, and shocked Britain by publicly criticising Prime Minister Theresa May’s Brexit strategy.
Trump later apologised to May for the furore over his withering public critique, blaming “fake news” and promising instead a bilateral trade agreement with Britain after it leaves the European Union in March 2019.
Of his upcoming meeting with Putin on Monday, Trump was more guarded.“I think we could probably get along very well. Somebody said are you friends or enemies? I said well it’s too early to say,” Trump was quoted as saying by the Mail on Sunday.
“Right now I say we’re competitors but for the United States, and frankly the UK and other places, to get along with Russia and China and all of these other places... that’s a good thing, that’s not a bad thing. That’s a really good thing.” ‘Low expectations from Putin meet’
US President Donald Trump said he had low expectations for the Monday summit with Kremlin chief Vladimir Putin just days after 12 Russian intelligence officers were charged by a federal grand jury for hacking the Democrats ahead of the 2016 election. The summit, which comes at one of the most crucial junctures for the West since the 1991 fall of the Soviet Union, has perturbed some European allies who fear Putin might seek a grand deal that undermines the US-led transatlantic alliance. Trump, who has been preparing for the summit by playing golf at his Trump Turnberry course on the western coast of Scotland, told CBS in an interview that “nothing bad” would come out of the summit with Putin. “I go in with low expectations,” Trump told CBS in Turnberry. “I’m not going with high expectations.” A US federal grand jury charged 12 Russian intelligence officers on Friday with hacking Democratic computer networks in 2016, in the most detailed US accusation yet that Moscow meddled in the election to help Republican Trump. Trump has repeatedly said the investigation into suspected Russian interference in the 2016 US election - which he casts as a “rigged witch hunt” - makes it hard for him to do substantive deals with Moscow. But the charges shine an even brighter spotlight on Trump’s treatment of Putin, who has repeatedly denied that Russia sought to skew the election that Trump, a Republican, unexpectedly won. When asked by CBS if he would ask Putin to extradite the Russians to the United States, Trump said he hadn’t thought of that idea but that he might. Russia’s constitution forbids the extradition of its own citizens. “I hadn’t thought of that,” Trump said.