Ahead of Putin summit, Trump calls EU ‘foe’

Washington, July 16: US President Donald Trump attacked Washington's allies yet again ahead of his summit with his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin in Helsinki on Monday, July 16, calling the European Union a "foe" and bracketed it with countries like Russia and China.

Trump said this to CBS News in an interview in Scotland, where he privately spent the interim period between his visit to the UK and the summit with Putin.

Trump said the EU is a foe of the US in terms of trade while China is a foe economically. He also said Russia is a foe as well in certain respects. However, Trump said by foe, it doesn't mean the other sides were bad. He said foe meant that those countries/groups were competitive and just like they wanted to do it well, the US also wanted to do well.

He raked up the issue of Nato not paying the bills once again, during the interview, adding that members of the group took advantage of the US. The president has had a stormy tour of Europe ahead of his visit to Helsinki to meet a leader who he anticipated to be the "easiest" to deal with before embarking on the trip.

At the Nato summit held in Brussels last week, Trump renewed his strict stance on the military alliance and particularly attacked Germany as a "captive to Russia". Thereafter, in the UK, he was seen taking opposing stances on British Prime Minister Theresa May - sometime blasting her before the media while at other times, appreciating her.

Back home, the indictment of 12 Russian spies by Robert Mueller, the special counsel probing Russia's alleged interference in the US presidential election of 2016, made the Democrats upset and they demanded Trump to call off the meeting with Putin and return. The indictment was made on the charges of hacking networks of the Democratic Party, including those of its presidential candidate Hillary Clinton.