Trump echoes Putin on Venezuela — and contradicts his own secretary of state

By Aaron Blake
May 3 at 5:45 PM

There has been a long-emerging pattern in Donald Trump’s presidency: He talks to an authoritarian leader, and then he says or does something they like. Sometimes, this has had far-reaching consequences for U.S. foreign policy, as it did when Trump announced a (later-aborted) quick withdrawal from Syria. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis resigned over that one.

On Friday, Trump did it again, this time with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

After he spoke to Putin on the phone for an hour, Trump held a news conference with the prime minister of the Slovak Republic. The first thing he emphasized was that Putin wasn’t going to get involved in the deteriorating situation in Venezuela.

“I had a very good talk with President Putin — probably over an hour,” Trump began. “And we talked about many things. Venezuela was one of the topics. And he is not looking at all to get involved in Venezuela, other than he’d like to see something positive happen for Venezuela. And I feel the same way. We want to get some humanitarian aid."

Someone should tell Trump’s own secretary of state that.

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