Secretary of State Marco Rubio doesn’t see anything wrong with how Donald Trump is interacting with America’s foreign adversaries.
The secretary defended Trump’s intended meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping, telling reporters Tuesday morning that the U.S. president’s detractors need to “grow up.”
“People need to grow up when it comes to foreign policy a little bit. I don’t think it’s unusual for the three most powerful, nuclear-armed nations on Earth—for their leaders to communicate with one another,” Rubio said. “I think it makes all the sense in the world.”
Rubio argued that Trump “does not consider talking to someone to be a concession.”
“For example, how are you going to reach a peace agreement between Russia and Ukraine if you don’t talk to Russia and Ukraine? You have to talk to them, right?” Rubio continued. “That’s the bottom line of diplomacy and negotiation.”
“Frankly, I think if there’s an opportunity … to have a conversation about things like arms control, that would be a very positive thing for the world,” he said. “I think the world is a safer place when the leaders of the world are at least communicating with each other.”
Trump mused Monday that he would be open to an unprecedented three-way meeting with Xi and Putin regarding nuclear weapons and disarmament.
“We would have it to talk about nuclear weapons and denuclearization,” Trump told reporters outside the White House. “If President Xi wants to have it, I’d have it. I’m sure we’d talk about other things like trade too.”
But the optics of Trump’s latest encounters with China and Russia have leaned more towards kowtowing than communicating. Last year, Trump had the U.S. military literally roll out a red carpet for Putin during his first visit to the U.S. in more than a decade. Trump did the same for Xi last month, when servicemembers were filmed on their hands and knees picking and brushing imperfections out of the carpet fibers.