President Donald Trump on Monday used his first public appearance at the Group of Seven summit to revive a years-old complaint about the group’s response to Russia’s 2014 invasion of Crimea and attack the the host country’s former head of government during a bilateral meeting with the current head of that government.
Speaking before reporters alongside Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney in a brief media availability at the start of an expanded bilateral meeting with the two leaders and their respective teams, Trump, unprompted, complained that the G7 “used to be the G8” until “Barack Obama and a person named Trudeau didn’t want to have Russia in.”
“I would say that that was a mistake, because I think you wouldn’t have a war right now if you had Russia in, and you wouldn’t have a war right now If Trump were President four years ago. But it didn’t work out that way. But it used to be the G7 and now it’s, I guess, what’s that? Nine years ago, eight years ago, it switched over. They threw Russia out, which I claimed was a very big mistake, even though I wasn’t in politics. Then I was very loud about it. It was a mistake in that you spend so much time talking about Russia, he’s no longer at the table. So it makes life more complicated, but you wouldn’t have had the war,” he said.
Trump’s grievance-airing about Russia’s ouster from what was called the Group of Eight from 1997 through 2014, did not mention the fact that the decision to suspend Moscow’s membership in the informal alliance of industrialized democracies was a collective decision by the other G7 members — the U.S., Canada, the U.K., France, Germany, Italy and Japan — in the wake of the March 2014 invasion and illegal annexation of Crimea by Russian forces.
The G7 members pulled out of that year’s summit, which had been due to be hosted by Russia in Sochi, and suspended Russian membership in the group.
And while Trump blamed Trudeau in part for the move, the former prime minister was not in power when the events in question took place.
In March 2014, Trudeau was just over a year in to his time as the head of Canada’s Liberal Party. And at the time, Canada’s government was led by the Conservative Party of Canada and then-Prime Minister Stephen Harper. Trudeau would not become prime minister until November of 2015.
Carney stood and watched as Trump continued speaking and taking questions from reporters, one of whom asked him if he believes Russia “should have a seat at the G7 today.”
Trump replied that he would not say that Moscow should be welcomed back into the fold because “too much water has gone over the dam” in the intervening years, but he again called the decision to remove Russia “a big mistake” and falsely blamed Trudeau for a second time.
“Obama didn’t want him. And the head of your country, the proud head of your country, didn’t want him. This was a big mistake,” he said.
He added that Putin’s had been “very insulted” by his ouster from the G8 and claimed that the Russian leader “doesn’t want to talk” to other G7 leaders except him as a result.
“Putin speaks to me. He doesn’t speak to anybody else. He doesn’t want to talk because he was very insulted when he got thrown out of the G8 as I would be, as you would be, as anybody would be. He’s very insulted,” Trump said.
For the third time, he falsely claimed that Russia had been “thrown out by Trudeau” — who at the time had no power to do so — and argued that the then-Liberal Party leader had “convinced one or two people, along with Obama” to go along with removing Russia from the G8 even though all seven remaining leaders had collectively decided to suspend Russia and not attend the Sochi summit.
“He [Putin] was thrown out, and he’s not a happy person about it. I can tell you that — he won’t speak to the people that throw him out, and I agree with him,” Trump added.
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