CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
We assembled here today are issuing a new decree to be heard
in every city, in every foreign capital and in every hall of power.
You could feel a sort of chill descending
on the assembled diplomatic corps as we listened.
And it actually started to rain just about the time he starts to speak.
We'd been given plastic ponchos.
We were all struggling to get into these.
George W Bush kind of completely tangled in his plastic poncho
as he tries to get this on.
From this day forward, it's going to be only America First.
America First.
CHEERING
Thank you.
No word about allies...
God bless America.
..no word about a community of like-minded nations.
It was a wake-up moment, and that left me almost speechless.
We expected an outsider who would want to make his mark,
but we didn't expect a disruptor of that sort.
He was putting the marker down, and he was saying,
"We want to have alliances with other nations,
"but we want to renegotiate the terms."
Nobody ever told me that politics was going to be so much fun.
LAUGHTER
EXPLOSIONS
One of the most divisive presidents in history,
riding roughshod over conventions at home and abroad.
Now, for the first time,
Donald Trump's closest advisers and foreign leaders
reveal how he ripped up the diplomatic rule book
and took America to the brink of nuclear war.
I didn't throw my hands up in the air
because I would have lost the phone,
but I thought, "This is exactly the wrong thing to do at this time."
THEY CHANT
In this first episode,
Trump locks horns with America's closest allies...
We're like the piggy bank that everybody's robbing,
and that ends.
..and makes friends with old adversaries.
Nato was probably in the greatest peril it's ever been in its history.
Donald Trump's rise to power was based on a promise to reforge
American foreign policy.
In the days after his victory,
his switchboard was buzzing with world leaders
anxious to know what "America First" really meant.
Who else? Let me see that, please. WOMAN: OK.
Brad and Dan both called. All right, get Brad for me, and then Dan. OK.
Attention!
The first foreign leader to get a taste of Trump in the White House
was the British Prime Minister.
I'm in the lead car with the Prime Minister,
and the first thing I notice is that the President
has come to the front door to meet her.
So, I'm already thinking to myself, "That's different."
I've always thought to myself that was quite a positive, nice gesture.
The personal chemistry between President Trump
and Prime Minister Theresa May was not great.
President Trump thinks of himself as a strong leader
and he likes to work with other strong leaders,
and part of that is his business background.
You know, and New York real estate is one of the most elbows-out,
toughest businesses there are.
And the image that she gave was one not of strength.
Trump had long railed against some of America's traditional alliances.
May's priority was to persuade him to stick with the most critical.
When Trump said, "Well, what are we getting out of Nato?
"Maybe we shouldn't be in Nato," the media all went crazy -
"Oh, Donald Trump's going to withdraw from Nato!"
No, he's not! He just wanted to cut a better deal.
It was very, very clear
that Donald Trump was a man of business transaction,
and so she went straight in with what she wanted.
She said, "We can't give a message that we're undermining
"such an important institution."
She said to him that Nato was the cornerstone of Western defence.
She said, "I want to say in the press conference, Donald,
"that you are 100% behind Nato.
"I hope you can agree that I can say that
"and that you will agree with me publicly."
The special relationship between our two countries
has been one of the great forces in history for justice and for peace.
And by the way, my mother was born in Scotland, Stornoway.
Well, thank you very much, Mr President.
On defence and security co-operation,
we're united in our recognition of Nato.
Mr President, I think you said you confirmed
that you were 100% behind Nato.
The special relationship looked like holding strong - perhaps too strong.
He held her hand going through the colonnades,
which took us all by surprise and took Theresa by surprise.
But I think she felt she couldn't really take her hand back,
so she was stuck with the hand in the hand.
And the first thing she said was, "Yeah, I need to call Philip
"just to let him know that I've been holding hands with another man
"before it hits the media."
Before May could call her husband, Trump treated her to lunch.
When Theresa May sat down, a conversation began
that I don't think even the British could have anticipated,
because it was our President in full blossom, in full bloom,
and a stream of consciousness that ran the gamut from
his own inauguration to his disdain for the press in the United States.
Prime Minister wanted to talk to him about Putin.
She'd heard him say some quite positive things
about his potential relationship with Putin during the campaign.
She wanted to tell him what she thought he was like.
She asked him, "Have you spoken with Putin?"
And the President said he had not.
But at that point, the Chief of Staff spoke up and said,
"Mr President, actually President Putin has called you,
"but we're busy scheduling a return call."
Trump at this point looks not orange but red.
He flipped furious. He said, "You're telling me that Vladimir Putin
"called the White House, and you're only telling me now
"during this lunch?"
The President dropped his shoulders for a moment,
looked at the Prime Minister and said, "I don't believe this.
"Vladimir Putin is the only man in the world who can destroy
"the United States and I didn't take his call."
Honestly, you could feel the tumbleweed just completely
take over the entire lunch table and my toes were curling.
He seemed to realise that he was playing out
in front of the British delegation and the Prime Minister,
an unseemly moment in the early days of his administration,
so he changed the subject.
He asked Theresa what her position on climate change is,
and Theresa was halfway through something about how she's a big,
you know, ardent fan of conservation,
and then suddenly he stops again,
and he says to the national security adviser, Mike Flynn,
"You... You're telling me that Vladimir Putin
"called the White House and you didn't tell me? You didn't tell me?"
Trump was still fuming about his team
when he spoke to the French President the next day.
Like his British counterpart, Hollande was worried about Nato.
This time, it was a harder sell.
Nato had long been the bulwark of Western defence
against Russian aggression - and the US paid the most for it by far.
Trump wanted Europe's richest country to foot more of the bill.
CHANTING
By the time Trump arrived in Europe for his first official trip,
the atmosphere had become increasingly hostile...
CHANTING: This is what democracy looks like!
..but Europe's leaders were keen to avoid a clash
with the most powerful man on Earth.
Everybody was very curious.
We had read a lot about President Trump in the media,
but President Juncker said to me,
"Look, let's first of all see how he really is.
"In politics, you have to dance with the girls in the ballroom
"and he is now in the ballroom, so let's work it out."
Sitting next to the President
was his Secretary of Defence, James Mattis -
a four-star general who'd fought alongside European allies.
He turned to General Mattis and said,
"So, General, what do you think about the EU?"
And General Mattis looked at him and said,
"Mr President, we think the EU is great.
"They're great partners, great to work with.
"We do a lot of good work with the EU." And you kind of...
CHUCKLES: You saw the President. It kind of looked,
"Oh, that's not exactly the answer I expected."
Mattis was one of those known to Washington insiders
as the "adults in the room",
which also included new National Security Adviser HR McMaster.
Many hoped they would be able to rein in the President
from his most extreme plans.
Flag up!
That afternoon, they lined up at Nato's brand-new headquarters,
where Trump would unveil a memorial to 9/11.
I think there was a misunderstanding,
or really an underappreciation
for the degree to which allies had sacrificed in our common cause.
It was a considerable concern on the part of allies -
and on the part of me as well -
and so it was important, I think, to explain to the President
what is in it for the United States.
The first time Nato goes to war
is when the United States is attacked on 9/11.
They were there not because they'd been attacked.
They were allies, they were partners,
they had shared values with us.
Nato's leaders were anxious to see
whether Trump would affirm his commitment to their mutual defence.
Nato members must finally contribute their fair share
and meet their financial obligations.
This is not fair to the people and taxpayers of the United States.
Of course they didn't want to have to give up their subsidies
and the free rides they were taking, but President Trump insisted.
He was just going to those countries and saying,
"It's time for you to do your fair share."
Trump looked at Nato contributions as something that countries owed
to the US like a tenant owes the rent to the landlord.
It was quite unsettling for Nato members, quite unsettling.
There were doubts whether the President
is still standing 100% behind Nato.
CHEERING, LIGHT APPLAUSE
The next day, the allies met again at Trump's first G7 Summit.
Top of the agenda, the Paris Accord -
the most important agreement ever in the global effort to combat
climate change, signed by nearly 200 countries just a year earlier.
Trump thought it placed unfair restrictions on US industry.
And in the spirit of America First, he wanted out.
The other six Heads of State explaining to him
that this is a multi-hundred-plus country deal.
It's never going to be perfect
when you get that many countries involved,
but we have to start from somewhere and we can try and improve it.
Prime Minister Trudeau talked about the impact of coal production.
And President Trump said, "Well, Justin, I'm not sure
"that the science is entirely right," and Mr Trudeau said,
"Well, I think you're listening too much to the coal industry, Donald."
Chancellor Merkel said, "Donald, look, this is a serious matter.
"It's the fate of the planet and we have the capacity in the G7,
"in discussions like this, to lead."
And he nodded.
Trump refused to sign up to the end-of-summit statement
endorsing the Paris Accord.
Their first bruising from the President
left Europe's leaders shaken to the core.
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
Back in Washington, the so-called "adults in the room"
joined the resistance.
A number of us in the administration made the case to the President to stay in the Paris Accord.
We felt as if that, really, there wasn't a downside to staying in
because it wasn't mandated, there weren't going to be penalties,
so the idea was "Work within the agreement and try to reform it."
We're showing the President he should understand
that he's not doing this for corporate America.
Even the oil and gas companies were taking out full-page ads
in The Washington Post, The New York Times,
The Wall Street Journal,
begging the administration to stay inside of Paris.
We made sure that the newspaper ads went onto his desk
or into his reading pile...
..but it's not 100% clear what his final decision's going to be.
APPLAUSE
Thank you very much.
In order to fulfil my solemn duty to protect America and its citizens...
..the United States will withdraw...
APPLAUSE
..from the Paris Climate Accord.
The President had tapped into, really, the sentiment
that the American people didn't have a direct say in these agreements.
So, this was like a mini Brexit for the United States, right?
There was a belief among the citizens of the United States
that this agreement had surrendered their sovereignty
to some sort of progressive agenda that they did not support.
Where does American leadership owe its allegiance,
to the people of the United States or to the global community?
I was elected to represent the citizens of Pittsburgh,
not Paris.
It is time to make America great again.
Thank you.
APPLAUSE
NEWSREADER: New exclusive reporting that Russian officials discussed
having potentially derogatory information about President Trump
and his top aides during the campaign.
Five months into his presidency,
concerns over Russia's role in Trump's election were mounting.
REPORTER: Jared Kushner also being looked at for his conversations,
communications, with the Russian Ambassador.
The Justice Department has appointed former FBI Director Robert Mueller
to oversee the investigation into any possible connections
between the Trump campaign and Russia.
As Mueller's investigation got going,
the President arrived at the annual G20 Summit,
where he'd meet Vladimir Putin face-to-face for the first time.
The President's main goal was to just have a sit down with Putin.
He was of the view that, given his own personality,
he would be able to spark off good chemistry.
We're going to have a talk now, and obviously that will continue.
Putin did most of the speaking, so the President had to listen
while Putin spoke at great length in Russian.
There was the issue of Russian interference,
and the President was clearly uncomfortable in
dealing with the issue head on.
He associated any discussion of this
with his own legitimacy as president.
Putin was obviously making it...noted that
they had not interfered and basically dismissing this
out of hand.
That evening, at the gala dinner,
the seating plan raised a few eyebrows.
We learned late on that the Germans had made for us
the inconceivable decision to sit the First Lady
next to President Putin.
They could have placed her next to anyone in the G20 but, no,
they had to pick President Putin knowing full well that
everybody would be scrutinising every interaction.
And so President Trump went over, as was inevitable, to talk to his wife.
Trump sat with Putin for almost an hour,
as the other leaders looked on.
One of them was the Australian Prime Minister, Malcolm Turnbull,
who was after his own one-on-one with the President.
During a break, he took his chance.
Donald said, "Malcolm, do you want to see my SCIF? It is so cool."
And I had no idea what he was talking about.
I thought he was talking about a boat.
And we turned around a corner, and there was this big steel box
about the size of a shipping container,
and he said, "This is so cool." He said, "When you're in there,
"nobody can hear you, not even the Chinese. It's so secret."
Trump pulled Turnbull into the ultra-secure communications hub,
with the new French President, Emmanuel Macron, in tow.
Turnbull wanted to confront Trump over steel tariffs -
another America First policy.
Instead, the President brought up a deal for the US
to take refugees from Australia.
Donald turned to Emmanuel Macron, and he said,
"Emmanuel, do you know Malcolm has 2,000 of the worst terrorists
"in the world locked up on a desert island?"
I said, "They're not terrorists, Donald."
He said, "No, no, they're the worst, they're the worst, Emmanuel.
"And you know what's worse? Now, I've got to take them."
And he looked, turned to Emmanuel and said,
"Emmanuel, do you want to take them?"
Macron was...had no idea what was going on.
Naturally, he was...speechless.
When Macron left the SCIF, Turnbull finally managed to get Trump on to tariffs.
It became a very detailed discussion.
He said, "Well, what sort of steel are you?
"What... What is this steel you're sending to us?"
It wasn't very much, to be frank.
And I said, "Well, it's basically, er, from a company called BlueScope
"that then turns it into a roofing product called Colorbond,"
and his eyes lit up.
"Colorbond," he said, "I know that."
He said, "They sell it in gold."
He said, "I remember it... I used it in Brooklyn."
Trump agreed a special deal for Australia.
And Emmanuel Macron left Hamburg keen to build his own relationship
with the US President.
But his predecessor had given him some advice.
Macron pushed on regardless.
Knowing Trump's love of grandeur, he pulled out all the stops,
hosting him at the Bastille Day Parade.
100 years after America joined its allies in the First World War,
the US President was made guest of honour.
For all Macron's efforts to woo, Trump's eyes were elsewhere.
BAND PLAYS LA MARSEILLAISE
The President loved the parade.
Whenever you have a band on horseback,
you know, how do you top that?
On the way back on Air Force One, he goes,
"Hey, how come we don't do parades like that?
"So, get with the Department of Defence..."
So I happily gave that over to Secretary Mattis and said how I feel.
HE LAUGHS
In Washington,
the Secretary of Defence feared Trump's America First agenda
was threatening the security of both the US and its partners.
Secretary Mattis invited me over to the Pentagon one day for lunch.
We discussed, "Should we try and put together a presentation?"
There'd been building concern that the President of the United States,
that Donald Trump, was abandoning a lot of our allies
and partners around the world,
and so Secretary Mattis felt like the best way to help
convince President Trump of the way forward
was to provide him with a briefing.
Mattis wanted Trump to come to the inner sanctum of the Pentagon,
a conference room known as The Tank.
General Mattis said, "Look, the President has yet to come over
"to the Pentagon. I'll roll out the red carpet - literally, literally."
And I said, "That's great."
Winston Churchill summed it up pretty well when he said,
"The only thing harder than fighting with allies
"is fighting without them."
In other words, you need allies.
And history is very compelling that nations with allies thrive
and nations without allies wither.
President Trump was a few minutes late to arrive.
He enters the conference room, quickly takes his seat.
His body language already seems negative.
He seems kind of dour.
Those of us in the control room look at each other and say, "Uh-oh!"
We all had specific pieces of the presentation to talk about
military might, intelligence might, security might, economic might.
Secretary Mattis turns to the President and says that,
"You know, Mr President, the reason why you have so many men and women
"arrayed around the globe is not only just national security
"but for economic reasons.
"They're defending American jobs, they're defending our economy.
"It gives America a lot more than what it takes."
President Trump just proclaims, "My God!
"Look how much money we're spending on everybody else.
"What is America getting in return?"
We were getting a very good return on investment from a economic,
military intelligence point of view.
The President was not nearly as convinced.
He crosses his arms and scowls
and started careening from topic to topic,
like a squirrel caught in traffic.
He turns to Secretary Mattis and says,
"My God, did you see the handshake with President Macron?
"He wouldn't let go, it just lasted forever."
He told Secretary Mattis, whether it was 4th of July or Memorial Day,
he wanted to have tanks rolling down Pennsylvania Avenue,
he wanted a flyover with military jets.
So, as I'm watching from the control room, I'm shifting uncomfortably.
Do you normally associate this type of parade with
an authoritarian regime, like China or Russia or North Korea?
I can see from the monitors that everyone in the room is dismayed
with the direction this had taken.
At the end of the meeting, you know, all of us had felt like
we had put together very robust presentations.
And I think we all walked out of there frustrated
that we didn't make our point.
The meeting was great. It was a very good meeting.
In the months that followed, the frost deepened
between the President and the so-called "adults in the room".
Soon enough, most of them were on their way out.
Then, in March 2018,
Trump's loyalty to America's allies was really put to the test.
When former Russian spy Sergei Skripal was poisoned
with a deadly nerve agent in the English city of Salisbury,
intelligence services quickly suspected an assassination attempt
by Putin's Russia.
This was an egregious attack.
I mean, it was using a banned nerve agent to commit murder in a way
that endangered hundreds, maybe thousands, of British citizens.
And so we took this very seriously from the beginning,
of course briefed the President.
The President was somewhat sceptical about the whole affair
because he saw this as spy-on-spy.
It is now clear that Mr Skripal and his daughter were poisoned
with a military-grade nerve agent of a type developed by Russia.
The Prime Minister announced that the UK would expel
23 Russian diplomats suspected of being spies.
She hoped Trump would follow suit.
The phone call was a little tense at first.
The President kept saying, "Are you sure? Are you 100% sure?"
And Theresa May was very firm and said to the President,
"We're 100% sure."
The Prime Minister was saying, "This is a moment
"when your international leadership on an issue as serious as this
"is absolutely critical.
"And if America does something substantial,
"then the rest of the world will follow,
"and if you don't, then Putin will take this as licence
"to do this kind of thing in other places, you know, at other times."
The President said, "Of course."
Even though he was still sceptical about all of the information,
this was really no choice but to stand up
and to support the United States' closest ally.
Trump agreed to expel 60 Russians,
expecting the Europeans to follow his lead.
But when Britain's allies announced what they would do,
France and Germany said they each had just four suspects to expel.
It was underwhelming. I mean, it was... It was disappointing.
The President let me know about that.
LAUGHS: These were my last days in the White House, and I was happy
to bear the brunt of the President's ire on the way out.
Setting off for the G7 Summit in Canada, Trump seized a chance
to confront the Europeans over Russia -
and restore his relationship with Putin.
Russia should be in this meeting.
Whether you like it or not, and it may not be politically correct,
but we have a world to run.
Four years earlier, the G8 became the G7
when Russia was expelled for invading Ukraine.
Trump's proposal stunned the allies.
It is evident that the American president and the rest of the Group
continue to disagree on trade, climate change
and the Iran nuclear deal.
What worries me most, however, is the fact that the rules-based
international order is being challenged -
quite surprisingly, not by the usual suspects,
but by its main architect and guarantor, the US.
The first night of the summit was unusually tense.
My Prime Minister said, "Theresa, you've had
"the most recent experience with Russian activity.
"Why don't you speak to it?" And Prime Minister May did.
And President Trump said, "Well, Russia's an important country.
"I don't see why Mr Putin shouldn't be here, and we...
"When we host, we're going to invite him."
And Chancellor Merkel said, "That would not be a good idea.
"I know him, I have spoken with him.
"He is not like-minded, he does not belong here at this time,"
to which President Trump simply said, "Well, we'll see, Angela."
Later, as the leaders were serenaded beside a campfire,
their advisers fretted over how to get an agreement
on the end-of-summit statement - the final communique.
SINGING
So I'm sitting in a dark corner of this hotel,
and I'm reading this and I'm not liking it.
I'm not liking a lot of things.
I didn't like it on trade,
I didn't like it on environment, climate control.
I had a lot of problems with it
and I realised the President would never buy into it.
With key points still outstanding, the leaders managed to
drag themselves away from the evening's entertainment.
Chancellor Merkel said, "Well, what's wrong?"
And I said, "Well, the problem is, a lot of this is not consistent
"with President Trump's policies," and so we didn't want to write it
in a document that, frankly, we would not wind up supporting
and rather have no document, to be honest.
The Europeans see it as a great chance to gang up
on the American president and try and force through language
that they can then later use against the United States.
The sticking point was what the G7 described as
"the crucial role of the rules-based international order."
In the opening paragraph of every G7 communique,
you speak about our commitment
to the rules-based international system.
John Bolton suggested it should be A rules-based system
instead of THE rules-based international system.
And, of course, this was something totally different,
because there is not... It's not any rules-based system,
it's the one we all believe in - democracy, values...
..in trade for the benefit of all of us.
My retort was, "Look at this, Americans,
"this is a structure that you set up 1945 onwards. We were with you.
"This is the system that has served us for decades.
"Why are you now challenging that
"because it does not fit your particular interests at this time?"
I would be happy if we never issued another communique
at another G7 Summit and I tell you the world wouldn't change a bit.
The leaders went to bed,
leaving their officials haggling through the night.
By morning, there was no compromise.
There's a breakfast session dedicated to gender equality,
and President Trump arrives, I would say, 20 minutes late.
I can tell you at least the women around the table
were not particularly amused about that.
I was worried that since the issues were still not resolved,
but with the summit coming to an end,
that the temptation to press us to give up everything would increase.
So my plan was to leave even earlier than Trump had already planned,
get him out of the room, get him into the Beast
and get to our helicopters so we could leave.
But for whatever reason, the Europeans must have sensed the plan
and they literally forced us into a corner of the room.
All the leaders stand around President Trump,
who sits there with his arms crossed like that,
and discussing with him the communique.
My own boss, President Juncker, didn't stand around,
bowing in front of President Trump.
He had taken the seat ten metres behind the crowd.
And President Trump shouted, "Where is Jean-Claude?"
And President Juncker shouted back and said,
"I'm here, Donald, but I'm not participating in this charade."
President Trump's saying, "Well, I'm... I'm leaving,
"and I guess there's something we have to work out."
And a few of us said, "Well, there's the language on
"the rules-based international order."
Officials came up with a last-minute ploy.
The communique would use the American phrasing of "a"
in the opening lines but use "the" further down the document.
President Trump immediately said, "OK, well, that's...
"That's fine with me. I don't care."
I nodded at my Prime Minister and said, you know, "That's OK."
President Trump could then leave and say, "OK, it's done."
After this very turbulent negotiation on the communique,
all the leaders gather on a terrace, get a bit of fresh air,
a glass of water, and they sit there and all...
They really look shaken by what they had just witnessed.
The helicopters of President Trump leave Charlevoix...
..and the whole terrace is shaking.
The leaders are sitting there and they are psychologically shaken,
and now they are also physically shaking.
And I think everybody realises
we have witnessed a turning point in international relations.
The United States of America is no longer willing to be the pillar
of the rules-based international system, the world is a different
place and is in great danger unless we all stick together now.
Bonjour a tous, hello.
Now, I know you'll know that we had some strong,
firm conversations on trade.
I highlighted directly to the President that Canadians,
we're polite, we're reasonable,
but we also will not be pushed around.
Trump saw on the TV on the plane,
Canadian Prime Minister Trudeau holding a press conference
where he thought Trudeau was saying unkind things about him.
Bolton raised the point that how bad it looks for the US President
to have the G7 leaders, presumably the allies,
taking shots at him.
You know, what kind of signal is that to Korea and China
and the rest of the world?
Every bit of this was unnecessary. If the Europeans had not been
so insistent on their points, we wouldn't have had the blow up.
From Air Force One, Trump tweeted that he would
withdraw his support for the communique.
It was the first time a leader
had ever refused to endorse a G7 statement.
Fans of America First were delighted.
It lit the fuse for an explosive showdown with the Europeans.
CHANTING: USA! USA! USA!
We go away on Monday, I'm going to tell Nato,
"You've got to start paying your bills.
"The United States is not going to take care of everything..."
They go out and they make a gas deal, oil and gas, from Russia,
where they pay billions and billions of dollars to Russia.
OK?
So they want to protect against Russia,
yet they pay billions of dollars to Russia,
and we're the schmucks that are paying for the whole thing.
The annual Nato summit was just the start of a three-stop trip
that would culminate in the President's first one-on-one
meeting with Vladimir Putin.
So I have Nato, I have the UK,
which is in somewhat turmoil,
and I have Putin.
Frankly, Putin may be the easiest of them all.
Who would think? Who would think?
Before Trump could get down to business, there was
the obligatory entertainment laid on for Nato's leaders.
When the President met Nato's Secretary-General,
he was in no mood for the usual dance of diplomacy.
Good morning, everybody.
Many countries owe us a tremendous amount of money for many
years back, where they're delinquent, as far as I'm concerned,
because the United States has had to pay for them.
We're watching the faces and the body language of the US delegation,
and you can tell that President Trump's remarks are every bit of,
as much of a surprise to them as they are to those of us
in the control room.
You have General Kelly who is the White House Chief of Staff
who suddenly becomes very interested in the flags off to the side.
You've got the Ambassador to Nato, Kay Bailey Hutchison,
who just has this look of complete shock on her face.
I think it's very sad when Germany makes a massive oil
and gas deal with Russia.
Germany is a captive of Russia.
It was a surprise.
That's for sure.
I had heard every president with whom I had served
say that the Europeans need to spend more on their own security.
I think all of us were surprised that it was just so direct.
Trump waited until the last day of the summit
to reveal his boldest move.
I was on the way from my hotel to our ambassador
to Belgium's residence where the President was staying.
He called me on the car phone and said, "You ready for something big?
"I think we should withdraw from Nato this morning."
And quite coincidentally our connection was cut off so I had
about five minutes in the car to figure out what to do.
I immediately tried to get Pompeo,
Jim Mattis, the Secretary of Defence, John Kelly,
to say, "All hands on deck, I think it's serious this time."
We couldn't find Mattis, he was having breakfast with the Canadians.
I thought maybe he was defecting,
maybe it had gotten too much for him.
As the leaders took their seats,
they were expecting to discuss expanding the alliance.
Before the meeting had actually begun, he called me up to the table
and whispered, "Shall we cross the line?"
And I said, "No, I would go up to the line but I wouldn't cross it."
I tried to explain why I didn't think we should withdraw from Nato
and he just nodded and I went back to my chair. I didn't know
what he was going to do, I didn't know whether he had been persuaded.
Nato is about Europe and North America working together...
I'd only been Foreign Secretary a few days and I imagined
that this was going to be a fairly normal business-like summit.
In fact, it turned out to be a moment when Nato was
probably in the greatest peril it's ever been in its history.
The President just started right out.
He went person to person
and he knew what they were not doing
and so he called them out, it was very tense.
Trump put Angela Merkel right on the spot, he was on the warpath,
and tore strips off Germany with, I think, real anger.
He said, "We're there defending you
"and, by the way, we've got a huge trade deficit with you
"but we're there defending you and you're not paying enough for it."
It was based on the fact that Germany didn't spend
anything like as much as America on defence as a proportion
of its GDP, was building a gas pipeline to Russia that was going
to make Russia very rich and also had a trade surplus with the United
States - these three things came together and they set Trump off.
Trump called the other Nato members deadbeats
who owed their freedom to America.
Then he said that if they didn't pay up,
the US would go its own way.
He combined the attacks on Germany, very tough attacks
on Germany, with some warning about Nato's future as a whole.
Nobody believed or could imagine that the United States,
which was seen as the leader of the free world,
would put that basic commitment into question.
Merkel sat there very calmly.
When it was her turn to speak, she just very softly said,
"No-one needs to talk to me about freedom. I grew up in East Germany
"under the Soviet Union, I know what it's like not to have freedom."
You could not get a bigger contrast in personality between the fiery,
emotional, rambling President Trump
and the cool, calm Angela Merkel.
Desperate to pull the President back,
Trump's fellow leaders pointed out that they had already spent
billions more on defence since he took office.
The idea was to present the contributions of Nato members
as a response to the President's demands and that's,
I mean, at the end of the day, that's true.
Also Germany is contributing more in terms of defence spending,
other countries are doing as well.
So the President was convinced to give a press conference.
It's about the content, yes,
it's also about dealing with that very unique personality.
We are doing numbers like they've never done before
or ever seen before.
Since last year, they've raised an additional $33 billion that's been
put up by the various countries, not including the United States.
Well, honestly he put his toe over the line
but then he pulled it back again in fairly Trumpian experience
at the end by saying that he was 1,000% in favour of Nato,
but it was as close as you could come
without actually crossing the line fully.
I'll never forget seeing Secretary Mattis who was the most
visibly upset, the most visibly angry, I'd ever seen him.
He feels like President Trump had called not only into question
the strength of the alliance, but it called into question, more
importantly, America's willingness to stand by its allies and partners
and could America be trusted and taken at her word, moving forward?
We understand your message,
but some people ask themselves,
will you be tweeting differently once you board the Air Force One?
Thank you.
No, that's other people that do that. I don't.
I'm very consistent.
I'm a very stable genius.
That evening, Theresa May welcomed the President to Britain
for his first official visit.
Someone had brilliantly worked out
that Trump was a big Churchill fan and so the decision was made to put
on a dinner at Blenheim Palace and it was absolutely magnificent.
I'd done an interview with Fox News
in which I defended the President's call for European countries
to spend more on defence.
He came straight up to me, grabbed my hand and said,
"Great interview on Fox News", he said, "I said to the people
"around me, I don't know who the hell that guy is
"but he's doing a great job."
That was my first lesson as a diplomat that if you want to get
through to President Trump, do an interview on Fox News.
The two-day visit came only months after the Salisbury poisonings,
and once the formalities were over, the Brits turned to Trump's
upcoming summit with Putin.
The great nervousness is that this is a President who likes
to deal with other strong men and isn't that interested in traditional
alliances. We wanted to make sure that he wasn't going to suddenly do
some rash deal with Putin and so we were trying to stiffen his resolve.
We talked about why Salisbury was such an affront,
not just to the UK but to the whole of the West, whole of the
international community that the Russians could behave in that way.
My opposite number said, "This was a chemical weapons
"attack on a nuclear power"
to emphasise how significant it was.
And Trump looked at Theresa May and said,
"Oh, is Britain a nuclear power?"
And I will say the British stiff upper lips held
but their eyes were wide as saucers.
Trump spent the weekend at his golf course in Scotland.
His team hoped it would be a chance to prepare for his encounter
with Putin - because this time, it would only be the two men
and their interpreters.
Everyone was having a real problem in trying to basically get
the President to sit down and have a briefing.
Our preparations were really not adequate at all.
But he wanted a meeting with Putin, and he wanted it more than
almost anything, because he wanted to show that
he was defying the talk in Washington about Russia collusion.
The meeting with Putin would take place on neutral ground
at the Presidential Palace in Helsinki.
Nearly three decades earlier, in the very same building,
George Bush Senior and Mikhail Gorbachev held a summit
that helped bring the Cold War to an end.
Now Trump sat down with Putin for another meeting
that could define US-Russian relations.
The two men talked alone for more than two hours.
I was worried that Trump would give away something
that really was serious and complicated
that he was not fully prepared on.
When they broke, Ambassador Bolton had to pull the President
to one side to try to kind of figure out what had actually happened.
Trump said, "He did most of the talking", meaning Putin,
"and I mostly listened" and I thought, "That's great."
REPORTER: How did the meeting go, Mr President?
I think it's a good start.
We go into the lunch and the President says,
"Vladimir, why don't you tell my team what you've discussed."
Trump raised the issue of Russian interference in American
elections and in fact we,
we learned at the lunch from Putin himself that Trump had
raised it first, which was important for the American President to do.
Putin makes it very clear that the Russian state is not involved in
any interference and it really got my attention that he had said
"the Russian state", because he wasn't actually denying that
Russians, Russian individuals, Russian entities, had been involved
in any kind of interference or efforts to influence,
he was just basically saying
that the Russian state apparatus had not been involved.
Before Trump was home and dry, he had a press conference to navigate.
I have just concluded a meeting with President Putin...
The President made his opening remarks and then Putin made his
and it seemed actually reasonably OK and then we had the questions.
The final question from the United States
will go to Jonathan Lemire from the AP.
I was sitting in the audience and I thought the maximum danger points
had been passed.
Thank you, a question for each president.
President Trump, you first.
Just now, President Putin denied having anything to do with
the election interference in 2016.
Every US intelligence agency has concluded that Russia did.
Who do you believe?
I knew that this would set off the most defensive reaction
from the President because it was him
being asked, "Will you not, President Trump, admit that
"Vladimir Putin elected you as President of the United States?"
My people came to me, they said they think it's Russia.
I have President Putin.
He just said it's not Russia.
I will say this, I don't see any reason why it would be.
It became frankly an utter disaster.
My initial thought was just how can I end this?
I literally did have in my mind the idea of faking
some kind of medical emergency and throwing myself backwards
with a loud blood curdling scream into the media.
Thank you very much, everybody.
We didn't know what to say.
But it became clear as the press conference ended
and I think we both sat in our chairs as everybody else was getting up and walking away,
that a fire storm was going to erupt and it did very quickly thereafter.
An extraordinary press conference.
We do now have a statement just in from Senator John McCain,
it is a powerful statement.
Senator McCain says, "Today's press conference marks a recent low point
"in the history of the American presidency."
How much do you think that Putin gained from this meeting?
He knows he gained a lot.
I would guess he's having caviar right now.
Instead of standing up for our democracy and democratic principles,
President Trump cowered in the presence of Putin.
That will be the last time you ever have a foreign leader meet
with the President of the United States privately.
Within 24 hours, Trump backtracked, claiming he'd simply misspoken.
But the damage was done.
In the next programme, the President turns to the Middle East,
taking America to the brink of war.
President Trump basically outsourced his foreign policy
towards Iran, to warmongers.
If this had blown up in his face,
if there were civilian casualties, the whole world was watching.
What influence did Trump's extensive use of social media have
on global affairs?
Discover the impact of Trump's tweets at:
Follow the links to the Open University.