‘Waiters Cleared the Wedge Salads and Brought Along the Main Course as Trump and Abe Continued Consulting With Aides’
Saturday evening, after playing golf with Prime Minister ShinzÅ Abe of Japan, President Donald Trump received a call on his cell phone telling him that North Korea had just launched a ballistic missile. The problem: the two heads of government were sitting down to dinner at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago restaurant, “in the middle of the private club’s dining area,” as CNN reports.
Rather tha excuse himself and move to a secure and private location, Trump and Abe discussed the possible threat to their nations’ security and developed together a plan to respond as “Mar-a-Lago’s wealthy members looked on from their tables, and with a keyboard player crooning in the background.”
The “decision-making” of Trump’s “first emergency foreign policy” was “on full view to fellow diners, who described it in detail to CNN.”
Trump and Abe were not alone.
As soon as the news came, “Trump’s National Security Adviser Michael Flynn and chief strategist Steve Bannon left their seats to huddle closer to Trump as documents were produced and phone calls were placed to officials in Washington and Tokyo.”
Trump and Abe were not just within earshot of diners.
“Waiters cleared the wedge salads and brought along the main course as Trump and Abe continued consulting with aides.”
During the presidential election race, Donald Trump labeled Hillary Clinton “crooked Hillary” and claimed not only should she be in jail for her handling of State Dept. emails, but that he himself would put her there. Yet now President Trump is discussing classified national security issues literally in the middle of a restaurant whose only barrier to the general public is the newly-doubled $200,000 initiation fee.
The situation did not go unnoticed by at least one Clinton:
Some responses via Twitter:
Â
Image via Enrique Acevedo/Twitter