How Could Trump Meet with 2 Ex-Presidents and Have No One Know? Mar-a-Lago
How Could Trump Meet with 2 Ex-Presidents and Have No One Know? Mar-a-Lago
AS/COA’s Eric Farnsworth weighs in on U.S. policy towards Colombia as the Trump administration threatens to slash funding for the country’s peace process.
President Donald Trump quietly met a pair of former Colombian presidents last weekend at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida, thrusting his administration into an ugly power struggle in Latin America that threatens to undermine the country’s controversial peace agreement with rebel leaders.
Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos is expected to push Trump to support the peace accord with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia at their first meeting at the White House next month. He wants the Trump administration and Congress to maintain the $450 million in foreign aid promised by former President Barack Obama to implement the plan to end Latin America’s longest armed conflict...
That money is now in doubt as the Trump administration plans to slash foreign aid as part of 31 percent cuts to the State Department’s budget.
“If you’re going to reduce foreign assistance, you have to go to the places where assistance is provided,” said Eric Farnsworth, a former State Department official who is now vice president of the Washington-based Council of the Americas.
