Domestic troubles follow Trump to Hanoi summit with Kim

North Korea Nuclear Summit

As on past overseas trips, the president is facing split headlines, this time over former lawyer Michael Cohen’s testimony.

HANOI, Vietnam — Domestic aggravations have been a regular stowaway as President Donald Trump has navigated the globe, seeking to establish himself on the international stage and build a lasting legacy.

As he has worked to turn President Vladimir Putin of Russia and Kim Jong Un of South Korea from foes into friends, and to rebalance the United States’ relationship with China, scandals at home have often intruded on Trump, creating dueling headlines and distracting a president who pays inordinate attention to the news coverage of his presidency.

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Unpleasant events at home are butting in again as the president prepares for his second face-to-face meeting with Kim in Hanoi this week, with the goal of moving closer to denuclearization on the Korean Peninsula.

As the president dined on grilled cod fish and roasted Wagyu beef medallions alongside Vietnamese leaders on Wednesday, his former lawyer and fixer, Michael Cohen, released a copy of the testimony he planned to deliver to lawmakers the same day in Washington, undercutting the president’s self-styled image as

a dealmaker by labeling him a “conman” and a “cheat.”

Cohen, who has cooperated extensively with special counsel Robert Mueller as well as federal prosecutors in the Southern District of New York, said in written testimony that had proof of the president’s “illicit” acts. This includes a check Trump purportedly wrote after he became president to reimburse Cohen for a hush-money payment to the adult-film actress Stormy Daniels, who alleges she had an affair with Trump.

Just hours before a dinner Wednesday evening with the North Korean leader, the president’s mind — and television screens around the world — was flitting between his upcoming negotiations with the North Korean leader and Cohen’s latest charges. “Michael Cohen was one of many lawyers who represented me (unfortunately),” Trump tweeted. “He had other clients also. He was just disbarred by the State Supreme Court for lying & fraud. He did bad things unrelated to Trump. He is lying in order to reduce his prison time. Using Crooked’s lawyer!,” he said, a reference to Lanny Davis, Cohen’s attorney, a longtime confidant of Bill and Hillary Clinton’s who served as special counsel in the Clinton White House.

Moments later, Trump wrote, “All false reporting (guessing) on my intentions with respect to North Korea. Kim Jong Un and I will try very hard to work something out on Denuclearization & then making North Korea an Economic Powerhouse. I believe that China, Russia, Japan & South Korea will be very helpful!”

It’s hardly the first time unpleasant developments at home have shadowed the president overseas.

Trump’s maiden foreign trip, in May 2017, was briefly overshadowed by a Washington Post report that a current White House official had become a “person of interest” in the special counsel’s probe of ties between the Trump campaign and Russia.

Trump was in the United Kingdom and heading to a meeting with Putin in Helsinki, Finland, last July when the Justice Department announced the indictment of 12 Russian military officials over the hacking of the Democratic National Committee’s email servers during the 2016 election.

During a press conference with Putin that ran over two hours, the president was dogged by questions about Russia’s interference.

And ahead of Trump’s trip to the G-20 in July 2017, The New York Times reported that Donald Trump Jr. had met with a Russian lawyer with ties to Kremlin several days after Trump became the Republican nominee.

During the flight back to Washington, the president inaccurately said that his son and the Russian lawyer had “primarily discussed a program about the adoption of Russian children” when they met in June 2016. Trump Jr. later said he met with the lawyer because damaging information on Hillary Clinton had been offered.

Whether the back-and-forth with Cohen ends up playing a bigger role in Hanoi remains to be seen as the president tries to broker a regional peace deal.

Trump and Kim are holding a one-on-one meeting on Wednesday at the Sofitel Legend Metropole Hanoi, followed by a social dinner. Further talks between the leaders will take place on Thursday before the U.S. delegation departs for Washington that night.

Since last year’s summit, top intelligence officials, including Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats, have said that North Korea is unlikely to fully give up its nuclear arsenal. As an inducement, Trump is planning to pitch Kim on a vision of North Korean modernization, according to White House officials, even though legislation that the president signed in 2017 prohibits American companies from investing in the country because of its poor human rights record.

“I think he’ll have a country that will set a lot of records for speed in terms of an economy,” Trump told reporters on Monday before leaving for the summit.

On Wednesday in Hanoi, he held up his host country as a guidepost because of its transformation.

“Vietnam is thriving like few places on earth,” the president tweeted. “North Korea would be the same, and very quickly, if it would denuclearize. The potential is AWESOME, a great opportunity, like almost none other in history, for my friend Kim Jong Un. We will know fairly soon — Very Interesting!”

Earlier Wednesday, Trump met with the Vietnamese president, Nguyen Phu Trong, after which the two leaders signed a trade deal in which Vietnam agreed to buy more than $20 billion in Boeing jets and other U.S. technology.