2/18/2017 AtMaraLago,TrumptacklescrisisdiplomacyatcloserangeCNNPolitics.
com
At Mar-a-Lago, Trump tackles crisis diplomacy at
close range
By Kevin Liptak, CNN White House Producer
Updated 0347 GMT (1147 HKT) February 14, 2017
Source: CNN
Trump, Abe respond to N. Korea missile test 02:09
(CNN) The iceberg wedge salads, dripping with blue cheese
Story highlights dressing, had just been served on the terrace of Mar-a-Lago
Saturday when the call to President Donald Trump came in:
The launch wasn't expected North Korea had launched an intermediate-range ballistic
missile, its rst challenge to international rules since Trump was
sworn in three weeks ago.
It presented Trump with one of the rst
breaking national security incidents of his The launch, which wasn't expected, presented Trump with one
presidency of the rst breaking national security incidents of his
presidency. It also noisily disrupted what was meant to be an
easygoing weekend of high-level male bonding with the more
sobering aspects of global diplomacy.
Sitting alongside Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, with whom he'd spent most of the day golng, Trump took
the call on a mobile phone at his table, which was set squarely in the middle of the private club's dining area.
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Photos: North Korea missile launch
North Korean leader Kim Jong Un looks on as the country tests a new intermediate-range ballistic missile.
1 of 7 Hide Caption
As Mar-a-Lago's wealthy members looked on from their tables, and with a keyboard player crooning in the
background, Trump and Abe's evening meal quickly morphed into a strategy session, the decision-making on full
view to fellow diners, who described it in detail to CNN.
News of Pyongyang's launch had emerged an hour earlier, as Trump was preparing for dinner in his residence.
Ocials had concluded the Musudan-level missile ew 310 miles o North Korea's eastern coast before crashing
into the Sea of Japan.
For the new commander in chief, the launch was his rst
brush with the hermit regime's saber-rattling, which along
North Korea tests new missile with heated rhetoric from the young leader Kim Jong-un has
spooked the country's neighbors. During his pre-election
intelligence briengs, Trump requested supplemental
North Korea calls ballistic missile test- information about North Korea from US intelligence ocials.
re a success National security analysts have identied the nation's nuclear
Missile test sends warning to Japan program as one of the imminent threats facing Trump as he
Kim Jong Un and China: Better the devil begins his tenure in the White House.
you know?
In his talks with Abe at the White House on Friday, the North
At Mar-a-Lago, Trump tackles crisis Korea threat weighed heavily. Abe said during a concluding
diplomacy news conference that he and Trump had agreed to "strongly
4 ways Trump could deal with North demand" the country "abandon (its) nuclear and ballistic
Korea missile program." They departed a short time later for Florida.
On Saturday
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What can be learned by not shooting On Saturday evening, as the two men walked through Mar-a-
down a North Korean missile Lago's ornate wrought-iron doors on their way to dinner,
neither responded to questions about the launch from
reporters.
Swanning through the club's living room and main dining
area alongside Abe, Trump was -- as is now typical -- swarmed with paying members, who now view dinner at the
club as an opportunity for a few seconds of face time with the new President.
But as he sat down for the planned working dinner with Abe, whose country is well within range of North Korea's
missiles, it was clear his counterpart felt it necessary to respond to the test. The launch occurred just before 8 a.m.
on Sunday morning in Japan.
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 ocials in Washington and Tokyo.
Presidents always travel with secure communications equipment, even when they're on vacation. A Sensitive
Compartmented Information Facility, known as a SCIFF, also comes along. The tent-like structure can t inside a
hotel room and allows a president to conduct sensitive phone calls without the risk of being detected by recording
devices.
At Mar-a-Lago on Saturday, it had not been immediately clear whether Trump utilized that equipment, but White
House spokesman Sean Spicer told reporters Monday he had.
"The President was briefed in a SCIFF prior to dinner," Spicer told reporters Monday. "They were reviewing the
logistics for the press conference ... President was subsequently briefed in a classied setting."
On Saturday night, the patio was lit only with candles and moonlight, so aides used the camera lights on their
phones to help the stone-faced Trump and Abe read through the documents.
N. Korea res rst test missile of Trump era 03:03
Even as a urry of advisers and translators descended upon
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Even as a urry of advisers and translators descended upon the table carrying papers and phones for their bosses
to consult, dinner itself proceeded apace. Waiters cleared the wedge salads and brought along the main course
as Trump and Abe continued consulting with aides.
First lady Melania Trump and Abe's wife, Akie, remained seated across from their husbands, speaking quietly
through a translator amid the activity. Earlier in the day, the women had toured a nearby Japanese garden and
visited the gothic Bethesda-by-the-Sea church, where Trump and his wife were married in 2005.
Eventually Trump and Abe, along with their collection of aides, stood and moved from the dining terrace and
toward a marble-trimmed ballroom, whose gilded columns were concealed by more sober-looking black drapes.
Standing in front of an American and Japanese ag, a stern-faced Abe called the launch "absolutely intolerable,"
and insisted North Korea adhere to United Nations Security Council resolutions barring it from testing of ballistic
missiles.
Trump, in his short remarks, didn't mention the launch. He used a short statement to vow support for Japan
instead.
Trump vows to work with Abe against N. Korea 00:48
"I just want everybody to understand and fully know that the United States of America stands behind Japan, its
great ally, 100%," Trump said.
He declined to read from a set of prepared remarks, which photographers captured images of, that were resting
on his podium. Those remarks did mention the missile test specically and vowed cooperation between allies to
"safeguard and protect" against North Korea's "provocative acts."
"That was a joint statement we decided not to make," a senior administration ocial said afterward, explaining
why those remarks were cast aside. Because Abe spoke rst, and then Trump, there was "no need for
communique," the ocial said.
Trump left the impromptu brieng room without taking questions,
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Trump left the impromptu brieng room without taking questions, having delivered the rst emergency foreign
policy statement of his presidency,
But even as he confronted one of the gravest matters of his oce, Trump nonetheless found it impossible to resist
dropping in on a nearby wedding reception, already underway in his treasured Grand Ballroom. Trump designed
and built the space himself after purchasing Mar-a-Lago in the 1980s.
Entering the ornate room, Trump took a photo with the bride and her bridesmaids, who posed in red gowns next
to the commander in chief, mimicking his signature thumbs-up.
Then he grabbed a microphone.
"I saw them out on the lawn today," Trump said of the bride and groom, who were standing nearby. "I said to the
Prime Minister of Japan, I said, 'C'mon Shinzo, let's go over and say hello.' "
"They've been members of this club for a long time," Trump said of the newlyweds. "They've paid me a fortune."
CNN's Sara Murray and Athena Jones contributed to this report.
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