Republicans push tepid Trump to sanction Turkey
After huddling with President Donald Trump at the White House on Tuesday, Republican senators tell Al-Monitor that the president isn’t keen on sanctioning Turkey.
President Donald Trump is still hesitant to implement legally mandated sanctions on Turkey for its purchase of the S-400 Russian missile defense system — even after 45 Republican senators urged him during an unusual meeting Tuesday to follow the law and do so.
“The president is not a fan of sanctions as a whole as a tool,” Sen. James Lankford, R-Okla., who attended the meeting, told Al-Monitor. “He made that clear overall.”
However, Lankford noted that Trump’s advisers were nonetheless “clear that they understand this is what’s required” under a 2017 law sanctioning countries for any “significant transaction” with Russia’s defense sector.
Last week Trump told reporters that sanctions were not on the table, only to reverse course moments later and state that “we’re looking at it.” Trump’s apparent equivocation on sanctioning Turkey prompted nearly all Republican senators to take the unusual step of meeting with him to explicitly press him to implement the sanctions.
