(HorizonPost.com) – British Foreign Secretary David Cameron defended meeting with Donald Trump before visiting Washington, saying it was standard practice for foreign envoys to meet with major presidential candidates, ABC News reported.
Cameron, who was in the US for meetings with his counterpart Secretary of State Antony Blinken, made a stop at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort on Monday to meet with the presumptive nominee, according to the New York Times.
The foreign minister told reporters in Washington on Tuesday that when he was prime minister, he met with Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney. Likewise, when Gordon Brown was prime minister, he met with then-presidential candidate Barack Obama, Cameron said.
He also noted that Secretary of State Blinken met with UK Labour leader Keir Starmer when he was in Munich, adding that such meetings were “entirely proper.”
Cameron said of his private dinner meeting with Trump that they discussed “a range of important geopolitical subjects.”
The Trump campaign said in a statement that the two dined together and discussed the upcoming elections in the US and Great Britain, as well as policy matters like Brexit, NATO defense spending requirements, and “ending the killing in Ukraine.” The pair also spoke about their “mutual admiration for the late Queen Elizabeth II.”
Cameron was in Washington to meet with Blinken and urge lawmakers to approve supplemental aid to Ukraine.
He told reporters that Ukraine was “fighting so bravely,” adding that the danger wasn’t a lack of morale but not getting the support it needed to win the war.
Cameron suggested that he discussed Ukraine with Trump, explaining that he makes “that argument to anyone who will listen to me.”
The foreign minister said while he was reluctant to get involved in a domestic debate in Congress, his convictions about Ukraine spurred him on. While acknowledging that he had “great trepidation” about meeting with US lawmakers since foreign politicians should not “tell legislators in another country what to do,” he passionately believed that it was important to defend Ukraine against Russian aggression.
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