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Trump accuses China of meddling in U.S. midterm elections, blasts Iran, at UN Security Council meeting
Deirdre Shesgreen and John Fritze
NEW YORK – President Donald Trump on Wednesday accused China of interfering in the U.S. midterm elections as a way to undermine his aggressive trade policies.
“Regrettably, we found that China has been attempting to interfere in our upcoming 2018 election, coming up in November, against my administration,” Trump said at a meeting of the United Nations Security Council.
“They don’t want me or us to win because I am the first president to ever challenge China on trade,” he added.
Trump, who did not offer any specific evidence of China’s meddling, did not mention the extensive and ongoing campaign by the Russian government to sway U.S. elections.
Trump’s comments came as he chaired a session of the U.N. Security Council focused on the threat posed by weapons of mass destruction.
Trump told the 15-country council that countering the spread of such deadly weapons was a “matter of urgent importance.” As expected, Trump reserved his most pointed remarks for Iran, and he blasted the multilateral 2015 agreement aimed at stopping Iran from developing a nuclear weapon. That deal was crafted in part by other countries sitting around the table, including France and the United Kingdom.
Trump pulled out of the agreement earlier this year, and he used the Security Council session to justify that decision before those countries seeking to save it despite the U.S. withdrawal.
“This horrible one-sided deal would allow Iran to continue its path toward a bomb,” Trump said, and gave the Iranian regime “a cash lifeline when they needed it the most.”
Since the deal was signed, Trump said, Iran’s aggression around the world “has only increased,” referencing the country’s ballistic missile program and its support for terrorism.
Some Security Council members shot back at Trump's remarks against Iran and took issue with his speech on Tuesday to the U.N. General Assembly, in which he sharply criticized international institutions and said U.S. sovereignty was more important than multilateral cooperation.
Bolivia's president, Evo Morales Ayma, was particularly harsh – accusing the U.S. of engaging in a long history of meddling in other countries sovereignty and reminding the council of America's role in the 1979 coup in Iran.
"In 1953, the U.S. financed, planned and implemented a coup d'etat against a legitimate government" in Iran, Ayma said. "After that, for many decades the United States supported an authorization government" and allowed global energy companies to tap into Iran's oil for their own profits.
Now, Iran "is one again the victim of a U.S. siege," the Bolivian president said. He condemned Trump's withdrawal from the Iran nuclear deal, saying the U.S. was "hiding behind pretext to continue its polices of meddling in the internal affairs of Iran."
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