MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:
Following a presidential tradition, President Trump placed a wreath and delivered a speech at Arlington National Cemetery on Memorial Day to commemorate the deaths of military service members. But his comments on social media had a very different tone.
NPR's senior political editor and correspondent Domenico Montanaro is with us now to tell us what else listeners may have missed over the long weekend. Good morning, Domenico. Thanks for joining us.
DOMENICO MONTANARO, BYLINE: Hey. Yeah, great to be with you.
MARTIN: So tell us more about how Trump commemorated Memorial Day.
MONTANARO: Yeah, it was really kind of two Memorial Days for Trump. You know, on the one hand, in person, on camera, during his scripted speech at Arlington, you had a mostly traditional, somber speech with comments honoring service members, commemorating 250 years since the first fallen soldiers in a battle at the start of the Revolutionary War. But then he veered off that, calling attention to himself.
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PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: We certainly know what we owe to them. Their valor gave us the freest, greatest, and most noble republic ever to exist on the face of the Earth, a republic that I am fixing after a long and hard four years. That was a hard four years we went through.
MONTANARO: And you can see the pivot there, and there was an even sharper pivot to social media.
MARTIN: Oh, social media Trump - what did he say there?
MONTANARO: Well, I mean, Memorial Day, first of all, is a day to remember those who died during active duty in the military. It's not a day to tell people, happy Memorial Day. But that's what Trump did three times on social media, wishing a happy Memorial Day to, quote, "including the scum that spent the last four years trying to destroy our country through warped radical left minds." He attacked judges who have ruled against him, mostly when it comes to immigration, calling them monsters who want the country to go to hell. He then previewed his speech at Arlington and told everyone to enjoy.
MARTIN: OK. So there was also some news on foreign policy. Trump said Russian president Vladimir Putin has gone, quote, "absolutely crazy" for continuing to attack Ukraine. So how much do these comments matter for a Ukraine-Russia ceasefire?
MONTANARO: Well, Trump's clearly frustrated, despite a long call with Putin last week. Here was Trump talking to reporters Sunday night.
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TRUMP: I'm not happy with what Putin's doing. He's killing a lot of people. And I don't know what the hell happened to Putin. I've known him a long time, always gotten along with him. But he's sending rockets into cities and killing people, and I don't like it at all.
MONTANARO: This, of course, does not bode well for a ceasefire. And a lot of foreign policy experts don't understand how Trump is surprised by Putin's actions. It's kind of like, for them, welcome to reality. I mean, it's why there's been such a bipartisan lack of trust with Putin for a very long time. The Kremlin, in response, meanwhile, said there's just a lot of "emotional overload" right now.
MARTIN: Right, and that was a quote. So finally, tariffs - markets faced another weekend of whiplash with a threatened hike in tariffs against the European Union that Trump then quickly postponed. Say more about this. Is there a strategy there?
MONTANARO: Yeah, I mean, who knows if it's a real strategy or not, but Trump sees tariffs as leverage, right? And I think that that has some limited capability strategically. You know, it's another area of frustration for Trump. You know, he really wants to get a deal done. He trumpeted one, but then he said there's been no progress. So he threatened to slap a 50% tariff on goods from the EU. But on Sunday, after a call with the president of the European Commission, he agreed to postpone the tariffs until July 9 to give more time to strike a deal. But, of course, this is leading to a lot of volatility. He said that he promised 200 deals, but he stopped asking reporters - he's asked reporters to stop asking him when the deals are coming. And the markets and consumers, really, are left in limbo.
MARTIN: That is NPR's Domenico Montanaro. Domenico, thank you.
MONTANARO: You're welcome. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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