By Gram Slattery and Simon Lewis
(Reuters) – Some of Donald Trump’s advisers are meeting foreign officials on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly where U.S. allies are seeking to get a grasp on what a Trump win in the Nov. 5 election would mean for U.S. foreign policy.
It was not clear who had met or planned to meet the advisers, nor was it clear what they planned to discuss. Trump, the Republican candidate for president, held the office from 2017 to 2021.
His foreign policy advisers have generally said they are careful not to promote specific policies in private chats, nor enter into any talks that could be seen as undercutting the administration of Democratic President Joe Biden.
A firm founded by Robert O’Brien, who served as Trump’s fourth and final national security adviser, hosted a reception for high-ranking foreign diplomats on Monday night in Midtown Manhattan, according to a person with knowledge of the event.
Mike Pompeo, who served as CIA director and secretary of state under Trump, was expected to host a separate reception on Tuesday night, according to two people with knowledge of the event, who requested anonymity to discuss a private gathering. Among those expected to attend will be former Trump administration ambassadors, one person said.
The campaign, in response to a request for comment, did not address the meetings between foreign officials and Trump’s advisers. A representative for Pompeo did not respond to a request for comment.
Opinion polls show Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic candidate, in a tight race with Trump in the battleground states likely to determine the winner, although a new Reuters/Ipsos survey shows Harris opening up a 7 percentage point lead nationwide.
One former Trump national security adviser, who requested anonymity to discuss private conversations, said he was fielding up to six meeting requests a day from foreign officials, many of them from central and eastern Europe.
Trump has made himself relatively scarce to foreign leaders in recent weeks. Some advisers have urged him to decline some meetings to focus on campaigning and to avoid any unnecessary negative headlines in the final days of the race, according to two people familiar with those conversations.
The former president had planned to meet Polish President Andrzej Duda at a Polish-American Catholic shrine north of Philadelphia over the weekend, but Trump’s campaign canceled the joint appearance.
While Trump said on the campaign trail last week that he planned to meet Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and that he would “probably” meet Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy this week, such meetings had yet to happen.
On Monday evening, Trump said at a rally in Pennsylvania that Zelenskiy wanted the Democrats to win the upcoming election.
Washington and its allies have provided a multi-billion-dollar assistance program to Ukraine since the Russian invasion began in February 2022, while also imposing several rounds of sanctions on Moscow.
Trump has consistently described U.S. aid to Ukraine as a waste of money and has declined to say he wants Ukraine to win, comments that have provoked concern in Central and Eastern Europe. His allies argue that he has the acumen to negotiate a peace deal with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
In a statement, Trump’s campaign referred Reuters to a past statement by Trump, in which he said he was “the only one who can get the war (in Ukraine) stopped.”
(Reporting by Gram Slattery in Washington and Simon Lewis in New York; Additional reporting by Michelle Nichols in New York; Editing by Phil Stewart and Howard Goller)
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