No deal: Trump’s skills face new questions after scuttling of Afghan talks

President Donald Trump’s boasts about his dealmaking skills may have helped him win in 2016. But after this weekend’s events, he has little to back up those claims on the world stage heading into 2020.

Trump announced Saturday on Twitter that he was canceling ongoing U.S. peace talks with the Afghan Taliban, including scrapping a secret meeting with the Islamist militia’s leaders and the Afghan president at the Camp David presidential retreat outside of Washington. He claimed that it was because the Taliban had been behind a recent attack that killed an American soldier.

The decision has imperiled what was, in the scope of Trump’s presidency, a relatively successful diplomatic effort so far to bring an end to the 18-year war in Afghanistan. It also adds to a growing list of Trump’s negotiating shortfalls — from Iran to North Korea to China — that gives ammunition to Democrats seeking to unseat him. The fact that the meeting could have happened the same week as the anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks especially outraged Trump critics.

“This isn’t a game show. These are terrorists,” Sen. Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota, who is vying for the Democratic presidential nomination, said of the Taliban on CNN’s “State of the Union” on Sunday. “The way he conducts foreign policy, this reminds me exactly of North Korea. He loves the showmanship. He wants to have that moment, but then all the details aren’t done, and then we end up in a worse place on the world stage than we were before.”

Trump’s first defense secretary, Jim Mattis, while not criticizing the president directly, called for caution on Sunday. “When we reduced nuclear weapons with Russia, we talked about trust but verify,” Mattis said on CBS’ “Face the Nation.” “In this case with this group, I think you want to verify then trust.”

Several people close to Trump asserted that the president could still use the aborted Afghan talks to his advantage as he campaigns with a strategy more focused on getting supporters to vote on Election Day and less about convincing undecideds to back him. One theory is that he could argue that he won’t fall for a bad deal.

“A majority of Americans agree with the president’s belief that it’s time to end this” war, a Trump campaign official said on Sunday.

Before he ran for president, Trump repeatedly said the U.S. should get out of Afghanistan. After taking office, he grudgingly accepted that American troops might need to stay — and in fact ordered a modest surge of several thousand troops in the country. About 14,000 American troops are in Afghanistan now, but the president has remained eager to cut the number down and is likely to talk about his vision during future visits to U.S. regions that are home to many troops, such as Fayetteville, N.C., where he will hold a campaign rally on Monday.

Trump’s advisers aren’t all on the same wavelength when it comes to dealing with the Taliban. National security adviser John Bolton has been highly skeptical of the talks, while Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has backed the diplomatic efforts so far. The dissonance has caused friction between the two men and their aides.

According to a person familiar with the discussions, Bolton told Trump that he opposed holding talks at Camp David. And during a meeting of top national security officials on Aug. 29, Bolton said he opposed any deal with the militant group and urged the president to simply scale down the U.S. troop presence to around 8,600 — essentially the same level it was at the end of the Obama administration.

Bolton said Trump could cast the remaining troop force as being for counterterrorism, according to the person familiar with the issue, although Defense officials have said the 8,600 figure would include other U.S. troop missions, such as advising regional Afghan military units. In Boltons view, Trump could declare a political victory by reducing the troop number and not signing a deal.

“The president can say, ‘I ended the war in Afghanistan,’” the person said.

A majority of the people at the Aug. 29 meeting, including Pompeo, backed the decision to hold the Camp David gathering, the person said. Trump, as usual, welcomed the opinions of everyone in the room, even when they conflicted.

Aides to Pompeo did not immediately offer comment.

It’s not the first time Trump, a real estate mogul and reality show star who wrote a book called “The Art of the Deal,” has stumbled in his attempts to strike deals that he promised voters in 2016 would give the U.S. an edge.

He has been unable to secure a new, more comprehensive nuclear deal with Iran as he promised he would do. He has met three times with North Korea’s Kim Jong Un, but has made little progress in getting Kim to abandon his nuclear arsenal. His trade talks with China are going nowhere. And while his administration did manage to come to a new trade deal with Canada and Mexico to replace the North American Free Trade Agreement, it has yet to gain approval in Congress and it’s not drastically different from NAFTA itself.

A former Trump adviser who remains close to the campaign acknowledged on Sunday that inviting the Taliban to Camp David was “stupid,” saying it appeared as if it was a reward. But the former adviser also said that the president was working to resolve the conflict and bring U.S. troops home.