President Trump is canceling his upcoming trip to South America to focus on the unfolding turmoil in Syria, officials said Tuesday.
Trump’s decision to remain in the U.S. follows his promise to unleash a “forceful” response to an alleged chemical attack in Syria and the FBI raid of the office of his personal lawyer.
Trump was scheduled to leave Friday for the Summit of the Americas in Lima, Peru and then stop for a day in Bogota, Colombia on Sunday.
“The President will remain in the United States to oversee the American response to Syria and to monitor developments around the world,” press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said.
The sudden announcement comes a day after federal agents raided the office and hotel room of Michael Cohen, Trump’s longtime personal attorney and fixer.
The raid, which stemmed from special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation, infuriated Trump.
“Attorney-client privilege is dead!” he tweeted Tuesday morning. A day earlier he vented that it was a “disgrace” that the FBI “broke into” his lawyer’s office.
John Bolton, a former ambassador to the United Nations and a noted war hawk joined the Trump administration as the President’s new national security adviser on Monday, raising concern that Trump may take a more aggressive military stance on certain issues including Syria.
Trump last week talked about pulling the remaining 2,000 U.S. troops out of the war-torn nation, a sentiment some — including Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) — say may have emboldened Syrian president Bashar Assad to use chemical weapons.
