Donald Trump is cancelling a planned trip to Latin America so that he can 'oversee the American response' to the Syrian chemical weapons attack, the White House says.
Trump will send his vice president, Mike Pence, to the Summit of the Americas in Peru, instead, a statement on Tuesday morning said.
The White House statement followed a string of tweets from Trump in which he fumed about an FBI raid on his personal attorney Michael Cohen's home, calling it a 'TOTAL WITCH HUNT' in one.
A meeting with military leaders the evening before was almost completely overtaken by Trump's livid response to the raid, which he called a break in during remarks that were open to the press.
Syria played second fiddle as Trump railed against the Justice Department for acting on allegations against Cohen.
Cohen admittedly paid off a porn actress who says she had an affair with Trump a decade prior to his election. The longtime attorney to the former real estate magnet and reality television show host says he used personal funds for a $130,000 check to woman, Stephanie Clifford, aka Stormy Daniels.
Trump signaled at the press avail that he is plotting a military strike in Syria to punish dictator Bashar al-Assad for the reported gas attack. When U.S. action would come is something he would not reveal, although he committed to making a decision in the next 24-48 hours.
This morning, the White House suddenly announced that Trump would no longer make an appearance at the U.S.-founded Summit of the Americas this week in Lima, where he was scheduled to hold bilateral talks with regional leaders and deliver a plenary speech.
'President Trump will not attend the 8th Summit of the Americas in Lima, Peru or travel to Bogota, Colombia as originally scheduled,' the statement read. 'At the President’s request, the Vice President will travel in his stead. The President will remain in the United States to oversee the American response to Syria and to monitor developments around the world.'
The schedule change gives Trump an excuse not to meet with Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto. The foreign leader told Trump in a speech last week to quit blaming Mexico for the United States' illegal immigration issues after Trump authorized a National Guard deployment to their shared border.
Pena Nieto and Trump have previously sparred over Mexico's refusal to pay for the U.S. president's desired border wall. The rift has kept the two men from holding talks at the White House -- a nicety that Trump has offered to a score of other U.S. allies.
Trump is now claiming he will exact payment from Mexico for his barrier through the North American Free Trade Agreement. At Trump's behest, Canada, the U.S. and Mexico are in the process of reworking the trilateral trade deal.
Aside from a meeting with Pena Nieto, Trump will lose out on an opportunity by not attending the summit to confront Central American leaders about the number of migrants that are making their way to the United States through Mexico.
The administration characterized the influx as a crisis last week that required the urgent deployment of the National Guard to the United States' southern border.
Enraged by reports on a caravan of Honduran migrants making the trek from Central America to the U.S., Trump threatened to cut off aid to their home country and others like it.
In a preview of the summit last week, senior administration officials were unable to say which heads of state Trump would meet with in Peru, only that they would be major regional leaders, suggesting a face-to-face with Pena Nieto was in the works.