Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton will meet separately with Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi on Monday while the foreign leader is in New York City for the United Nations General Assembly.
Walid Phares, a senior foreign policy adviser to Trump, told Reuters that a meeting between the Republican presidential nominee and Sisi would take place Monday afternoon. Clinton is expected to meet with him later in the day, in addition to holding a session with Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko.
Trump’s meeting with Sisi comes two weeks after he traveled to Mexico City for a closed-door discussion with Mexican President Enrique Peno Nieto, the first time the billionaire businessman had met with a head of state since securing his party’s nomination. Trump and Nieto held a joint press conference after their meeting, only to engage in a war of words hours later when the Mexican president said his country would not be paying for the candidate’s proposed border wall and Trump said the issue of payment didn’t come up.
Trump and Sisi are likely to discuss the fight against Islamic State radicals when they meet in New York, as well as some of Trump’s national security proposals.
This summer, the GOP nominee modified his previous proposal to bar non-American Muslims from entering the U.S. to instead apply to all immigrants from countries with terrorist ties. Alabama Sen. Jeff Sessions, a top Trump surrogate, previously named Egypt as one country from which a Trump administration could temporarily halt immigration.
Trump told Fox News on Monday morning that several individuals attending the General Assembly this week have expressed an interest in meeting with him.
“I will say that with all the folks being in New York, I’ve had a lot of calls from a lot of different people on the basis that I’m doing well and, you know, they seem to think it’s important to maybe meet,” Trump said. “I don’t want to comment specifically on who but a couple of people are coming over.”
