After a Disciplined Week in Asia, Trump Unloads on Critics

HANOI, Vietnam — For the last week on the road, President Trump had been measured, disciplined and studiously scripted as he picked his way through the geopolitical minefields of Asia.

Then came the weekend.

In a stream of tweets on Sunday, the president said those who want to probe his ties to Russia were “haters and fools,” ridiculed “crooked” Hillary Clinton’s ill-fated effort to reset relations with Russia and fired back at North Korea’s leader, Kim Jong-un, for calling him old, saying that he could call Mr. Kim “short and fat” — but had restrained himself.

That followed a freewheeling session with reporters on Air Force One on Saturday, in which Mr. Trump dismissed the Russia investigation as a Democratic “hit job” and derided as “political hacks” three former chiefs of the nation’s intelligence agencies, all three of which concluded that Russia had meddled in the 2016 presidential election.

It was hard to say what prompted the sudden change in the president’s demeanor, though the first lady, Melania Trump, who often plays a moderating influence on her husband, dropped off the trip in Beijing, after visiting the Great Wall of China and stroking the paw of a panda bear at the Beijing Zoo. Mr. Trump, 71, could also simply be tired.

Pressed again on Sunday whether he believed President Vladimir V. Putin’s denials that Russia had intervened, Mr. Trump seemed to walk back his earlier comments somewhat. He said he did not dispute the assessment of the intelligence agencies that it had interfered.

“As to whether I believe it or not, I’m with our agencies, especially as currently constituted, with their leadership,” Mr. Trump said at a news conference with Vietnam’s president, Tran Dai Quang. “I believe in our agencies. I’ve worked with them very strongly.”

Still, Mr. Trump’s endorsement was grudging — he noted that the assessment reflected only four agencies, not 17 — and he repeated his assertion that Washington needed to move on from the Russia investigation to cooperate with the Russians on issues from North Korea to Syria.

“What I believe is, we have to get to work,” he said. “It’s now time to get back to healing a world that is shattered and broken.”

In the short run, Mr. Trump’s comments broke with a narrative that the White House had carefully constructed during this 12-day trip — that of a statesman marshaling a worldwide coalition to confront a nuclear North Korea, and a populist leader working to right trade imbalances.

The president’s tweets and comments also complicated life for White House officials, who had been encouraged by his friendly meetings with the leaders of Japan, China and South Korea and by what they characterized as one of the most effective foreign-policy speeches of his presidency, on the need to confront a nuclear North Korea.

Speaking to reporters here on Sunday, the White House chief of staff, John F. Kelly, insisted he did not pay attention to Mr. Trump’s tweets or allow his staff to be distracted by them.

“They are what they are,” Mr. Kelly said. “But like, you know in preparation for this trip, we did the staff work, got him ready to go and then at each place we brief him up on whatever the next event is and all that. The tweets don’t run my life; good staff work runs it.”

Until Sunday, Mr. Trump had been careful not to make things personal with Mr. Kim. But after his speech in Seoul, in which he cataloged the brutality of the Kim regime, North Korea described him as a “lunatic old man” and urged Americans to force him out of office or face an “abyss of doom.”

That prompted an indignant response from Mr. Trump, who seemed more offended by the gibe about his age than about his mental condition. Shortly before leaving his hotel to meet the Vietnamese president, he tweeted, “Why would Kim Jong-un insult me by calling me ‘old’ when I would NEVER call him ‘short and fat?’ Oh well, I try so hard to be his friend.”

Once at the Presidential Palace, however, Mr. Trump seemed to have gotten over it. Asked whether he could see himself becoming friends with Mr. Kim, he said, “Strange things happen in life. That might be a strange thing to happen, but it’s certainly a possibility.”

“If that did happen,” he continued, “it would be a good thing for — I can tell you — for North Korea. But it would also be good for lots of other places, and it would be good for the world.”

Mr. Trump’s comments were in keeping with his hot-and-cold approach to Mr. Kim. At times, he has floated the idea of a meeting with Mr. Kim and praised the North Korean leader for consolidating power in his country at a young age. But he has also ridiculed him as “Little Rocket Man” for his ballistic missile tests.

With Mr. Putin, Mr. Trump has been more consistent.

“I believe that President Putin really feels — and he feels strongly — that he did not meddle in our election,” Mr. Trump said Sunday, when he was asked to clarify his comments about Mr. Putin’s sincerity on that question the night before. “What he believes is what he believes.”

Standing next to the Vietnamese president, Mr. Trump did not repeat the contempt he had shown the day before for three officials who served under President Barack Obama: John O. Brennan, the former director of the C.I.A.; James B. Comey, the former director of the F.B.I.; and James R. Clapper, the former director of national intelligence.

But he was no less insistent that the Russia investigation was a distraction from more pressing global matters — Syria, Ukraine and North Korea — and that time for punishing Russia was over. The president discussed North Korea in his brief conversation with Mr. Putin, Mr. Kelly said.

“People don’t realize Russia has been very, very heavily sanctioned,” Mr. Trump said. “And I feel that having Russia in a friendly posture, as opposed to always fighting with them, is an asset to the world and an asset to our country, not a liability.”

When the news conference was over, Mr. Trump reverted to his script. Sitting before a bust of Ho Chi Minh with the general secretary of the Vietnamese Communist Party, Nguyen Phu Trong, he stressed the importance of fair trade relationships.

“We are opening up and you are opening up and it’s going to even out,” Mr. Trump told the Communist leader.

For those wondering if the president’s trip will pack any more surprises, he then boarded Air Force One for Manila, where he is to meet on Monday with the Philippine president, Rodrigo Duterte, one of the few world leaders who outdoes him in unpredictability.