“The administration just said, ‘Okay, we’ve been telling you all through the campaign and the last year and a half this is where we are, and guess what? This is where we are,’ ” said former House speaker Newt Gingrich, a Trump ally…

Even as European leaders pressed Trump with these arguments, the president’s advisers reminded him over and over again of what he had promised as a candidate, according to another White House official. This is the same approach some advisers, including former chief White House strategist Stephen K. Bannon, took with Trump last year when trying to urge him to withdraw the United States from the Paris climate accord.

“One of the most powerful persuasion tools that anybody could possibly have with Trump is to simply point out that you said you were going to do this during the campaign,” the White House official said. “I’ve seen it over and over again. He shrugs his shoulders and says, ‘I told everybody this is what I was going to do.’”