Donald Trump’s first foreign trip is a story told mostly via semaphore. There’s the shoving a world leader out of the way to stand in the front of a group picture. There’s getting slapped by Melania. Getting slapped by Melania. And whatever the hell this is.
The biggest reason that Nelson Muntz’s world tour has turned into a parade of images to be interpreted like a mysterious batch of hieroglyphs is simply this: Trump isn’t talking to the press.
President Donald Trump has left American journalists in the dark during key moments of his nine-day foreign trip, delaying readouts, keeping reporters at a distance and not holding news conferences — which has allowed him to avoid having to answer to controversies at home.
Unlike Rex Tillerson, who simply left the press behind in his efforts to do things “behind closed doors,” Donald Trump can’t completely dump the press pool. That doesn’t mean he has to say anything.
Trump attended a meeting with European Union leaders at the EU headquarters in Brussels on Wednesday without bringing members of his press team, unlike his peers, whose spokespeople turned out formal statements within minutes of the meeting’s conclusion.
The Trump team seems to understand that the fewer opportunities people have to view Trump in contrast to other national leaders, the better. After all, it’s not as if those moments when Trump has said something in public have gone that well.
Trump has so far not held any news conferences on the trip, which is unusual for such a tour. It’s not clear whether he’ll take questions in Sicily, the final stop of the trip, where he’s scheduled to attend a meeting of G7 leaders.
Trump may feel more loquacious at the G7, since money is something that he thinks he understands. Everyone would love to see Donald Trump give an extended lecture on world economics.
Both Sean Spicer and Sarah Huckabee Sanders are along on the trip, but they haven’t really had anything to do—other than conspicuously not be invited to meet the Pope.
Ari Fleischer, who was press secretary for George W. Bush, said his team never went through an entire foreign trip without a presidential news conference.
Yes, but compared to Trump, W was such a wordsmith. It’s likely that Trump will just remain silent except when formal occasions call on him to be rude to other nations.