We begin today’s roundup with Paul Waldman at The Week and his analysis of Donald Trump’s first overseas trip:
[I]t isn't hard to imagine that things won't go smoothly — an errant remark that offends his hosts, angry protests against him, or who knows what else. Perhaps the most fraught part of the trip is a speech Trump is scheduled to give in Riyadh, in which he will address the world's Muslims with a discussion of Islam. What could possibly go wrong?
For starters, the speech is being written by Stephen Miller, the former Jeff Sessions aide who has a broad policy portfolio in the White House. Among other things, Miller helped author the administration's ban on travel from several Muslim countries, and is seen as a partner with Stephen Bannon in a long-term project to limit immigration and push back on non-European cultural influences. Miller is hardly alone on this score; Trump's administration is rife with Islamophobes, from Bannon to Sebastian Gorka to the president himself. This has not been lost on the world's Muslims, who may be less than receptive to a lecture from Trump on the past, present, and future of their religion.
Every time Trump goes to a new place or meets a new group of people, there will be new opportunities for him to offend and insult, intentionally or otherwise. While he has little understanding of domestic policy, in foreign policy his cluelessness may be even more encompassing — and of course he has little or no desire to learn what he doesn't already know.
Jen Kirby and Margaret Hartmann at New York Magazine:
Despite the hype, Trump seems unenthused about this new presidential obligation. He reportedly “barked at an aide” that the trip should be half as long, and has had trouble focusing on preparations for his meetings with foreign leaders. According to Reuters, National Security Council officials have resorted to repeating Trump’s name throughout his briefing materials in an effort to make sure he reads them.
In other words, it’s unlikely that an entirely new Trump is going to step off Air Force One. Here’s a look at the controversies that are already brewing, and what to expect when our inexperienced and possibly agitated president throws himself into delicate foreign policy matters...
Christopher Dickey at The Daily Beast:
Many of the leaders Trump will be meeting over the coming week, from Saudi royals to Israel’s prime minister, Pope Francis, and the newly elected president of France , have justifiable reasons to doubt both Trump’s foreign policy acumen and his mental acuity, defined as memory, focus, concentration, and understanding. The grandiose pretensions of Trump’s program are extraordinary. Trump’s embattled national security adviser, H.R. McMaster, told reporters last Friday, “This trip is truly historic. No president has ever visited the homelands and holy sites of the Jewish, Christian, and Muslim faiths all on one trip,” then added, “What President Trump is seeking is to unite peoples of all faiths around a common vision of peace, progress, and prosperity.” A noble sentiment, to be sure. But while it’s doubtful even Trump will tell Jews how to be Jews or Pope Francis how to be a Christian, the White House agenda informs us he’ll be lecturing Muslims, whom he had hoped to ban en masse from the United States, “on the need to confront radical ideology and [his] hopes for a peaceful vision of Islam.”
At The New York Times, former National Security Council members Steven Simon and Jonathan Stevenson analyze the damage Mike Flynn has done to American foreign policy:
Big decisions about strategy become much harder when the issues are permeated by domestic politics. Of course, it’s never been entirely true that politics stop at the water’s edge, but when the stakes for the United States are muddied by domestic scandal, as they are in Mr. Flynn’s case, then an objective discussion of the stakes for America, of the very nature of our adversaries, and of the basis on which our leadership is making crucial decisions becomes difficult if not impossible. [...]
Rational policy discourse on these profound challenges will now be far more difficult because they have become entwined in American politics and Turkey’s ties to a former American general and intelligence official. And that is ultimately because the president was too irresponsible to exercise due diligence and sound discretion in making a crucial appointment.
Speaking of Flynn, Vice President Pence’s stance is raising more questions:
This would seem to suggest that Pence did a terrible job as head of the transition team, and didn’t even know how to Google Flynn. But hours later a source floated a possible explanation to NBC News: people on the transition team intentionally kept things from the vice-president-elect. “There’s a pattern as it relates to the Flynn situation — vis a vis Pence — that he was never, either intentionally or unintentionally, made aware of the facts,” the source said. [...]
Still, how could Pence claim in March that he’d just learned about Flynn’s questionable lobbying when it was widely reported in the months after the election, and Representative Elijah Cummings even wrote Pence a letter on November 18 bringing the matter to his attention? “I’m not sure we saw the letter,” said the source.
Pence sparked another controversy this week when he filed paperwork to launch his own PAC, the Great America Committee, which is a first for a sitting vice president. With all the talk of “President Pence” this week, it seemed odd that he was suddenly separating his political activity from Trump’s.
On a final note, atThe Washington Post, Eugene Robinson analyzes Trump’s victim complex:
President Trump believes he is being persecuted, and that is a frighteningly dangerous mind-set for a man with such vast power. [...]
He has access to the nation’s most closely held secrets but cannot be trusted to safeguard them. He runs the White House like a family business, valuing loyalty over experience or expertise. He has no real grasp of policy, foreign or domestic. He feels himself under attack. Four months into his term, he brags to White House visitors about how he won the election. And there’s not another one until 2020.