Trump an impolitic guest on trips abroad
President Donald Trump has proven himself to be an impolitic guest, soaking up pomp and pageantry while leaving behind hosts he scorched despite their best efforts to favor the president with flattery. Trump on Friday wrapped up five days in Europe that, much like his stay in Japan two weeks earlier, showed how his “America First” foreign policy mixed with his “Me First” Twitter habit have made him an unpredictable partner for America’s allies ...
Time after time, diplomatic niceties fell by the wayside as the president contradicted and undermined his hosts. “Not only has Trump been ungracious on these trips, he is losing credibility with his behavior,” said presidential historian Douglas Brinkley. “No world leader can trust President Trump because at any moment he may shatter the glass right in front of him; a single whim, or tweet, could upend a deal that had been months in the making. He leaves world leaders wiping their brows and wishing for him to leave.”
The United Kingdom this week welcomed Trump for a grand state visit ... But even as Trump praised the royal family (claiming “automatic chemistry” with Queen Elizabeth II), he meddled in the U.K.’s internal politics, played tough on trade and took a sharp jab at the American-born Duchess of Sussex, Meghan Markle.
It was the same story last month, when Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe crafted a made-for-Trump itinerary in Tokyo that featured golf, American beef and Sumo wrestling. At a closing joint press conference, Abe stood by as the president publicly broke with Japan’s plan for managing the missile threat posed by North Korea.
The Group of 20 summit in Osaka later this month will be particularly consequential: Trump will meet with Chinese President Xi Jinping in the midst of a trade war and he’ll hold his first face-to-face encounter with Russia’s Vladimir Putin since a Helsinki summit last summer where Trump rattled European capitals by publicly siding with Putin over his own intelligence agencies.
https://www.apnews.com/768b59297e8d4a55998839411490562f
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