Trump Remains a NATO Skeptic
Presidential trips are hard to assess. George H.W. Bush threw up on the Japanese prime minister; he was sick. Bill Clinton went to China without going to Japan, a big no-no. Someone threw a shoe at George W Bush; he ducked. President Barack Obama failed to meet with human-rights activists in China. His speech was censored on Chinese television.
These all passed for big problems. Then again, those were different times.
The bar for President Donald Trump on his foreign trips this past week was, by comparison, unusually low. Everyone expected problems. Trump famously knows very little about foreign policy. In his March 17 meeting with Angela Merkel, the chancellor of Germany, he confessed he had never heard of the or the G-20. She a colorful map of the sphere of influence, which he apparently liked. So, when Trump embarked on a nine-day trip of five countries, it seemed particularly ambitious. Most new presidents go to Canada or Mexico.
