What Happened to the America First Foreign Policy Voters Were Promised?

Trump also took time out of his foreign trip to meet with the Emir of Qatar, a funder of ISIS.

Daniel Larison rips apart the President’s foreign trip as a complete failure. Aside from cow-towing to the Saudis, who Larison says are the “one relationship” America should be fleeing, Trump’s trip did little to restore confidence in American leadership.

H.R. McMaster and Gary Cohn gamely try to spin Trump’s foreign trip as something other than the failure that it clearly was:

President Trump just returned from nine days in the Middle East and Europe that demonstrated his America First approach to ensuring security and prosperity for our nation. America will not lead from behind. This administration will restore confidence in American leadership as we serve the American people.

It is a given that a president’s top advisers will do their best to put a favorably spin on his actions as much as they can, but this is exceptionally thin gruel. No one outside the administration believes that Trump “restored confidence” in American leadership on this trip or that he is likely to do so in the future. The only relationship that Trump “deepened” during his time overseas was with the Saudis, and this is the one relationship from which the U.S. should [be] trying to extricate itself as quickly as possible.

Read more from Larison at The American Conservative. The former head of the CIA’s bin Laden unit, Michael Scheuer recently echoed Larison’s thoughts in an appearance on the John Fredericks Show.