A Tragic Display on Trump's Saudi Trip

Daniel Larison calls Donald Trump’s trip to Saudi Arabia “excessive fawning and stroking of the client’s [Saudi’s] ego that creates the false impression that we need them far more than they need us.” Barack Obama may have bowed to the Saudis, but Larison doesn’t find Trump’s display to have been any better. He writes at The American Conservative:

Ishaan Tharoor reviews Trump’s Riyadh speech:

But let’s be clear about what the speech really was: A sop, soaked in platitudes, to the Saudi agenda in the Middle East.

Trump’s embrace of the Saudis and their agenda is in keeping with his general enthusiasm for our most authoritarian clients and allies, and the speech was a statement of his administration’s Iran obsession and what passes for conventional wisdom in Washington regarding relations with our clients in the region….

The display the president put on in Riyadh is what happens when the U.S. makes keeping “no daylight” with its clients the top priority….

The only ones to benefit are the despots on the receiving end of U.S. backing, and even then they are being indulged in their worst and most ruinous habits.