I find this Washington Post op-ed by Michael Scherer, Greg Jaffe and Josh Dawsey very distressing:
It is unclear just how much Trump’s private conversations signal a public shift in policy or, rather, if they are just maneuvering by a famously transactional leader who often says what he needs to say to make a deal and then reverses himself. The White House declined to comment for this story, but an official confirmed the outlines of the interactions that Paul described.
Nonetheless, Trump’s talks with Paul reflect an area of growing tension between the president, whose instinct is to withdraw from overseas entanglements, and his military, whose leaders think that swift pullouts would spark dangerous instability. In Afghanistan, one indication of the military’s nervousness is its eagerness to open peace talks with the Taliban and try to negotiate an end the conflict.
The Trump-Paul conversations also point to an effort by the dovish senator and former Trump rival, long treated by his party as a foreign policy gadfly, to assert influence over a president who chafes at being managed by his advisers and the Republican foreign policy establishment.
claiming as it does that unless you’re invading and occupying other countries or have open borders with them it’s isolationist. I reject any charge of isolationism against any country with as much international trade as we do. It seems to me the authors are confusing disinterest and isolationism.
I have no idea what Trump really believes, other than that he is the greatest, and I defy anyone to articulate real core beliefs. That said, just because they are hard to identify, he might have some. Maybe he really does believe that we should occupy foreign countries. That we should stay at war. It is always kind of sad to watch Trump supporters defend him by claiming he is being manipulated by his advisers, or someone, when he does not behave according to how they interpreted him. I HOPE he really believes that we should stop invading and occupying, but I have no proof of that. I think it more likely he will do whatever he perceives will make his base happy and give him a shot at a second term.
Steve
One of the very few things I was hopeful about when it came to a Trump administration is a more transactional, less interventionist foreign policy. So far, every President that’s initially shown that promise has failed spectacularly and so far Trump’s record is decidedly mixed.