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June 16: Trump On John Kerry and the Iran nuclear talks: “I will stop Iran from
getting nuclear weapons. And we won’t be using a man like Secretary Kerry that
has absolutely no concept of negotiation, who’s making a horrible and laughable
deal, who’s just being tapped along as they make weapons right now and then goes
into a bicycle race at 72-years-old and falls and breaks his leg. I won’t be
doing that. And I promise, I will never be in a bicycle race — that I can tell
you.”
http://www.politico.com/story/2015/06/donald-trump-2016-announcement-10-best-lines-119066
President Trump’s first year signaled a profound departure of U.S. leadership in
areas like trade and climate policy, and an across-the-board toughening of
immigration practices. The moves reflected the administration’s push for an
America First agenda.
https://www.cfr.org/timeline/trumps-foreign-policy-moments
February 27: More than 120 retired three and
four-star generals just sent a letter to the House and Senate leadership calling
on Congress to “ensure that resources for the International Affairs Budget keep
pace with the growing global threats and opportunities we face.”
February 28: As civil society organizations committed to multilateral
cooperation as a means to creating a better, safer world, we urge you to support
strong U.S. leadership at the United Nations, including by fully meeting our
nation’s financial obligations to the organization. Continued engagement with
the UN is critical to advancing a number of core U.S. foreign policy objectives,
including securing recent gains in international development, delivering
lifesaving humanitarian assistance, combating terrorism, encouraging the
peaceful resolution of conflict, and promoting universal human rights.
https://betterworldcampaign.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/BWC-UN-Funding-Congressional-Sign-on-Letter-2.27.2017.pdf
February 28: Trump plan to slash State,
foreign aid spending has foes in Congress ... “I am very concerned by reports of
deep cuts that could damage efforts to combat terrorism, save lives and create
opportunities for American workers,” said U.S. Representative Ed Royce, the
Republican chairman of the House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Committee.
March 1: John Glaser, an Associate Director of Foreign Policy Studies
at the CATO Institute, said cuts were not likely to significantly worsen the
plight of people facing famine and war, because a lot of the aid comes in the
form of military aid to foreign countries.
March 16: The final days of the [Dutch]
election were dominated by a diplomatic row with Turkey over the Dutch
government's refusal to allow Turkish ministers to address political rallies in
the Netherlands.
March 14: Saudi Arabia hailed a “historical
turning point” in U.S.-Saudi relations after a meeting between U.S. President
Donald Trump and Deputy Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman highlighted the two
leaders’ shared view that Iran posed a regional security threat.
March 16: The 62 agencies and programs Trump
wants to eliminate ... President Trump's proposed budget takes a cleaver to
domestic programs, with many agencies taking percentage spending cuts in the
double digits.
But for dozens of smaller agencies and programs, the cut is 100%.
Community development block grants. The Weatherization Assistance Program. The
Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Program. The National Endowment for the Arts.
The Corporation for Public Broadcasting. All would be axed if Congress adopts
Trump's budget.
March 17: During the 2016 race, [Trump] knocked
the country [Saudi Arabia] for insufficiently compensating the US for its military presence in
the region and scolded the Clinton Foundation for accepting money from Saudi
Arabia despite its human rights record.
May 17: Erdogan’s
guards clash with protesters outside Turkish ambassador’s D.C. residence ...
Tuesday’s clash involving protesters and security guards for visiting Turkish
President Recep Tayyip Erdogan prompted outrage by local and U.S. officials who
accused the guards of using violence to quell what had been a peaceful
demonstration in Northwest Washington.
May 20: As President Trump begins his first
overseas trip, Americans have widely differing views of his approach to foreign
policy. But a majority of both Republicans and Democrats want the U.S. to
continue its robust engagement with the rest of the world.
More than half the people surveyed in a
new NPR/Ipsos poll said America's foreign policy should focus on maintaining
the current global order — with the U.S. at the center. Less than a quarter said
the country's foreign policy should look out for Americans, even if it harms
people in other countries.
http://www.npr.org/2017/05/20/528802896/npr-ipsos-poll-americans-arent-so-hot-on-america-first
May 22: President Trump has landed in Israel
for the second leg of his nine-day trip abroad, which started in Saudi Arabia
and will end in Italy.
May 22: The fight against terrorism is a
"battle between good and evil," not a fight between "different faiths, different
sects, or different civilizations," President Trump said Sunday in a
widely-anticipated speech in Saudi Arabia.
May 25: President
Donald Trump appeared to muscle past — or shove — Montenegro Prime Minister Duško
Markovic at a public appearance during the NATO summit in Brussels on Thursday.
A
closer view suggested that Markovic might have been pushing Trump to the
front at the same time. [However, another look clearly shows that Trump is
pushing his way forward, and only after that did Markovic hang back and give
Trump his desired position].
http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2017/05/25/america-first-donald-trump-muscles-past-montenegro-pm-nato-summit/
June 6: Trump: "During my recent trip to the Middle
East I stated that there can no longer be funding of Radical Ideology. Leaders
pointed to Qatar - look," he tweeted.
The tweet could pose difficulties for the US in explaining why it remains in
Qatar, host to the one of the Pentagon's largest military bases in the Middle
East and a linchpin in the campaign against ISIS. For that reason, the
President's 140 character blast may raise concerns within the Defense
Department.
http://www.cnn.com/2017/06/06/politics/trump-qatar-ideology/?iid=ob_lockedrail_bottomlist
September 24:Chancellor
Angela Merkel clinched an historic fourth term in Germany's election on Sunday,
but her victory was clouded by the hard-Right AfD party winning its first seats
in parliament.
Merkel, who after 12 years in power held a double-digit lead for most of the
campaign, scored around 32.9 per cent of the vote with her conservative
Christian Union (CDU/CSU) bloc.
November 3: Trump leaves Friday on his most
crucial foreign trip yet, to confront rising fears of a US war with North Korea,
an increasingly bullish China and perceptions that US power has ebbed in the
region since he took office.
January 11: Trump wants fewer immigrants
from “shithole countries” and more from places like Norway ... He reportedly
made the racist remarks during a meeting Thursday.
President Trump reportedly referred to Haiti and countries in Africa as
“shithole countries” and called for more immigrants from places like Norway at
an Oval Office meeting with lawmakers ...
January 11: President Donald Trump on
Thursday referred to Haiti and African nations as "shithole countries" during a
meeting with a bipartisan group of senators at the White House, a Democratic
aide briefed on the meeting told NBC News.
January 12: One of Africa’s smallest
countries is taking the lead in standing up to Donald Trump
While the “giants” of Africa seem reticent to get into a war of words with, or
even react to Donald Trump’s derogatory comments and
tough policy actions, Botswana, a small country with only two million
people, has no such problems.
July 24: Global ambivalence about Trump’s
foreign policies sends clear message to the White House
President Trump's style of governing is widely and aptly described as a radical
departure from that of all U.S. Presidents in recent memory. In addition to
taking considerable heat for it in the U.S., he has courted controversy and
severe criticism elsewhere, particularly Europe.
September 25: Swedish Prime Minister Stefan
Lofven has lost a confidence vote, effectively forcing him out of his post and
plunging Sweden's politics into uncertainty.
National elections earlier this month resulted in a hung parliament after a
far-right party made significant gains. Now, the parliament's speaker will tap
another leader to try to form a government, but the shape of any future alliance
is far from clear.
Lofven, who heads the center-left Social Democrats, has been prime minister in
Sweden since 2014. Two hundred four parliamentarians voted against him, 142
voted for him, and three abstained.
November 26: President Donald Trump may not
see Congress as a threat to his foreign policy agenda, even as Democrats prepare
to take control of the House of Representatives after the midterm elections Nov.
6.
But Rep. Eliot Engel,
a mild-mannered Democrat from the Bronx, is drawing up an aggressive
oversight plan for January, when he is likely to take the gavel of the House
Foreign Affairs Committee.
First on his priority list: getting Secretary of State Mike Pompeo at his
witness table after Trump's chief diplomat
"snubbed" the panel this year. Next up: a wide-ranging examination of
Trump’s ties to Russia and an investigation into how the president’s business
interests have intersected with his foreign policy decisions, among other
matters.
November 28: S. President Donald Trump’s
aggressive approach to China has been the most credible and consistent policy of
an often-criticized White House. The president’s assertions of Chinese
malfeasance in trade matters are undeniably true. Even
CNN’s Fareed Zakaria, no fan of the
president, has said, “Donald Trump is right: China is a trade cheat,” going on
to praise the U.S. trade representative’s exhaustive
report on China’s World Trade Organization noncompliance as a rare example
of a quality document from this administration.
https://foreignpolicy.com/2018/11/28/trumps-china-policy-is-a-triumph-wto-trump-gdp/
December 2: President Trump is bolstering
American influence by leading a coalition of strong and independent nations to
promote security, prosperity, and peace both within America’s borders and
beyond. The promise of a better future will come in part from reasserting
American sovereignty and the right of all nations to determine their own
futures.
https://www.whitehouse.gov/issues/foreign-policy/
December 17: At the turn of the 18th
century, a newly elected president of the United States—only the second in the
nation’s then-brief history—cautioned the American people about “the danger to
our liberties if anything partial or extraneous should infect the purity of our
free, fair, virtuous, and independent elections.” In particular, John Adams
pointed to threats from abroad, warning that if a changed election outcome “can
be obtained by foreign nations by flattery or menaces, by fraud or violence, by
terror, intrigue, or venality, the Government may not be the choice of the
American people, but of foreign nations. It may be foreign nations who govern
us, and not we, the people, who govern ourselves.” Speaking before a joint
session of Congress, he thus pleaded with the U.S. Senate and the House of
Representatives to “[preserve] our Constitution from its natural enemies,”
including “the profligacy of corruption, and the pestilence of foreign
influence, which is the angel of destruction to elective governments.”1
The threat of foreign influence over our elections did not wane in the
intervening 220 years: Today, the United States has a president whose election
was aided by the fraud and intrigue of a foreign nation. Americans who watched
how President Donald Trump, in the words of the late Sen. John McCain, “abased
himself … abjectly before a tyrant” in Helsinki, cannot be faulted for wondering
whether John Adams’s long-ago warning has become a reality.2
https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/democracy/reports/2018/12/17/464235/following-the-money/
May 26: The
President of the United States is erratic, illiterate, and doesn’t want to
know what he doesn’t know. The President has alienated former allies, befriended
or courted murderous dictators, and has repeatedly brought the country to the
brink of nuclear confrontation. The President lies constantly, knows that he is
lying, and demands that Administration officials lie for him, and often they do.
The President has waged war on the institutions of government, overseeing the
gutting of the State Department and the destruction of other federal agencies by
their own leaders, and effectively shut off media access to the Pentagon, the
State Department, and the White House. The President has acted to thwart
oversight of the Administration by other branches of government. The President
has never made a secret of despising the government itself: he has called it a
“swamp” and gleefully shut it down for thirty-five days, during a temper
tantrum. The President has not only failed to divest himself of his businesses
but has installed his children in and near the White House, openly using his
office for personal financial gain. The President has debased political culture
and language, using his bully pulpit to spew lies, hate, and personal insults
https://www.newyorker.com/news/our-columnists/how-nancy-pelosis-tactics-affirm-the-trumpian-style-of-politics
