What the president’s visit to the Middle East reveals about America’s shifting global role
Editor’s Note: Washington Week With The Atlantic is a partnership between NewsHour Productions, WETA, and The Atlantic airing every Friday on PBS stations nationwide. Check your local listings, watch full episodes here, or listen to the weekly podcast here.
This week, Donald Trump returned from the first major foreign trip of his second term. Panelists on Washington Week With The Atlantic joined last night to discuss what the president’s visit to the Middle East reveals about America’s place in the world.
The time Trump spent abroad has reinforced an approach to foreign policy that is “malleable” and “not always predictable,” Peter Baker said last night. “He went to the Middle East to re-alter the dynamics by recognizing Syria’s new government, announcing that he’s going to lift sanctions, and effectively moving closer towards a deal with Iran that sounds an awful lot like the deal he threw out in his first term.”
This, Baker continued, “is a different dynamic than we saw even just a week ago.”
Joining the editor in chief of The Atlantic, Jeffrey Goldberg, to discuss this and more: Peter Baker, the chief White House correspondent at The New York Times; Stephen Hayes, the editor of The Dispatch; David Ignatius, a columnist at The Washington Post; Andrea Mitchell, the chief Washington and foreign-affairs correspondent for NBC News.
Watch the full episode here.
