NATO chief: Trump has been ‘very consistent’ in support of alliance

Mr. Trump appears to be proving him correct, as he falls in line with established USA policy on issue after issue.

Secretary of state Rex Tillerson had earlier delivered a similar message to Russian president Vladimir Putin in Moscow, telling him US-Russia relations were at a “low point”. On Wednesday, however, the President declared the worldwide alliance was “no longer obsolete”, taking credit for what he said was the organization’s greater focus on fighting terrorism.

John Drinnan: When does plain talk become hate speech? .

Christine Wormuth, former undersecretary of defence in the Obama administration, said Mr Trump had a steep learning curve on foreign policy when he came into office but that it was beginning to even out. He even said he would “certainly look at” pulling the USA out of the organization. And it actually makes money, it could make a lot of money.

Allies describe Trump as merely growing in the job, taking what he’s learning and adapting.

There’s been something of a Cold War inside the White House.

North Atlantic Treaty Organisation invited Montenegro – a traditional Russian ally – to join as its 29th member in December 2015.

Trump had previously questioned NATO’s relevance. When the driver is Steve Bannon, we sometimes applaud.

Mr Trump also appears to have grown fond of the US Export-Import Bank, which has been a rallying cry for conservatives who consider it a mechanism of crony capitalism. But the end result is what’s most important, not just talk.

The top USA commander in Afghanistan, General John Nicholson, told Congress in February that he needed a “few thousand” more troops to help train the Afghan security forces, which are battling Taliban insurgents as well as militants claiming allegiance to Islamic State.

During the campaign, Trump blasted China as a currency manipulator, promising to label it one on the first day of the administration to help protect American jobs. Chinese leaders have sought a US relationship based on the two powers respecting each other’s spheres of influence and not intervening in one another’s internal affairs. Cohn has been looking for ways to fulfill Trump’s campaign promises in ways that are practical and achievable ” as opposed to doing things precisely the way the candidate outlined. At the first presidential debate in September, he said the Fed was “being more political than Secretary Clinton”.

The answer is that nothing has really changed. It seems like just over a week ago we heard that the Syrian people were going to decide their leadership. After the failed U.S. Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba, Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev had arranged with Cuban premier Fidel Castro to position nuclear missiles in Cuba.

Some things don’t change. When the president is so self-admittedly “flexible”, there are real and dramatic consequences to who’s up and who’s down in the West Wing, and we’ve seen them in stark relief this week. “That’s his pipeline to supporters, and he still has it”.