The Atlantic

Trump Will Probably Have a Great Trip to Saudi Arabia

And he will leave wishing he could spend more time in such places where people afford him more respect than the Washington press corps.
Source: Faisal Al Nasser / Reuters

The past four U.S. presidents, when making their first trips abroad, traveled to either Canada or Mexico. Donald Trump, by contrast, will go to Saudi Arabia—to meet not only with the Saudi leadership but with other Gulf and Arab leaders.

This is a move by the anti-Obama. The former president’s relations with America’s traditional regional partners were strained, so what better way to advertise that you’re not the former president than to embrace them whole-heartedly—despite some of the pointed things you yourself said about them on the campaign trail.

, the Gulf Arabs are still excited about Donald Trump, even as the president’s position among his own people following a weeklong artillery barrage of bombshells on everything from the president’s firing of the FBI director

You’re reading a preview, subscribe to read more.

More from The Atlantic

The Atlantic4 min read
Hayao Miyazaki’s Anti-war Fantasia
Once, in a windowless conference room, I got into an argument with a minor Japanese-government official about Hayao Miyazaki. This was in 2017, three years after the director had announced his latest retirement from filmmaking. His final project was
The Atlantic7 min readAmerican Government
The Americans Who Need Chaos
This is Work in Progress, a newsletter about work, technology, and how to solve some of America’s biggest problems. Sign up here. Several years ago, the political scientist Michael Bang Petersen, who is based in Denmark, wanted to understand why peop
The Atlantic4 min read
KitchenAid Did It Right 87 Years Ago
My KitchenAid stand mixer is older than I am. My dad bought the white-enameled machine 35 years ago, during a brief first marriage. The bits of batter crusted into its cracks could be from the pasta I made yesterday or from the bread he made then. I

Related Books & Audiobooks