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• Charles Lipson in Real Clear Politics:
“Trump showed a clear-eyed recognition of the threats from Russia and radical Islam, promised continued U.S. engagement in Europe, offered to support Poland against Moscow, and wrapped it all in a full-throated defense of Western civilization and its achievements.”
Mr. Lipson applauds Mr. Trump’s “Reaganesque defense” of the West, and is heartened by the president’s articulation of the threat of Russia and of support for NATO. Seeing it as a foreign policy reversal of sorts, Mr. Lipson writes, that Mr. Trump’s words “not only rejected President Obama’s tentativeness, they reversed Trump’s own inward-looking nationalism on the campaign trail.” Read more »
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• Roger Kimball in American Greatness:
“I have no idea who wrote the rousing speech that Donald Trump delivered Thursday in Warsaw. But I think I know who might have provided a model: Pericles of Athens.”
Mr. Kimball sees an ancient Greek antecedent for the president’s speech: the funeral oration of Pericles at the onset of the Peloponnesian War. He admires the Greek statesman’s “frank and manly self-confidence,” and quotes his address to the people of Athens on what sets their city, and their form of government, apart. Read more »
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From the Left
• Peter Beinart in The Atlantic:
“The most shocking sentence in Trump’s speech — perhaps the most shocking sentence in any presidential speech delivered on foreign soil in my lifetime — was his claim that ‘the fundamental question of our time is whether the West has the will to survive.’”
Many of the columnists featured in the right section of this roundup took issue with Mr. Beinart’s take on the Warsaw speech. He understood Mr. Trump’s emphasis on the survival of the West to be the ultimate “statement of racial and religious paranoia,” and a marked departure from the foreign policy of both Republican and Democratic presidents before him. Read more »
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• Anne Applebaum in The Washington Post:
“In giving such a speech in such a place, Trump has confirmed Poland’s nationalist government in its isolationist and anti-democratic course.”
If Mr. Goldberg wants greater context in evaluations of the president’s trip to Europe, Ms. Applebaum’s column delivers both the historical and political conditions that frame Mr. Trump’s speech in Poland. The country, according to Ms. Applebaum, is run by a political party that has “launched an assault on the country’s democratic institutions.” She also explains why the location for Mr. Trump’s speech — a monument to the Warsaw uprising — is ironic. Read more »
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• Jeva Lange in The Week:
“It has been said that Trump has ‘no doctrine,’ or that his doctrine is putting ‘America first.’ On Thursday, Trump proved it to be something else entirely: A war against an undefined, and perhaps even nonexistent, ‘other.’”
Ms. Lange connects Mr. Trump’s inaugural speech to his speech in Poland, offering what she sees as a sequel to the brutal “American carnage” imagery. To Ms. Lange, the Warsaw speech is a reflection of nationalist thinking espoused by advisers like Stephen K. Bannon, where radical Islam, Russia and other unnamed “powers” and government bureaucracy come together to form a “strange axis of evil.” Read more »
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• Jen Psaki in CNN:
“Putin may have less of a warm diplomatic bedside manner, but he understands the art of presentation and how to set a trap. And set a trap is exactly what he just did.”
Ms. Psaki worked for the Obama administration as the White House communications director and as the State Department spokeswoman. According to her, the meeting between Mr. Trump and President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia had a predictable outcome: “The Russians just played the president.” She describes the Russian art of public manipulation and stage management — something the Trump administration should have expected and rebuked, but didn’t. Read more »
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And Finally, From the Center:
• Jonathan Swan in Axios:
“Trump and Putin perfectly staged their first meeting so that both men could get what they needed out of it, politically.”
Mr. Swan reads between the lines of the meeting with Mr. Putin and declares victory for both sides. Read more »
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• Matt Latimer in Politico:
“So how, in fact, might history have changed if Trump descended that infamous golden escalator and declared his candidacy for the Democratic nomination? And how would it be (depressingly) the same?”
Take a break from reactions to the president’s trip abroad with this provocative thought experiment by Mr. Latimer: What if Donald J. Trump had won as a Democrat? The answer might encourage you to re-evaluate the way you think about our political culture. Read more »
The New York Times