FOREIGN POLICY/TRUMP AS PRESIDENT/TRUMP PEOPLE: “Just as a grim-faced Vice President Mike Pence was alighting from his Blackhawk helicopter a mile from the Korean Demilitarized Zone on Sunday, his boss, President Donald Trump — fresh from Florida — was at home, tweeting.
Ensconced with his family inside the White House after three nights at Mar-a-Lago, Trump’s thoughts were far from the tense Korean Peninsula. Instead, an old familiar grudge was weighing on the President.
‘The recent Kansas election (Congress) was a really big media event, until the Republicans won. Now they play the same game with Georgia-BAD!’ he wrote, referencing a set of special elections this month and taking another swipe at the press.
Trump, who has not yet traveled abroad as president, insists he’s focused on making deals with foreign leaders in a bid to create a more secure planet. But nearly 100 days into his presidency, Trump is remaining at home while delegating diplomatic travel to his underlings, who this week are spreading across the globe to some of the world’s most problematic regions.
Pence, national security adviser H.R. McMaster and Defense Secretary James Mattis are all traveling overseas this week on key diplomatic missions amid heightened global tensions. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson returned late last week from a closely watched visit to Moscow, where he met with Russian President Vladimir Putin. And Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, who acts as his senior adviser, took a trip to Iraq last month so widely scrutinized it was parodied on ‘Saturday Night Live’ this weekend.”
-Kevin Liptak, “As advisers cross globe to hotspots, Trump stays put,” CNN Politics, CNN.com, April 17, 2017