FOREIGN POLICY/IMMIGRATION/TRUMP AS PRESIDENT: “It was already past midnight on Friday [1-12-18] when the news arrived in Norway: A day after meeting with Norway’s prime minister in Washington, President Trump told members of Congress that the United States needed more immigrants from places like Norway and fewer immigrants from countries like Haiti.
Many in this prosperous Scandinavian country were already asleep, but several prominent Norwegians who were still online took to Twitter to vent their outrage and disgust, not only at Mr. Trump’s vulgar language but at what many saw as a racially tinged insult… Prime Minister Erna Solberg’s visit to Washington to meet Mr. Trump — where they held a joint news conference on Wednesday at the White House — was big news in Norway, and the encounter had not gone without a hitch: Mr. Trump pointed to the sale of American-made ‘F-52s and F-35 fighter jets,’ a remark that puzzled many listeners since there is no such thing as an F-52 fighter jet. (There are F-52s in the video game ‘Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare.’)
Helge Ogrim, a veteran journalist who used to cover the United States for the Norwegian News Agency, said of Mr. Trump’s latest remark: ‘It falls into a pattern of nativist and very unpleasant language from a poorly qualified president, if not worse. President Trump seems to relish in derogatory remarks about others and praise for himself. This incident, just after his blunder with the fictional ‘F-52’ planes, further lowers the respect for his office and for the U.S. abroad.’
This was not the first time Mr. Trump had rankled Scandinavians with off-the-cuff remarks. In February, he puzzled and alarmed Swedes when, in a speech discussing refugee policies in Europe, he suggested that a terrorist attack had occurred ‘last night in Sweden.’ No such thing had taken place.”
-Henrik Pryser Libell and Catherine Porter, “From Norway to Haiti, Trump’s Comments Stir Fresh Outrage,” The New Times online, Jan. 11, 2018