EU/TRUMP AS PRESIDENT: “EU leaders agreed to hold their tongues — and their noses — as they brace for U.S. President Donald Trump to barnstorm into Europe. As leaders convened in Brussels on Thursday [6-28-18] for one of their busiest summits in recent memory, Trump provided fresh outrage — an assertion at a rally in North Dakota that ‘the European Union, of course, was set up to take advantage of the United States.’ It was not, of course. But none of the leaders gathered in the Council’s Europa building voiced any hope of changing the mind of America’s reality-TV-star-in-chief. Not French President Emmanuel Macron, who initially tried to build a bromance with Trump. Not German Chancellor Angela Merkel who has given him little more than a stink-eye from the start. Nor U.K. Prime Minister Theresa May, who will welcome Trump to London next month. Instead, the leaders used an afternoon conversation about the trade war that Trump ignited by imposing steel and aluminum tariffs to dwell on the larger importance of the transatlantic bond — even if Italy’s beef about the EU’s approach to migration meant that the country’s prime minister was threatening to block any conclusions from the summit.”
-David M. Herszenhorl and jacopo Barigazzi, “EU leaders eye new containment strategy — for Trump,” Politico, June 28, 2018 8:34 pm