FOREIGN POLICY/SAUDI ARABIA/TRUMP AS PRESIDENT: “Donald Trump has dug a moral hole through the middle of America’s foreign policy — and he’s not sorry at all. The President’s reaction to the apparent murder of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul offers the clearest evidence yet of his turn away from a foreign policy rooted in universal human values. The crisis is instead showcasing Trump’s radical form of ‘America First’ realpolitik, his promise not to infringe other nations’ sovereignty with lectures on human rights and his trust in the word of autocrats. In his unrepentant conduct of American foreign policy, Trump is lurching from a path taken by every president since World War II, who all believed to various degrees that American leadership was needed to create a world safe for democracy, open commerce and freedom. And it will be seen around the world as an unmistakable sign that there is no cost for heinous behavior — after all it happened days after a US-based journalist for a top American newspaper was apparently killed before his body was reportedly chopped up in an official Saudi government building.”
–Stephen Collinson, “Saudi affair exposes Trumpism’s moral apathy,” CNN Politics, CNN.com, October 16, 2018 4:02 am