Trump’s Inflammatory Comments Matter More Than His Supporters Want to Admit

Days before Donald Trump’s 2017 inauguration, a conservative foreign affairs analyst told me to ignore the president-elect’s tweets. They won’t represent the incoming president’s foreign policy, he insisted, dismissing my astonishment in an exchange that went viral.

As Trump prepares to debate Joe Biden on Thursday, some of his backers are once again pushing that same notion. Don’t worry about Trump’s rhetoric, they insist. His policies will be more restrained and practical — even traditional.

It’s a claim that’s not flying with many of the foreign officials and other jetsetters who must deal with the fallout of Trump’s words on the global stage. But that won’t stop his defenders from trying.

Take Matthew Kroenig, one of Washington’s most prolific foreign policy wonks and co-author of a new book partly about Trump’s foreign policy.

“With a normal president, if they say something, we take it as a kind of final statement of policy. With Trump, we can’t do that,” Kroenig said when I pressed him on his sanguine views on Trump. “Sometimes it’s just a rhetorical flourish. Sometimes it’s ad-libbing. Sometimes it’s an opening position in a negotiation, but not his final position.”

I expect we will hear more such assertions from Trump backers this week even if Trump’s debate talk is explosive. Some ex-Trump aides, such as former national security adviser Robert O’Brien, are publishing essays about a future Trump foreign policy to help allay fears.

But foreign officials are now intimately familiar with the whole taking Trump “seriously versus literally” debate, and they’re preparing for the worst-case scenario. That’s because nearly a decade after he broke onto the political scene, they see a Trump more angry than before, more bent on retribution, more surrounded by sycophants, and less encumbered by traditions or political considerations that may once have held him back.

If anything, one foreign diplomat said, it’s best to expect for Trump’s words to quickly lead to drastic policy changes.

“Rhetoric has real world implications,” the diplomat said, having been granted anonymity, like others, to be candid. “It moves the Overton window of what is acceptable to propose. Once it is said, it becomes a possibility. Then people support that possibility and it becomes a demand on the politicians.”

This is especially true in international affairs.

Whether it’s in the language of a treaty or an off-the-cuff interview, countries pay heed to every syllable emerging from power centers. A slight change in wording — the State Department suddenly saying it is “deeply concerned” versus merely “concerned” about a situation, for instance — can prompt action thousands of miles away. A misspeak can hasten the end of the Berlin Wall.

Because international law is far from solid or seriously enforceable, a promise or a threat from a world leader can matter more than anything on paper. It especially matters when it comes to the U.S. president, whose powers on foreign policy are less restrained than on domestic issues.

These days, foreign diplomats and U.S. officials who deal with global affairs are parsing Trump’s words closer than ever, and even the most seasoned of them are still startled now and then. How else to react when, according to one report, Trump suggested to donors that he would have bombed Moscow and Beijing if Russia invaded Ukraine or China invaded Taiwan?

But the foreign policy crowd is looking beyond the more well-known of Trump’s bold pronouncements, such as his talk of leaving NATO or admiration for Russia’s Vladimir Putin, to prepare for other scenarios that once seemed unthinkable.

Trump’s desire to bomb drug cartels in Mexico is among his less-covered statements drawing alarm, in part because it seems to have become a policy mainstay in the Republican Party.

According to reports, Trump raised the idea of using missiles against the cartels while still president, then he backed off after being told of the legal complications and potential border crisis it could cause. But he’s since revived the idea, and some GOP lawmakers have proposed bills that could pave the way for such a military move.

Another issue foreign policy-makers believe merits more attention is Trump’s questioning of U.S. security commitments to South Korea.

In an interview published in Time magazine in April, the Republican questioned why South Korea isn’t paying the United States more to help its defense, noting that America has tens of thousands of troops there.

The setup “doesn’t make any sense,” Trump is quoted as saying. “They’re a very wealthy country and why wouldn’t they want to pay?”

Among American officials, there’s a fear that South Korea will seek its own nuclear weapons program if it comes to believe the U.S. will not protect it against nuclear-armed North Korea. That could fuel an arms race in Asia and beyond.

There’s near-certainty among foreign officials that Trump will keep his promises on immigration, a domestic issue with global implications, not least because he’s likely to have hardline anti-immigration adviser Stephen Miller working for him.

In his interview with Time, Trump made clear he’d use the U.S. military to assist in deporting millions of undocumented migrants and would deny funds to jurisdictions that don’t cooperate.

A Trump campaign spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment.

Reducing immigration is one of the few topics on which Trump is fairly consistent. He frequently hedges or contradicts himself on other issues. And during his presidency, his policies were at times different from his rhetoric; for example, his administration was tough on Russia in many ways, even as Trump sweet-talked Putin.

Trump’s defenders point to these contradictions as a way to comfort global elites, suggesting that he uses rhetoric to gain leverage but is ultimately persuadable on most policies.

“I’m not a determinist when it comes to Trump. His policy is totally dependent on who he surrounds himself with and the last adviser he talks to,” said one former Trump administration official who hopes to work under him again.

These assurances do not comfort America’s closest friends, who have often been the targets of Trump’s threats.

The alliances they have with Washington are meant to deter enemies, but, as one senior European official familiar with Trump’s rhetoric put it, “Deterrence is based on perception, so it matters what one says.”

Kroenig downplayed fears on the left that Trump 2.0 will be surrounded by inexperienced sycophants unlike the “adults in the room” who prevented him from taking some radical moves last time. He noted that Mike Pompeo, a Trump secretary of State and CIA director, and O’Brien are among the people who may serve again.

“I do think that at the Cabinet level there will be serious people who are willing to go in,” Kroenig said.

Foreign officials often grill journalists such as myself for insights about who will land in a Trump Cabinet. “We’re spending a lot of time reconnecting with his former officials and other key potential players in his administration,” one African diplomat said.

Few of them, if any, can afford to abandon or reduce their ties with a superpower such as the U.S., no matter what its leader says.

They have too many interests at stake.

After Trump reportedly called them “shithole countries” in 2018, African states did little beyond issue diplomatic protests.

Nigeria’s then-president, Muhammadu Buhari, later visited the White House. In a news conference with Trump, Buhari was asked about the insults. Instead of defending his country and continent, he questioned the reports’ accuracy.

Eventually, Buhari told the assembled reporters: “The best thing for me is to keep quiet.”