In the last five days, President Trump has thanked Kim Jong-un of North Korea for his “nice letter,” reminisced about his “great meeting” with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia and offered to meet Iran’s president, Hassan Rouhani, without any preconditions.
During those same five days, the Treasury Department imposed sanctions on a Russian bank accused of helping North Korea with weapons-related activities. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo listed stringent preconditions for any engagement with Iran. And the administration’s top intelligence and law enforcement officials vowed to combat Russian interference in the midterm elections, while Senate Republicans pushed a bill that would impose harsh new sanctions on Moscow.
There is Mr. Trump’s foreign policy, and then there is the foreign policy of the rest of the Trump administration, backed by the Republican Party. This week, the two were openly at odds with each other. Be it Russia, NATO, Iran or North Korea, Mr. Trump’s staff and his party projected a radically different message than the president himself.
On Thursday, the White House produced an array of top officials to dramatize the (Russian) threat and explain the nation’s countermeasures. The president was conspicuously absent. Yet at a rally in Pennsylvania hours later, Mr. Trump dismissed the special counsel’s investigation of Russian interference as a “hoax” that was impeding his efforts to nurture a constructive relationship with the Russian president.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/03/u...39ries&ref=cta