Contradictions add up during Trump’s Saudi visit

WASHINGTON — As a presidential candidate, Donald Trump railed against President Barack Obama for failing to utter the words “radical Islamic terrorism.” He accused the foundation run by Bill and Hillary Clinton of corruption for accepting charitable contributions from Saudi Arabia and chastised first lady Michelle Obama for not covering her head during a visit to the Kingdom.

Now that he’s president, Trump has changed his tune.

The president now finds himself adjusting to the nuances of Middle East diplomacy, where inflammatory campaign slogans — no matter how popular among some voters — can be the cause of major disruptions now that he holds office.

Trump’s visit to Saudi Arabia, at the start of his first trip abroad as president, has produced a number of statements that run counter to the harsh, antiMuslim rhetoric from his 2016 campaign. While many presidents adjust their commentary once they depart the campaign trail and travel abroad, Trump’s speech to Gulf Arab leaders featured a much softer tone than his large-scale rallies last year.

Here are some of the most glaring contradictions:

‘Radical Islamic terrorism’

Trump routinely railed against Obama and Democratic campaign rival Hillary Clinton for failing to use the specific phrase, “radical Islamic terrorism.” In an August 2016 speech, for example, Trump said Obama’s 2009 speech to the Muslim World in Egypt lacked “moral courage” and was replete in naiveté. “Anyone who cannot name our enemy is not fit to lead this country. Anyone who cannot condemn the hatred, oppression and violence of radical Islam lacks the moral clarity to serve as our president,” he said.

Trump called on Muslim leaders to address “the crisis of Islamic extremists” and referenced “the Islamists and Islamic terror of all kinds.” But he failed to the use the phrase “radical Islamic terrorism” in his major speech on Sunday in front of more than 50 leaders of Arab and Muslim-majority countries.

Islam

Trump declared in a March 2016 interview with CNN that “I think Islam hates us,” adding that, “there’s a tremendous hatred there.” It was just one of a series of inflammatory statements about one of the world’s major religions that included a call to surveil mosques and a proposal to ban all foreign Muslims from entering the U.S. “until our country’s representatives can figure out what is going on.”

Trump struck a far less caustic tone in Sunday’s speech, expressing that “young Muslim boys and girls should be able to grow up free from fear, safe from violence, and innocent of hatred. And young Muslim men and women should have the chance to build a new era of prosperity for themselves and their peoples.”

He said, the biggest victims of terrorism are the “innocent people of Arab, Muslim and Middle Eastern nations. They have borne the brunt of the killings and the worst of the destruction in this wave of fanatical violence.”

Charitable contributions

During his 2016 campaign, Trump frequently assailed rival Hillary Clinton’s ties to the Clinton Foundation, which received millions in donations from Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar and several other Mideast nations.

The World Bank announced Sunday at an event with Trump’s daughter and White House adviser, Ivanka Trump, that Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates had pledged $100 million for the bank’s proposed Women Entrepreneurs Fund, which was first proposed by Ivanka Trump.