Haass: Europe’s Not Thrilled with Trump Because They Preferred Obama

EXCERPT:

HAASS: “Look, so far the first 48 hours of this trip have been extraordinarily scripted. You had, actually, the formal speech. You’ve had no tweeting. You’ve had no press conferences and you’ve had closed meetings. So there hasn’t been a real opportunity to -- to go off message. We’ll see what happens in Israel. Obviously the one thing the Israelis are looking for is some signal about moving the U.S. embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. He’s also got to be really careful that any comment about Jerusalem and so forth is -- is a proverbial land mine just given the history and -- and the politics of that. But again, it’s quite possible this trip will, you know, will stay heavily -- heavily controlled. I think Europe is going to be be a slightly more open situation. I think the big difference when he gets to Europe, Joe, compared to the Middle East is that in the Middle East everyone is thrilled about who he’s not, which is his predecessor. In Europe, it’s almost the opposite, people are not thrilled by who he’s not because they preferred his predecessor, they were much more comfortable with Barack Obama, you have a tradition of a far more open, aggressive media. So, yeah, I actually think the European half of this trip could be -- could be more difficult.”