Why Trump's First Trip Is Focusing on Faith

Alberto M. Fernandez

Politics, Middle East

Trump’s administration recognizes that ideas and identity still have power, and need to be understood.

Despised by so many among the American political and cultural elite, President Trump paradoxically still has a tremendous opportunity during his first overseas trip to begin to forge a common civilizational front at a key point in Middle East history.

Given that most media coverage of President Trump is negative, it is no surprise that most of the reporting before the beginning of his first trip, to Saudi Arabia, Israel and Europe, has been hostile as well. Presented by the administration as an effort to “bring together all the different countries and all the different religions in the fight against intolerance and to defeat radicalism,” it includes, for the first time, three different stops of importance to the three Abrahamic religions of Judaism, Christianity and Islam, in Riyadh, Jerusalem and the Vatican. It has also been a golden opportunity for the media to contrast the trip with 2016 campaign rhetoric and past tweets by then candidate Trump on Islam and Pope Francis.

Such trips, by any president, are heavy on symbolism and positive rhetoric, and this one is no different. In fact, some of the heavy lifting for the trip has already occurred in U.S. actions over the past few months. Presidential trips always have “deliverables,” deeds that are—whether of real substance or actually just connected—spun as concrete results of the visit. Despite news of agreements signed, the administration’s real deliverables have already been delivered and are easily perceived.