Trump upends White House establishment in just 7 days

Washington

BY SOME measures, President Donald Trump has altered the perception of American foreign policy more in the past seven days than his predecessors did in the past seven decades.

A nation that built its brand around the world as open to the needy and ambitious is now viewed, after Mr Trump's immigration executive order, as closing its doors in a way it never did even after the Sept 11, 2001, attacks. Twenty years of stop-and-go efforts to rebuild a relationship with Mexico - on trade, counter-terrorism and drug interdiction - crashed into an avoidable blowup with the Mexican president, who cancelled his visit to the US.

When Prime Minister Theresa May of Britain came for what appeared to be a largely successful visit, Mr Trump's first by the leader of a close ally, she spoke of maintaining sanctions on Russia until it met its commitments on Ukraine. Mr Trump stayed silent. After he spoke the next day to President Vladimir Putin of Russia, the official readout provided by the White House made no mention of Ukraine, or of the information-warfare operation to influence the US election that led Presiden…