Mr. Trump, who delights in mocking scripted candidates who use teleprompters, delivered his speech with the help of two teleprompters, and aides said he had practiced with them over the weekend.
There were paradoxes throughout Mr. Trump’s speech. He called for a return to the coherence of America’s foreign policy during the Cold War. Yet he was openly suspicious of the institutions that undergirded that era. He promised to eradicate the Islamic State, but said the campaign against extremism — or as he called it, “radical Islam” — was as much a philosophical struggle as a military one.
Mr. Trump’s speech drew negative reaction across the political spectrum. Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina, posted on Twitter that “Ronald Reagan must be rolling over in his grave.” Lanhee Chen, a fellow at the Hoover Institution who advised Mitt Romney, the 2012 Republican nominee, said “There was clearly an isolationist strain to the speech, but that runs into the reality of the world that we live in.”
Even Mr. Trump’s embrace of the slogan “America first” raised eyebrows, with critics noting that it was popularized in the 1930s by the aviator Charles A. Lindbergh and other isolationists who opposed the United States’ entering World War II. “To fly the banner of America First shows that he has historical amnesia or just doesn’t understand history,” Mr. Burns said.
Mr. Trump, who delights in mocking scripted candidates who use teleprompters, delivered his speech with the help of two teleprompters, and aides said he had practiced with them over the weekend.
There were paradoxes throughout Mr. Trump’s speech. He called for a return to the coherence of America’s foreign policy during the Cold War. Yet he was openly suspicious of the institutions that undergirded that era. He promised to eradicate the Islamic State, but said the campaign against extremism — or as he called it, “radical Islam” — was as much a philosophical struggle as a military one.
Mr. Trump’s speech drew negative reaction across the political spectrum. Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina, posted on Twitter that “Ronald Reagan must be rolling over in his grave.” Lanhee Chen, a fellow at the Hoover Institution who advised Mitt Romney, the 2012 Republican nominee, said “There was clearly an isolationist strain to the speech, but that runs into the reality of the world that we live in.”
Even Mr. Trump’s embrace of the slogan “America first” raised eyebrows, with critics noting that it was popularized in the 1930s by the aviator Charles A. Lindbergh and other isolationists who opposed the United States’ entering World War II. “To fly the banner of America First shows that he has historical amnesia or just doesn’t understand history,” Mr. Burns said.
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/28/us/politics/donald-trump-foreign-policy-speech.html