The New Yorker:

The outcry grows over Trump's undeclared war in the Caribbean.

By Susan B. Glasser

Just after 1 p.m. on Thursday, Donald Trump appeared at the newly renamed Donald J. Trump Institute of Peace, in Washington, D.C., to preside over a signing ceremony with the Presidents of Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo. Trump praised the two leaders for having the courage to put their names on the “very detailed, powerful agreement” to end the decades-long conflict between their countries—and praised himself for “succeeding where so many others have failed” in brokering a deal. When another attendee, Kenya’s President, William Ruto, hailed Trump’s “consequential” and “historic” and “bold leadership,” Trump stood beside him, looking pleased as could be. At the end of the ceremony, Trump took a single question from a journalist, who suggested, consistent with reports from the region, that fighting in eastern Congo had escalated in the runup to the summit and that peace was not really possible until troops actually withdrew. Not to worry, the President insisted: “It’s going to be a great miracle.”

Setting aside the question of whether Trump could identify either African nation on a map, or the dubious math behind his claim to have personally ended eight wars, the photo op had an are-you-kidding-me quality that only he could inspire. For starters, there was the awkward fact that a President famous for deriding African nations as “shithole countries” was hosting an array of leaders from the continent—not only from Rwanda, the D.R.C., and Kenya but also from Angola, Burundi, and elsewhere—just days after unleashing a bigoted rant branding all immigrants from Somalia as “garbage” and declaring they were not wanted in the United States.

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