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Trump on foreign trip: 'We hit a home run'

Saturday, May 27, 2017 - 01:44

With trouble facing him back home, U.S. President Donald Trump ended his nine-day overseas journey in dramatic fashion on Saturday, giving U.S. troops a recap of his first foreign tour as president. Rough Cut (no reporter narration).

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ROUGH CUT (NO REPORTER NARRATION) With trouble facing him back home, U.S. President Donald Trump ended his nine-day overseas journey in dramatic fashion on Saturday (May 27), addressing U.S. troops at a campaign-style rally. In a hangar at Naval Air Station Sigonella, which is also on Sicily, Trump was introduced by his wife Melania, who has raised eyebrows during the trip by twice flicking away her husband's hand when he tried to hold hers. Trump, whose Marine One helicopter landed from Taormina to the soaring soundtrack of the "Air Force One" movie, emerged from two days of closed door summitry to declare his trip a success. "We have been gone for close to nine days. This will be nine days. And I think we hit a home run no matter where we are," Trump told service members before offering a recap of his first foreign tour as president. Trump said he had helped forge more international cooperation in the fight against Islamist militants, a threat he said was underscored by a suicide bomber in Manchester, England, and the killing of Coptic Christians in Egypt. Noting that innocent Muslims were often victims of extremist attacks, he said he asked the nations of the Middle East to "take on the burden of fighting this evil." "We also further isolated the Iranian regime over its hostile and destabilizing actions and reaffirmed that Iran must never be allowed to obtain under any circumstances a nuclear weapon," Trump said. Trump used his trip to promote "America First" policies, promoting $110 billion worth of arms sales to Saudi Arabia and telling G-7 allies that the United States needs a more level playing field on trade. His body language on the trip demonstrated his typically brash behavior, dramatized by his demands that NATO allies pay more for their defense and his refusal to explicitly declare that the United States backs Article 5 of the alliance's charter, which requires each member to come to the defense of each other.