AP: Trump Tasked Kushner With Managing Dispute With Mexico Over Wall
AP Photo / Marco Ugarte
JULIE PACE and VIVIAN SALAMA January 28, 2017, 3:27 PM EST
WASHINGTON (AP) — One week into office, President Donald Trump was trying to clean up his first international incident.
The president shifted a jam-packed schedule Friday to make room for an hourlong phone call with Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto, who had abruptly snubbed the new president by canceling a visit. Trump's team had appeared to respond by threatening a hefty border tax on Mexican imports.
By the end of the conversation, Trump had tasked his son-in-law and senior adviser, Jared Kushner — a real estate executive with no national security experience — with managing the ongoing dispute, according to an administration official with knowledge of the call.
The episode, an uneven diplomatic debut, revealed the earliest signs of how the new president plans to manage world affairs. In a matter of days, he both alarmed and reassured international partners. He picked fights, then quickly backed away from them. He talked tough, and toned it down. And at each step, Trump relied on the small clutch of advisers that guided his norm-breaking campaign, a group with scant foreign policy experience but the trust of the president.
Much of the foreign policy decision-making has rested with Kushner and Steve Bannon,...