Trump the Risk-Taker Wins Again

If nothing else, Donald Trump is not risk-averse.

The Republican presidential nominee raised eyebrows Monday by meeting with Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah el-Sisi on the sidelines of meetings at the United Nations.

“Ultimately, that turned out to be a pretty successful trip … It looked like he was committing an act of diplomacy.”

The Trump campaign said in a statement late Monday that the GOP nominee thanked el-Sisi for his leadership role in the Middle East, expressed support for his war on terrorism and pledged that a Trump administration would be “a loyal friend, not just an ally.” Trump advisers Sen. Jeff Sessions and retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn also attended the meeting.

There are plenty of reasons for Trump to have been wary of the meeting. It is playing on Clinton’s turf. Clinton, who was also slated to meet with el-Sisi, has knowledge and personal contacts that only come with experience as the nation’s top diplomat.

What’s more, there was always the possibility that Trump’s rhetoric could ruffle feathers. He has vowed to temporarily bar entry from Muslim counties compromised by terrorism. That presumably could include Egypt.

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But the meeting, like so many other recent gambles from Trump, appears to have been another political win.

“Donald J. Trump met with Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi in New York today during his visit to the U.N. General Assembly,” Trump’s statement read, “Mr. Trump and President el-Sisi discussed the strategic bilateral relationship between the U.S. and Egypt focusing on political, military, and economic cooperation between the two countries.”

In other words, Trump notched another productive, substantive, and serious meeting with a world leader.

Trump has consistently exposed himself to potentially hostile situations and come out the winner on the other side. He has taken his campaign message into America’s inner cities and spoke at a historically black church in Detroit. Last week Trump took questions from reporters about an old controversy over his past doubts about President Obama’s American birth.

Trump decided to meet with Mexico’s president last month despite having angered many Mexicans with his tough immigration rhetoric and his vow to make America’s neighbors to the south pay for construction of a border wall.

“He is on some level a risk-taker,” said Justin Holmes, a University of Northern Iowa political science professor.

Ordinarily, Holmes said, politicians have to weigh potential benefits of meeting with foreign leaders against the risk that they might commit a gaffe under circumstances that are beyond the control of tightly scripted campaigns. But Trump is no normal politician, having weathered one verbal faux pas after another.

“He’s sort of beyond our normal understanding of gaffes,” he said.

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Meeting with foreign leaders can make a White House aspirant appear presidential. It worked swimmingly for President Obama in 2008 when he traveled to Europe to burnish his foreign policy credentials and spoke to a massive crowd in Germany.

“He was greeted as a rock star,” said Stephanie Martin, a Southern Methodist University professor who has studied the rhetoric of political campaigns. “And the pictures that came back were incredible.”

But foreign policy dabbles can have their electoral downside. Mitt Romney, the 2012 GOP nominee, suffered disastrous press during a trip to Europe. First, he insulted Britain — and drew the ire of that country’s prime minister and flamboyant tabloid press — by suggesting that London might not be ready to host the summer Olympics.

Less remembered was Romney’s stop in Poland, where the candidate expected a warm reception from the Solidarity union that partnered with Ronald Reagan to confront the Soviet Union. Instead, he got an earful from trade unionists upset by what they regarded as his party’s unfair attacks on collective bargaining.

“He really never got control of the news cycle on that trip again,” Martin said,

Many observers predicted a similar fate for Trump as he headed off to Mexico City to meet with President Enrique Peña Nieto. After all, they have sharply different views of immigration; the Mexican president had even compared Trump to Adolf Hitler.

And, indeed, Peña Nieto and Trump engaged in a Twitter fight afterward over their divergent accounts of their discussion. But Martin said what mattered more to voters in the United States is what they saw — Trump and a head of state standing shoulder to shoulder.

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“Ultimately, that turned out to be a pretty successful trip, because the visuals were quite good,” she said. “Donald Trump is really good with the visual medium of television.”

Holmes agreed.

“It looked like he was committing an act of diplomacy,” he said.

Another factor in Trump’s favor for the Egyptian meeting was he and el-Sisi have shared interests. Both view the Muslim Brotherhood negatively. Trump has blasted Clinton for abandoning former President Hosni Mubarak — a staunch U.S. ally — and the Muslim Brotherhood’s rise to power that followed his ouster.

Trump has supported el-Sisi’s military takeover of the government, despite criticisms from some that he has squelched democratic reforms.

Al-Monitor, an English language news site in the Middle East, speculated in July that el-Sisi may secretly hope Trump wins the election. It noted that an Arabic newspaper, Al-Wafd, named el-Sisi as one of five world leaders who would benefit from a Trump presidency because of their shared calls for a “war on extremism” and common views on the Muslim Brotherhood.

“Trump has not show any reticence speaking well of foreign leaders who speak with a strong will … It falls in line with a lot of what he wants to do,” Martin said.