Trump calls Egypt’s President, stressing U.S. support
Trump’s phone was as busy as his pen.
Monday, President Trump’s pen was very busy signing 3 executive orders, withdrawing the U.S. from the Trans Pacific Partnership, defunding International Planned Parenthood, and freezing the hiring of federal workers.
His phone was also very busy. He made a supportive call to Egypt’s President Abdel-Fattah el-Sisi, indicating essentially military aide would continue to support the regional fight against Islamic extremist terrorists.
White House press secretary Sean Spicer said Monday that Trump and President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi discussed ways to deepen the bilateral relationship between the two countries, fight terrorism and boost Egypt’s struggling economy.
…Egypt is the second largest recipient of U.S. military aid.
The Egyptian press offered a few details of the dialogue, including plans for a state visit in the near future.
…Trump told El-Sisi his administration is committed to maintaining the US’s annual military aid to Egypt.
El-Sisi stressed to Trump Egypt’s commitment in the fight against terrorism despite economic burdens the country faced in the past three years.
Meanwhile, Trump reiterated to the Egyptian president his appreciation for the difficulties Egypt endured in the fight against terrorism, and commended El-Sisi on the country’s economic reform program.
The two presidents affirmed their belief in the strategic nature of the relationship between Cairo and Washington.
Egypt annually receives $1.3 billion in military aid from the United States.
Trump told El-Sisi he was looking forward to the Egyptian president’s visit to Washington, which is in the planning stages, the spokesman said.
Sisi was the second foreign leader that Trump called after he was formally inaugurated, after Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu. This action signals a much warmer and closer relationship between the two nations. Legal Insurrection readers will recall Obama snubbed Sisi, by failing to meet with when when both heads-of-state participating in the United Nations General Assembly’s 70th meeting.
We had been reporting that Russian President Vladimir Putin had been aggressively pursuing enhanced relations with Egypt, offering a significant amount of military aide. Now, Sisi continues to reach out to Western powers, including a Canadian delegation to discuss promoting religious tolerance in his nation.
Egypt’s President Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi told a visiting Canadian parliamentary delegation on Saturday that his country is eager to change the popular discourse on religion, moving away from extremist interpretations and the prejudice these provoke against religion, state news agency MENA reported.
…The president said he is also keen to promote values of tolerance, coexistence and acceptance of the other.
El-Sisi discussed with the delegation the government’s latest efforts to create jobs and improve conditions for foreign investment.
The president spoke on Egypt’s efforts to combat terrorism, emphasising the need for international cooperation to eradicate the problem, which he said threatens all countries.
As I predicted in my previous post, Egypt’s President endured Obama SmartPower™ antics until Jan. 20, 2017. However, I don’t think he dared dream that Trump would act so quickly after that date.
I can’t wait to see what else Trump’s Pen & Phone do the remainder of the week.
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Comments
He’ll undoubtedly be criticized since Sisi is an autocratic strongman, but that ignores how much of an improvement he is over the moslem brotherhood chaos that came before.
I think one of Bush’s most grievous mistakes, and a mistake that most Americans want to repeat because we see people through our rose colored glasses, was that he so badly wanted to believe that Arab societies were not all that different from us, and thus they could adopt our modes of government. Experience shows that Arab societies only work when they have some form of tyrant who’s willing to keep his foot on their collective necks. Without that, they devolve into constant chaos and murder, like the MadMaxistan that places like Syria and Libya have devolved into. Sometimes they go there anyways, that’s what passes for normal in the arab world.
Ironically, the *best* governments they’ve ever been able to tolerate are the hereditary monarchies. Not that those were all that good, but they tended to be slightly more enlightened than any of the other forms that have been tried there.
Ruling barbarians is hard; it usually takes a barbarian to do it with any level of success.
Excellent post,this in particular: “[H]e so badly wanted to believe that Arab societies were not all that different from us…”
It never ceases to amaze me that, despite all of our yammering about “multiculturism,” we so frequently fail to respect how powerful culture really is.
Having lived in an Arab country, I agree 100%. When Bush was yammering on about how the middle east wanted freedom, I thought to myself… honey, that word means something completely different to them. It would take generations to get them to accept western style “democracy” and I’m not interested in dealing with the carnage they’ll inflict upon others while trying to force them to accept it.
I think one of Bush’s most grievous mistakes … and thus they could adopt our modes of government
Recognizably Western-type governments manage to function adequately in various places in Asia, even though those regions are far more alien than anything native to the Middle East. The idea that such governments might work in Asia Minor is not inherently ridiculous.
So, did Bush make a mistake, or did he perform a useful experiment? One can’t simply assume the results of an experiment without actually performing it. We now have another data point, one which bolsters the position that we have to find some way to co-exist on the same planet with west Asian societies which doesn’t depend on them having anything resembling civilized governments.
You refer to Asia; I think we all should give Great Britain a great deal of credit for successfully transferring their political culture to India, and to most of their other former holdings. That was helped by the fact that India has a very old culture, and one that has spent millenia working on the problem of getting a large number of people with different faiths and nationalities to coexist without constant war. (yeah, there’s one group that never quite gets the message, and you can guess who that is)
China doesn’t have what can be called a western style government, but I fear that we in the west are moving far more in their direction than they are moving in ours – appointees who are the public face of government, backed by a gigantic but secretive bureaucracy that in fact, runs everything. Feels more and more familiar every day.
Good.
Finally, an American ally that can be relied upon.
Mailman