Eli Lake, Columnist

Trump’s Outreach to Rogues Follows in Obama’s Footsteps

Obama changed the consensus by meeting with Castro, but Rouhani ducked the invitation.

July 31, 2018 at 7:41 PM UTC

Eli Lake is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering national security and foreign policy. He was the senior national security correspondent for the Daily Beast and covered national security and intelligence for the Washington Times, the New York Sun and UPI.

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There was a time in Washington when the establishments in both major parties believed that a meeting with a U.S. president was something a foreign adversary had to earn. Unless concessions are offered and conditions are met, the leader of the free world should avoid parleys with rogues. Think of George W. Bush’s refusal for America to enter nuclear talks with Iran until it stopped uranium enrichment.

This was a hot-button issue back in 2007 and 2008 when an upstart Democratic senator named Barack Obama proposed that if elected president, he would meet with leaders of Iran, Cuba and North Korea in his first year. His opponents pounced. Hillary Clinton said she wouldn’t want a meeting with such dictators to be “used for propaganda purposes.”