Donald Trump will give a foreign policy speech later today as part of his campaign’s attempt to present him as a more credible general election candidate. He’s speaking at an event sponsored by the Center for the National Interest (former President Nixon is not amused), which will probably produce another round of arguments about Trump’s supposed realism. The speech could be the typical rambling that we’ve come to expect from Trump, or he might deliver prepared remarks as he did for the AIPAC conference, but I doubt the speech will shed any new light on his views or clarify the jumbled, deal-obsessed approach to foreign policy.
In one sense, it makes sense that Trump’s campaign wants to have him give policy addresses to make him appear to be a more serious candidate. This is what the “normal” presumptive front-runner would start doing at this point, and so that is what they are having Trump do. Even so, I’m not sure I see the point. The people that are likely to be won over by policy addresses are the same sort of people that have already declared themselves to be against Trump no matter what. The content of Trump’s speech isn’t going to reassure them even if he sticks to a very conventional set of policies.
If the speech accomplishes anything, it will probably be its effect on Trump’s media coverage. If media outlets choose to accept that Trump is trying to be more “presidential” by giving these speeches, that is the message that will be conveyed to a national audience. The speech isn’t going to satisfy most people that work on foreign policy, but then it was never going to and it isn’t meant to.
Trump’s speech can be viewed on C-SPAN’s site here at 12:00 Eastern.