Subject: for resaerch -- blast
From: "Freundlich, Christina" <[email-masked]>
To: RR2 <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 21 Apr 2016 08:01:44 -0700

Rachel pulled out excerpts from this story since we can't blast the entire thing

Trump terrifies world leaders<http://www.politico.com/story/2016/04/trump-terrifies-world-leaders-222233>
POLITICO //  EDWARD-ISAAC DOVERE and BRYAN BENDER

President Barack Obama is trying but failing to reassure foreign leaders convinced that Donald Trump will be the next president of the United States. They're in full-boil panic.

According to more than two dozen U.S. and foreign-government officials, Trump has become the starting point for what feels like every government-to-government interaction. In meetings, private dinners and phone calls, world leaders are urgently seeking explanations from Obama and Vice President Joe Biden, Secretary of State John Kerry, Defense Secretary Ash Carter and Trade Representative Michael Froman on down. American ambassadors are asking for guidance from Washington about what they're supposed to say.

"They're scared and they're trying to understand how real this is," said one American official in touch with foreign leaders. "They all ask. They follow our politics with excruciating detail. They ask: 'What is this Trump phenomenon? Can he really win? What would it mean for U.S. policy going forward or U.S. engagement in the world?' They're all sort of incredulous."
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Now, world leaders cop to being afraid of a Trump presidency, and they're making preparations: scrambling to get deals done with the Obama administration while they still have the chance. Leaders, members of their governments, even their aides are so spooked that they don't want to say anything, and many privately admit that it's because they think he'll win, and a quote now could mean a vengeful President Trump going after them personally next year.

"As we're on the record, I'm rather hesitant to give you big headlines on this," said Olli Rehn, the Finnish minister of economic affairs. "In Europe, we are concerned about the U.S. possibly turning toward a more isolationist orientation. That would not be good for United States, good for Europe, good for the world. We need the U.S. engaged in global affairs in a constructive, positive way."
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"Trump solutions for me are false solutions, but they're not original. They're things that we have heard in Europe from extremist sections," said Sandro Gozi, a member of the Italian parliament and undersecretary for European affairsin Prime Minister Mateo Renzi's Cabinet.
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"It's not the America that they're used to dealing with," another senior administration official said. "Our message back to them is we're committed to the policies we're pursuing now. That is not going to change. A message of reassurance, but we can't control the campaign rhetoric, the election process. But we can control what we're doing and are committed to."

Many governments have stepped up their requests for information from their embassies, and a number of leaders ordered up expanded briefings while in Washington for the Nuclear Security Summit.
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Administration officials, though, see an upside: Trump anxiety overseas has translated to a surprising eagerness on the part of foreign governments to ink new agreements.
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There's always some interest in closing up negotiations with an outgoing administration rather than waiting for a new one to get on its feet. The prospect of Trump has heightened that, said the American official who's in touch with foreign leaders. "They see that this is an administration that they can work with, and they don't know what's going to come next," the official said. Certainly, there's some schadenfreude at play, too, particularly in Germany. After years of being lectured about democracy by Americans, they're taking in over a million refugees while Trump's talking about a ban on Muslim immigration. That say that gives them the moral high ground, and a sense of the erosion of America's soft power in Europe.
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Gozi said allies are just as concerned about what a new world order would be like if Trump holds firm to his promises as they are if he starts to drop some of them.

"We would open a more and more complicated phase if he does what he's saying he would do," Gozi said. "If he doesn't, it'll be a big question mark."