Donald Trump's White House is paranoid, tense and increasingly defined by turf battles? between top advisors vying to promote their competing agendas. It has gotten so bad that Donald Trump has charged a group of senior aides with monitoring the loyalty of his Cabinet secretaries. The confusion shows and it's rattling America and our closest European and Asian allies.
Treasury secretary Steven Mnuchin broke decades of American support for global trade this weekend at a meeting of finance ministers and central bankers from the Group of 20 industrialized and emerging nations. He insisted a "America First" message be inserted into a typically mundane communiqué intended to put aside competing interests in the interest of consensus on major issues.
Lastly, Rex Tillerson went to Asia this weekend to forge a relationships with South Korea and China. Chinese president, Xi Jinping welcomed him with open arms - before scoring a diplomatic victory that upended Sino-American relations. Tillerson refused to let the press accompany him on his visit to Asia. Instead, the South Korean press filled the void. It wasn't flattering.
GUESTS:
- Philip Rucker - White House Bureau Chief at the Washington Post
- Jack Ewing - European economics correspondent reporting from Frankfurt for the New York Times. His book on the Volkswagen scandal will be published on May 23.
- Simon Denyer - China Bureau Chief for the Washington Post and the author of Rogue Elephant: Harnessing the Power of India's Unruly Democracy.
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Colin McEnroe and Chion Wolf contributed to this show.
