Swinging over the green Ionian sea on Saturday, his first foreign trip behind him, President Donald Trump was in a valedictory mood.
Behind him, perched on the hillside, was the former Dominican monastery where G7 leaders had just finishing haranguing him to abandon his campaign promises to withdraw from a major climate agreement. He didn’t give in.
Ahead was a crowd of US troops stationed on this rocky Italian outpost, eager to hear their commander in chief reprise the foreign agenda he’d spend the last nine days considering.
After nine days of talks with calculating foreign leaders, Trump was eager for the affirmation of an applauding audience.
“We have been gone for a long time,” Trump declared at the Sigonella Air Base here. “Everywhere I go — we have been gone close to nine days, this will be nine days — I think we hit a home run no matter where we are.”
It was an upbeat message for a leader fresh from meeting with his new club of foreign counterparts for the first time. But underneath the point-by-point recap of his trip lay uncertainty over his agenda and disputes with his foreign counterparts.