It’s not just Trump. Rex Tillerson skilled out on the State Department’s annual release of human rights information and has downplayed rights on his overseas trips. The United States is consistently sending a new message under Trump—our friends can get away with anything. And the world is listening.

Trump’s widely anticipated speech, ostensibly about Islam and extremism, included assurances to the gulf’s Sunni states that “our friends will never question our support.”

In Bahrain, the government’s opponents viewed the conference and Trump’s appearance with the Bahraini monarch as providing tacit approval for the raid on Tuesday.
That’s not true, of course. It wasn’t tacit. It was clear.