Mr. Mitchell is apparently under the mistaken impression that this president is the first to say one thing on the campaign trail, another thing for consumption in his own country and something else entirely for the world to hear.

Imagine his shock.

I’ll try to break it to you gently: Every president has done it, to one degree or another. (Although Barack Obama’s eight-year attempt to appear as if extending some sort of conciliatory olive branch to the Muslim world in the naïve hope that the bad guys would go away and stop bothering U.S. interests, wasn’t exactly subtle. Yeah, that worked.)

Fact is, a message to sell oneself to targeted voters in an election and a message for world consumption can and almost always are distinctly different things with distinctly different purposes. 

That isn’t to say President Trump is a measured statesman. But toning down red-meat rhetoric in the road company isn’t a new thing.

Sorry if that comes as a surprise.