The New York Times’ White House and national security correspondent discussed President Donald Trump’s focus on short-term tactical gains in international policy and his non-traditional cabinet picks at the School of Media & Public Affairs on Wednesday.
David Sanger, a Times correspondent for more than four decades, spoke about Trump’s first 45 days back in office, including his policies toward China and Russia and their impact on the global stage. Serving as the 2024-2025 SMPA Terker Distinguished Fellow, Sanger sat with SMPA professor Frank Sesno for SMPA’s 2025 Walter Roberts Annual Lecture to discuss his latest book New Cold Wars, which details U.S. relations with China and Russia post-Cold War, with SMPA.
The Terker Distinguished Fellow program brings a media, political communication and public affairs professional to SMPA each academic year to meet students and join classroom discussion and events with faculty, according to SMPA’s website.
Sanger questioned if Trump is focusing on short-term tactical gains at the cost of something much bigger, like alliances that contribute to expansionist power. He said, for example, it’s important for officials to consider if the value of the Panama Canal is worth losing Canada’s long lasting alliance.
“Are the individual wins of getting the Panama Canal back into the hands of American investors worth scrapping all of this?” Sanger asked. “We have done more to alienate the Canadians with whom we run our North America defense system in the past 45 days, and it may take decades to go rebuild that.”
Sanger said one way the Trump administration differs from previous administrations is they do not hold frequent meetings with advisors to discuss policy and make decisions. He said in Trump’s first term, the president would post on X about policy decisions without consulting national security staff, and the administration would have to come up with a plan to “manage the damage” of Trump’s post.
Sanger said Trump has picked new, non-traditional people to serve on his cabinet, with the exception of Marco Rubio, the current secretary of state, and Mike Waltz, the national security advisor, because they are close to the type of cabinet secretaries seen last term but still “let Trump be Trump.”
“I think that Trump felt that all those people were managing him, and that’s because all those people were managing him,” Sanger said. “And in the second term, you don’t see those people there.”
Sanger said a “big battle” in the current Trump administration will be setting up their priorities in order of threats to the U.S., because Trump hasn’t appointed officials in his administration who have the same views. Sanger said that, for example, the Trump administration has a group of traditionalists who view Russia and China as opponents and another group who has the “America First” vision, where the U.S. dominates the region.
“There are spheres of influence, that we’re back to that, and that means we command the North American continent, and America First means you draw high walls, but you don’t get involved in these long foreign wars,” Sanger said.
Sanger said a question he asked Trump in a 2016 interview with his colleague Maggie Haberman resulted in Trump using the term “America First” in his campaign. He said Trump’s idea to pull troops out of South Korea and Japan reminded him of the America first movement of the 1930s, where an American isolationist group tried to prevent America’s entry into World War II.
When Sanger told Trump this idea, he said Trump liked how the phrase sounded. Sanger said two days later at Trump’s rally in Dallas, Trump started yelling “America First.”
Sanger said an interesting aspect of Trump’s second inaugural address was his mention of former President William McKinley, who served from 1843 until 1901, because McKinley “loved tariffs” and was in office during the Spanish American War, where the U.S. had built up a large enough military to conquer the territory. He said that under McKinley the U.S. gained control of the Philippines, Puerto Rico and Guam during what became an era of territorial expansion where tariffs were used to finance the country.
“During his inaugural address, he named a former president he really admired,” Sanger said. “Was it Washington? No. Jefferson? No. Lincoln? No. It was William McKinley.”
Sanger has covered four other presidents besides Trump, including Joe Biden, which he details in his new book. Sanger said the latter half of his book is about how the Biden administration tried to deal with the rising powers of China and Russia.
Sanger said one of the surprising things he came across when writing the book was that the Biden administration thought there was a high chance Russia would use a nuclear weapon against Ukraine in October 2022, the 60th anniversary of the Cuban Missile Crisis where the U.S. and Soviet Union were brought close to a nuclear war in a 13-day confrontation.
Sanger said the Biden administration was not prepared to use a nuclear weapon if Russia used one on Ukraine because Ukraine isn’t one of the 32 countries a part of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s military alliance, and the U.S. doesn’t have the responsibility of protecting the freedom and security of the country.
“If the same threat came today, how would Donald Trump think about that issue?” Sanger asked.
Sanger said he was also surprised with Finland’s presidents’ ability to change the psychology of the country from a state of neutrality to a desire to join NATO. He said Russian President Vladimir Putin contributed to scaring Finland’s people, and it’s “pretty remarkable” how the whole country’s ideology changed.
“And in just a matter of months, he had to, like, alter the thinking of his countrymen to make this acceptable,” Sanger said. “And he managed to go do it.”
