President Trump presided over a Congo-Rwanda peace deal on the same day his administration was being questioned about potential war crimes.
Two sides of the same presidency played out simultaneously along the National Mall on Thursday afternoon.
At one end, President Trump was telling the world to give peace a chance at a meeting with African leaders. It was possible, he said, “to begin healing old wounds and transcending past differences and creating a future where every child of God can live in dignity, prosperity and peace.”
At the other end of the mall, top officials from his Defense Department were being grilled by lawmakers about potential war crimes. Representative Jim Himes, the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, said video of one of the administration’s lethal boat strikes was “one of the most troubling things I’ve seen in my time in public service.”
Washington in the Trump era is filled with contradictions, but the cognitive dissonance on display Thursday was particularly acute.
The first setting was the U.S. Institute of Peace, which was created at the height of the Cold War when Ronald Reagan was president. It’s one of those wonky and obscure Washington entities along that mall; it was largely overlooked until Mr. Trump’s DOGE team took a chain saw to the place earlier this year.