President Trump set off a firestorm Tuesday when he conducted diplomacy-by-tweet. The President took credit for the decision by Saudi Arabia and several other Arab countries to cut off ties with Qatar, an ally that is home to a large base with as many as 10,000 U.S. military personnel. The tweets were a huge surprise given that a day earlier, top U.S. officials had sought to downplay the dispute. “During my recent trip to the Middle East I stated that there can no longer be funding of Radical Ideology. Leaders pointed to Qatar - look!” Trump tweeted Tuesday.

The day before President Trump met with Pope Francis, Cardinal Peter Turkson juxtaposed the president’s speech in Saudi Arabia with what the Pope said in Egypt. Taking to Twitter, he wrote: “Pope Francis & Pres Trump reach out to Islam-world to exorcise it of [religious violence]. One offers peace of dialogue, the other security of arms.” [...] Yet the Ghanaian cardinal, Francis’ chief “minister” for matters of peace, suggesting that the “peace of dialogue” is the path to be preferred over the “security of arms.”

The 4th “transatlantic dialogue” took place at the University of Luxembourg on Campus Belval in Esch-sur-Alzette. The theme was “creating human bonds through cultural diplomacy”. 320 attendees and 100 cultural actors from Europe, the United States, Mexico, Japan, South Africa and Saudi Arabia discussed and performed around the notion on how cultural diplomacy has a vital role to play in international relations.In 55 discussions and workshops, participants studied inter-sectionalism and common bonds; and how to bridge differences by understanding cultural identities. 

When Melania Trump visited the Vatican alongside her husband and stepdaughter Ivanka Trump on Tuesday, she wore a black veil and dress to follow Vatican tradition for formal visits. While in Brussels on Thursday, Melania sported a beige skirt suit by Belgian fashion house Maison Ullens. She has also been making her own diplomatic choices, including opting not to wear a headscarf during her visit to Saudi Arabia last Saturday. She chose to end this trip, though, with a nod to Gabbana, an iconic Italian fashion house.

In late spring of 1974, Washington newspapers were crammed with headlines about Watergate and impeachment. But President Nixon was 6,500 miles away in Saudi Arabia, in the middle of an ambitious 10-day, seven-stop foreign trip. His ill-fated mission — derided by critics as "impeachment diplomacy" — holds a lesson for President Trump: While successes in foreign policy can help distract from troubles at home, domestic problems can also spill over into foreign policy and have long-reaching consequences.