President Donald Trump has embarked on his first international tour as president, where he visited Saudi Arabia over the weekend, then traveled to Israel on Monday. He will meet with Pope Francis at the Vatican later this week.
While in Israel, Trump became the first sitting president to visit the Western Wall, a Jewish holy site not officially recognized as Israeli territory. Wearing a black yarmulke, Trump placed a handwritten note in the wall's cracks, and called the trip a "great honor" and said, "I can see a much deeper path, friendship with Israel."
Tuesday, Trump visited the Yad Vashem Holocaust museum and memorial and left a bizarre note in the museum's guestbook. "It is a great honor to be here all of my friends — so amazing + will NEVER FORGET!" the yearbook-like note read, signed by Trump and First Lady Melania Trump.
Contrast it to when President Barack Obama's visit in 2013, when he wrote:
Nothing equals the wrenching power of this sacred place. If you come here a thousand times, each time our hearts will break. For here we see the depravity to which man can sink, the barbarity that unfolds when we begin to see our fellow human beings as somehow less than us, less worthy of dignity and life; we see how evil can, for a moment in time, triumph when good people do nothing.
Accompanied by prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Trump gave a speech after the wreath laying ceremony Tuesday, and called the Holocaust, "history's darkest hour."
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