Trump touts flexibility as reversals grow

“After listening for 10 minutes, I realized it’s not so easy,” the president said after a discussion with Chinese President Xi Jinping that included his hopes that China’s pressure could steer North Korea away from its nuclear efforts. “I felt pretty strongly that they had a tremendous power” over North Korea, he said in an interview with the Wall Street Journal. Abandoned his pledge to label China a currency manipulator. Rethought his hands-off assessment of the Syrian conflict — and ordered a missile attack. Asked about the growing list of reversals, spokesman Sean Spicer argued this week that NATO actually is “evolving toward the president’s position,” not the other way around, by focusing more on terrorism and encouraging nations to pay more toward defense. Trump, who seemed to remain in campaign mode for months after the election, appears to be listening to different advisers now. [...] there is some growing into the office and dealing with the real effects of some of the policies, said Stephen Moore, a conservative economist who helped craft Trump’s economic plans.