Story highlights Seen in a less positive light, Trump changes positions based on a desire to please

Seen in the best possible light for Trump, these series of position changes are evidence of his flexibility of mind

Washington (CNN) President Donald Trump is winning kudos for the start of his nine-day foreign trip.

It's some of the first positive press coverage he's received in months. But it's also based on a series of flip-flops -- rhetorical and policy-centered -- that have greased the skids for Trump's trip to look like a success.

Let's start with Trump's speech on Sunday in Saudi Arabia. In it, he praised Islam as "one of the world's great faiths" and described the war on terrorism in terms that could easily have come from the mouth of Barack Obama or George W. Bush.

"This is not a battle between different faiths, different sects or different civilizations," Trump said. "This is a battle between barbaric criminals who seek to obliterate human life and decent people of all religions who seek to protect it."

That sort of rhetoric is VERY different from what Trump said on the campaign trail.

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