The president, who announced Friday that he was tacking on an extra day in the Philippines to attend the East Asia Summit, heads overseas during a time of what some experts see as a decline of U.S. influence in the region and they suggest that it is unlikely that Trump will be returning home with any clear wins.

As he and first lady Melania Trump depart, Trump and the White House also have been roiled by the indictment of two former campaign aides and the guilty plea of another, an ISIS-inspired terror attack in New York City, and the continuing inability of this administration to score a significant legislative victory on Capitol Hill.

Now, the president's focus will turn to problems abroad — with North Korea at the top of the list. National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster, briefing reporters on Trump's itinerary, said that the world is "running out of time" to deal with the threat from that county.