WASHINGTON (AP) — On his first working day in charge of the Pentagon, Pat Shanahan got a taste of President Donald Trump's scattershot way of looking at the world.

As Shanahan sat to Trump's left at a Cabinet meeting at the White House, the president denounced U.S. allies as freeloaders, expressed disgust with U.S. warfighting strategy in Afghanistan, mused about his own potential to be a great general, dismissed Syria as "sand and death," spoke encouragingly of a second North Korea summit, and falsely claimed he had fired former Defense Secretary Jim Mattis.

It was a very public reminder of t...