The Dalai Lama is the spiritual head of the Tibetan nation and he carefully avoids political debates. But he does remind his worldwide audience of the values that have created civilization as we know it. At a press conference, in response to a question the Dalai Lama praised the United States: “Your ancestors really considered the importance of liberty, freedom, democracy…” Then he added: “The present president, in the very beginning he mentioned ‘America first.’ That sounded in my ear not very nice.” He expressed concern that the U.S. as “the leader of the free world,” was becoming more “selfish, nationalist”.