I don’t know how many news reports entitled “the two faces of Trump” or “Two-faced Trump” have been written since his election as President of the United States.
Another common term in Presidential news headlines is “U-turn,” referring to Donald Trump’s reversal on many campaign promises. “Trump’s Syria U-Turn,” “Trump’s U-Turn On Chinese Currency Stance,” “Trump U-Turn: NATO No Longer Obsolete,” to mention a few.
“Donald Trump Master The Art Of The Unexpected,” says a news headline in The Financial Times. “Planned Parenthood’s Brilliant New Ad Features An Unexpected Supporter: Donald Trump,” is a blaring headline no one could have predicted.
If you missed all this political about face you were likely in a coma in the ICU.
While the political left was loading bullets for their next salvo of demands for early impeachment, Trump was running past them in the direction they started from.
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Which political pundit predicted any of this?
It has become obvious the man who campaigned to limit immigration from Mexico by building a $40 billion wall across America’s southern border, who appeared to embrace efforts to question vaccine mandates, who gave the impression he would abolish the North American Free Trade Association agreement between Canada, Mexico and the U.S., who said he wanted to eliminate the alleged nuclear threat posed by North Korea, may have had other objectives in mind.
To understand Mr. Trump one has to see him the way he sees himself, as a master negotiator. Mr. Trump has learned to brow beat, intimidate and threaten his opponent with imaginary sanctions and consequences before sitting down at the negotiation table. That makes the other side capitulate even before negotiations begin.
So did Trump just placate the anti-vaccine movement so he could get Big Pharma to sit down and negotiate better prices on prescription drugs?
Did Mr. Trump hold military drills in South Korea to provoke North Korea into conducting its own drills so he can get Japan and surrounding Asian countries to foot more of the bill for their own military defense?
Did Mr. Trump threaten Mexico with a wall to block unbridled immigration and invoke trade tariffs on Canada in order to get both countries to re-negotiate the NAFTA agreement? Apparently re-negotiation is underway.
Mr. Trump has already coaxed Japan to offer jobs to Americans. Japan knows it had better give Mr. Trump what he wants.
Is Mr. Trump a principled man? Does he really believe in anything? Well, he is principled about money. The rest seems secondary.
Do nothing Trump?
As for not getting anything done in his first 100 days in office, does anyone recall the Clinton White House after Bill Clinton’s first election? Clinton didn’t know how to organize the Executive Branch of government and placed cronies from his home State in the White House. Does anybody recall when newly elected President Bill Clinton had to dismiss his first chief of staff Tom McLarty, a long-time friend from his home state of Arkansas, and replace him with Leon Panetta? [Wikipedia] Does anyone recall the Hillary Clinton-botched attempt to establish “Hillarycare?
Republicans actually had to send the Clinton team David Gergen, a political consultant, to help organize the White House.
President Obama was elected in 2009 and his first White House Chief of Staff, Rahm Emanuel, didn’t last a year in his position. Pete Rouse, his successor, lasted 4 months. Bill Daley, Rouse’s successor, last a year.
What Trump un-did
It is not that Mr. Trump didn’t get anything done but that he hit the office ready to pounce, issue Executive Orders and annulled many regulations that his predecessor had penned, and that riled the news media that was already camped against him. It may not be what legislation Mr. Trump pushed through Congress as much as the Executive Orders that were rescinded that represents his accomplishments in his first 100 days in office.
Which way did he go?
And what to think of his Daughter, Ivanka who is pushing for equality in women’s pay and other women’s issues, issues that normally fall under the political left’s agendas.
You’ve heard of “wrong way Corrigan,” the pilot who took off in his monoplane in 1938 headed for Long Beach, California and ended up landing in Dublin, Ireland. Nobody is checking to see if Mr. Trump is somehow genetically related to “wrong-way.”
But no, Mr. Trump is very much in control from the beginning with his unexpected election. At least in foreign affairs, Mr. Trump didn’t want any foreign power anticipating his next move.
“We must, as a nation, be more unpredictable,” Trump declared during a major foreign policy address in April. “We are totally predictable. We tell everything. We’re sending troops: We tell them. We’re sending something else: We have a news conference. We have to be unpredictable. And we have to be unpredictable starting now.” (Los Angeles Times, Dec. 16, 2016)
Mentally unstable or shrewd strategist?
Political opponents have coaxed psychiatrists to claim Mr. Trump is unfit for the Presidency and is mentally unstable. Or has he fooled them too?
One thing is for sure — one cannot anticipate his next move. Call him impulsive. Call him capricious. Call him unorthodox. But no, he is not mentally ill. He is fully in contact with reality and is playing with his opponents’ minds.
Trump is more than Teddy Roosevelt’s “speak softly and carry a big stick” ideology. Mr. Trump has a big task ahead — how to keep an economy going that is miles deep in debt. America is living a lifestyle it hasn’t earned. He brings up an intriguing approach to paying off $20 trillion in federal debt — selling off some U.S. assets, like its $128 trillion in mineral rights and oil and gas reserves. Maybe he isn’t beholden to bankers earning $400 billion a year in interest payments on the national debt after all.
According to news headlines, Trump has the Kremlin, Israel, NATO, the U.N. and everybody else guessing what his next move is. You can’t put Mr. Trump in a box. As an NBC news report says: “Trump leaves friend and foe guessing.”
