Understanding Trump – Part II
The View from the Middle

Donald Trump is a businessman, not a politician. With this fact comes some realities that we all have to live with. He’s not smooth and slick like a Barack Obama who spent practically his whole adult life in politics. Actually, I wish Trump had a little more of that in him, but he doesn’t. He’s been in the rough and tumble world of business and began his career in the tough New York construction industry. When people strike out at him, he hits back. When he hits a dead end, he changes directions. Results are the measure of his success, not popularity polls.
That brings me to his recent purported “flip-flops”. First of all, he has delivered on more of his campaign promises than any President in my memory for sure, and maybe any President. He approved the Keystone Pipeline, reduced regulations, put Neil Gorsuch on the Supreme Court and taken the US out of the TPP trade agreement. He is certainly working on repealing and replacing Obamacare, securing our southern border and reforming our tax system. If these things are done in year one, that would be a real “promises made – promises kept” first year of any Presidency.
And now, all the talk is about flip-flopping on his positions. Interestingly, when Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton changed their minds on when life begins or the traditional definition of marriage, they are “evolving”. Why did they change these positions? To get votes. If Trump changes his positions, it will be to get “results”.
I’ve already talked about his changes on NATO and China. As I explained, this was simply negotiating. The costs to us were minimal to nonexistent, but we received big behavioral changes from both as a result. Now, he’s being accused of flip-flopping on Janet Yellen, chair of the Federal Reserve, and the Export-Import bank.
Let’s be absolutely honest. To these moves, most Americans say, “What?” Most Americans don’t even know what The Fed or the Export-Import bank do. So, what does it cost Trump to support Yellen and the EI bank now, and what does he get out of these changes? First, the cost is zero. Even if he was a politician, his next election is nearly four years away so he has plenty of time to produce positive results, which is what he is really after. And what might those positive results be? In both cases, I’m sure it revolves around jobs!! Janet Yellen is likely to keep interest rates under control to finance an economic expansion and the EI will help finance exports, which will fuel jobs in the US.
It’s all about results with Trump and while they aren’t in yet, I can connect the dots of the President’s activity to future economic growth in America, which was a huge campaign promise by Trump. Another huge promise from Trump was to keep America safe, and the jury is also still out in that area. I like what he has done in Syria, and even with Russia. The world was deplored by Assad’s chemical weapons attack on his own people and last week’s meeting with Putin and Tillerson in Russia gives me some hope that we may be able to use Russia to remove Assad from Syria. We’ll see.
The one area of the world that still concerns me, however, is North Korea. While we have had a couple of encouraging signs from the Chinese, who I believe need to be the real solution in North Korea, we still have what John McCain called “the crazy fat kid” (Kim Jong Un) leading that country. I have to agree with McCain on this one. He is fat, and I think he’s crazy. Having a crazy dictator armed with a nuclear weapon should scare us all, but we did get some encouraging signs this weekend when the CFK didn’t pull any ballistic or nuclear stunts during their Founder’s Birthday Celebration. The fact that he is crazy is his own fault. The fact that he has nuclear weapons belongs to at least a couple of previous administrations. Now, Trump has to handle this delicate situation and we should all be praying that he does it well.