The liberals are not getting it with President Donald Trump and Mexico.
OK, they’re not getting it with Donald Trump and anything but they are especially estranged from reality when it comes to the Wall.
Seems the Mexicans are so shocked that Trump is going through with barricade and actually expecting Mexico to pay for it. The news has so devastated the Mexican president that he has cancelled a planned meeting with Trump.
CNN and the rest of the network cut-ups are a little shocked too and they keep reporting every word from Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto like there was a war brewing between the two nations. “Please be careful what you say, Trump, er, Mr. President…” or “let’s not suggest that the meeting was cancelled by mutual consent; he might be offended.”
You see, the mainstream media is so used to America apologizing to everybody; for walking on diplomatic eggshells around the globe; for anticipating pushback even before it occurs: it just can’t get used to America being in charge again. Can’t you sense the transformation in the foreign policy universe? It hasn’t felt like this since Ronald Reagan had his steady hand on the ship of state.
Do you remember when Barack Obama went to Saudi Arabia, met with their King Abdullah and promptly got on his knees as a sign of his complete subservience to this shady foreign leader? Can you imagine Trump paying such homage? Yet Obama literally bowed to world leaders at least a dozen times and spent half of his foreign travel apologizing for imagined American wickedness around the globe. Sooner or later, had he been given the time, he would have gotten around to sending his regrets for wining the Cold War because somehow that wasn’t fair either, forcing the Soviets to bankrupt themselves and all.
Well Trump may rarely speak softly but he does know how to carry a big stick and he’s prepared to use it whenever he needs to. He’s going to keep drumming that stick until he’s gotten the attention of so many world leaders who thought America has lost its voice or retired from pubic life.
There’s a college kid doing hard labor in a North Korean prison right now because he lifted poster as a souvenir. Most countries would thank you for the free advertising initiative but not North Korea, a country so insular, so politically backwards and so economically inept that the only activity for which they have demonstrated any preciosity is locking people up in Asian gulags.
In another age Otto Warmbrier would have been released within a week. President Dwight Eisenhower would have made a few phone calls, cashed in a few favors, issued a choice threat or two of reciprocal action and waited for the response. Reagan? Hell, he’d administer a strong left of diplomacy and quick upper cut of veiled military response and have matter settled. Obama did nothing, said nothing and, I’m sure, cared little.
The visit this week of British Prime Minister Theresa May is serendipitous to the efflorescence of a new and stronger foreign policy. Don’t they remind you, just a bit, of Reagan and Margaret Thatcher? Now that partnership was grounded in a shared commitment to political and economic freedom and a mutual respect for each other’s democratic institutions. The friendship was reminiscent of what Roosevelt and Churchill enjoyed and used to such bold and victorious military effect.
If the liberal media thought was either crazy or blowing smoke their way every time he talked about building walls and making America great again, most of the world was inhabiting the same moral universe and comfortable in the same pusillanimous foreign. That a guy would actually do some of the things that he had promised to do during an election campaign – it just couldn’t happen because we all know that politicians demonstrate a practiced mendacity that is all about winning elections and disappointing voters.
Well, as we all knew, Trump is no politician and so far at least, he has not disappointed.
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