President Trump seems to be adopting the standard Republican response to criticism from the left-wing media, that is, to act more like a Democrat.
That both justifies and fulfills the media agenda at the expense of the Trump agenda, at least what we thought it was.
That also explains the rise in influence of Jared Kushner, a Democrat, and his Goldman-Sachs globalist team at the expense of Stephen Bannon, a nationalist, whose views reflect those of the people who actually elected Trump.
The President should heed the admonition of English poet John Dryden, “Beware the fury of a patient man.”
That “patient man” is Trump’s base of support, which is now growing impatient. And without that base, the President has no support. None.
The Trump Presidency is at risk because he seems to be operating under a false assumption.
Forgive me for being blunt, Mr. President, but you were elected because of what you promised to do, not for who you are, but largely for who you claimed not to be.
You said it best yourself, Mr. President, in “The Art of the Deal” (1987):
You can’t con people, at least not for long. You can create excitement, you can do wonderful promotion and get all kinds of press, and you can throw in a little hyperbole. But if you don’t deliver the goods, people will eventually catch on.
A recent New York Times opinion article frames the current dilemma:
Stephen K. Bannon, the architect of Donald Trump’s campaign and presidency, is a man with a lot of ideas. He believes that Western civilization is locked in an existential battle with the barbarians at the gates, that nationalists must wrest control from the aloof and corrupt globalist elite, and that America is a once great nation shackled by welfare for both the poor and the wealthy…The first few months of President Trump’s term have been an attempt to put all of that theory into practice, and by any reasonable standard, that attempt has failed.
The ideas that carried you to your Presidency, Sir, did not fail – they were sabotaged. And now the agenda upon which your election was based, Mr. President, is withering through intentional neglect in order to replace it with one maintaining the corrupt and dysfunctional political status quo.
It should tell you something, Mr. President, that the same people who denounced and ridiculed you from the day you announced your candidacy, and still do, are now saying “Jared Kushner might save us after all.”
In that case, the “us” to be saved are the Democrats, the left-wing media and the swamp.
Saving them won’t save your Presidency, Sir, but will doom it because the people making such arguments are not those who elected you.
The downsizing of Stephen Bannon and the attacks on other “nationalist” advocates in your administration, Mr. President, are just some of the thousand cuts your enemies hope to inflict to bleed your Presidency white.
It is not a choice between family or friends or a competition between “Nepotism and Nationalism” and certainly not a matter of buttressing the Trump brand.
It is about the President keeping the promises he made to the American people and not diluted versions of them in order to placate those who had always preferred a Trump loss.
In the end, it is really about the survival of representative government.
Lawrence Sellin, Ph.D. is a retired US Army Reserve colonel, an IT command and control subject matter expert, trained in Arabic and Kurdish, and a veteran of Afghanistan, northern Iraq and a humanitarian mission to West Africa. He receives email at lawrence.sellin@gmail.com.