Misunderstanding Trump - Victor Davis Hanson

Misunderstanding Trump - Victor Davis Hanson

He was and is clearly a populist-nationalist: i.e., what in a cost-to-benefit analysis is in the best interests of the U.S. at home and its own particular agendas abroad?

• Trump did not like neoconservatism because he never felt it was in our interests to spend blood and treasure on those who either did not deserve such largesse, or who would never evolve in ways we thought they should, or whose fates were not central to our national interests.
• So-called optional, bad-deal, and forever wars in the Middle East and their multitrillion-dollar costs would come ultimately at the expense of shorting Middle America back home.

Trump’s much-critiqued references to Putin—most recently during the G7, and his negotiations with him over Ukraine—were never, as alleged, appeasement...but art-of-the-deal/transactional (e.g., you don’t gratuitously insult or ostracize your formidable rival in possible dealmaking, but seek simultaneously to praise—and beat—him.)
Similarly, Winston Churchill initially saw the mass-murdering, treacherous Josef Stalin in the way Trump perhaps sees Putin, someone dangerous and evil, but who if handled carefully, occasionally granted his due, and approached with eyes wide open, could be useful in advancing a country’s realist interests...

At best, one could say Trump really did lament the horrific loss of life, and at the least, as a builder and dealmaker, wars for him rarely made any practical business sense, i.e., it seems wiser to build things and mutually profit than to blow them up and impoverish all involved...