Remember the campaign rhetoric that included the partisan mantra that Donald Trump was a savvy, blunt businessman? And how much, of course, we needed that, especially when the executive package included legendary negotiation skills. Well, that rationale, inexplicably, is still out there among the fan base four and a half months into an administration that still touts and re-touts a Supreme Court appointment when confronted with its lackluster legislative record and massive federal government vacancies.
* Because if the Trump touting were true, we might be seeing signs that China, after President Xi Jinping was Mar-a-Lagoed personally by Trump, is actually helping out with North Korea, still the planet’s biggest existential threat.
* Were it true, we might be seeing a best-and-brightest cabinet and capable communication professionals directly representing him–and this country–to the rest of the world.
* Were it true, the U.S. might already have cashed its wall down-payment check from Mexico.
* Were it true, we might be seeing a leader with enough guts to tell Emmanuel Macron and Angela Merkel in person that he planned to withdraw the U.S. from the Paris climate pact. (Remember how it was approvingly leaked that he was “evolving” in his climate-change thinking?) And that he also had enough guts–and bottom-line sense–to acknowledge that clean energy is much more of a job creator than coal mining is.
* And were it true, we might be seeing a full-throttle lobbying effort to end the Cuban embargo–because it would economically benefit the United $tates of America.