At first I laughed at Trump. Now I know not to underestimate him. | Opinion
When will we realize it's a mistake to misjudge and underestimate Donald Trump?
I was trying to remember the last time Donald Trump’s opponents laughed so hard at his expense.
Oh, yes, it was Nov. 15, 2022.
The twice-impeached, Jan. 6-disgraced former president announced that he would run again for president.
What a joke.
I laughed, too.
Critics say Trump folded on Mexico, Canada tariffs
Now this week, Trump is the target anew of that same mockery, that same sneering contempt, as he momentarily lifts the promised tariffs on Mexico and Canada.
Trump’s “a cheap date,” his tormentors say.
Canada and Mexico merely offered him things they had already promised, and Trump folded.
What a fool!
This was exactly the mood when Trump brought the world media to his Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Florida, in 2022 to declare that he would return to the White House.
People howled.
They laughed when he said he'd run again
The conventional wisdom was that Trump was actually not running for president but running from the law.
Here’s how The Washington Post put it:
“Trump’s urgency to announce also comes from wanting to get ahead of a potential indictment in any of the several ongoing criminal investigations.”
His popularity was in the toilet. Polls showed 54% of voters had an unfavorable view of him. Forty-four percent had a “very unfavorable” view, The Post reported.
Just three months earlier, the FBI had served a search warrant at his Mar-a-Lago living quarters looking for and finding classified documents.
And now he was running for president again?
What a farce!
Trump won. Laugh at your own peril.
Except that he did run for president.
He did win.
And now it is Trump sweeping the Augean stables of the FBI and the rest of the U.S intelligence community.
That latter development has even become a trending topic this week on social media: “Panic in D.C.”
This is a cautionary tale for anyone inclined to believe that Mexico and Canada just took Trump to the cleaners on tariffs.
Laugh at your peril.
Trump is strong. Democrats are in tatters.
Before you do, however, go back even earlier to 2015, when Bill Maher asked Ann Coulter who would win the Republican nomination for president.
“Donald Trump,” she said with unflinching confidence.
Laughter rained down on her.
Not only was the audience doubled over, the other guests and Maher laughed at her. Coulter sat as the dunce in the room. She did not back down.
Today, Donald Trump controls the White House and majorities in the U.S. Senate and the House of Representatives.
The Democratic Party is in tatters.
A new Quinnipiac University poll shows that Democrats just hit a 16-year low in popularity. A mere 31% of U.S. voters express a positive view of the Democratic Party.
Democrats now say Trump blew himself up with tariffs
But Democrats have new hope today. They think Trump just blew himself up with tariffs.
Did he?
They say he got from Canada what Canada had already put on the table – a $1.3 billion hardening of the U.S.-Canada border.
But that happened in December. Here’s how Newsweek headlined it on Dec. 20: “Canada Announces $1.3 Billion Border Security Plan Amid Trump Tariff Threats.”
So, that was a concession Trump had already won with threatened tariffs. He merely kept his line in the water a little longer to see what else he might snag.
And here’s what he got.
Trump got a $200 million bonus from Canada
Canada will appoint a “fentanyl czar” to focus on drug trafficking. It will join the United States in designating drug cartels as “terrorist” organizations and creating a joint strike force to combat organized crime, fentanyl and money laundering, Canada’s National Post newspaper reports.
In all, a $200 million bonus. Not earthshaking, but not nothing.
As for Mexico, The New York Times reports that country “will post an additional 10,000 Mexican National Guard members on the border with the promise to ‘prevent drug trafficking,’ in particular fentanyl.”
Liberals howled again that those troops are already there.
OK, then take it up with The Times, which you now accuse of fake news.
That doesn’t even take into account that Trump hasn't closed the deal on tariffs. He merely paused it for a month.
I underestimated and misjudged Trump before
For you Trump critics, are you confident that the president will never reimpose tariffs if he decides Canada and Mexico have just answered him with phony concessions?
I don’t like Trump’s tariff ploy. I don’t like playing chicken with the national and global economy.
But I’m also fully awake to the fact that I’ve misjudged and underestimated Trump before.
He is bringing a new muscular approach to foreign policy. There is trouble on the horizon with authoritarian powers China, Russia, Iran and North Korea forming an axis to challenge American democracy and influence in the world.
Many of the Democratic nations in Latin America have been getting cozy with the Chinese in return for infrastructure funding.
That infrastructure gives China a commercial and military foothold in the Western hemisphere that can be used to threaten the United States and its citizens.
Trump sent a clear message to Latin America
Whether he intended to or not, Trump has sent a message to all of Latin America that you can go ahead and choose sides, but we have the ability and the will to inflict serious pain on your economy and your people.
How many Latin American nations will forget that the next time Chinese diplomats show up bearing gifts?
Panama has ended its participation in China’s Belt and Road Initiative to build dual-use infrastructure across the globe, Bloomberg News reported Monday: “After talks with (U.S. Secretary of State Marco) Rubio, Panama’s President Jose Raul Mulino said his country’s broad agreement to contribute to the Chinese initiative will not be renewed, and could be terminated early. He said the deal was set to expire in two to three years.”
Still laughing?
Phil Boas is an editorial columnist with The Arizona Republic, where this column originally appeared. Email him at phil.boas@arizonarepublic.com