NEW YORK DAILY NEWS
November 16, 2016
Donald Trump the candidate was the man who could fix everything with the wave of a gold-plated magic wand, sweeping away undocumented immigrants and transforming the American economy with a poof.
Donald Trump the President-elect is already accommodating to reality, modulating what had been radical and profoundly unrealistic proposals.
Though results are, to put it in election parlance, too early to tell, we cautiously note some promising signs of post-election growth.
Obamacare. On the campaign trail, Trump promised a “full repeal” of the Affordable Care Act, which he deemed a “disaster.”
He now favors keeping the program’s “stronger assets” — prohibiting insurers from denying coverage because of a pre-existing condition and allowing young people to stay on their parents’ insurance plan to age 26.
The question will be how to keep those popular pieces — which happen to be expensive — if Congress insists on dismantling the individual mandate, which pays for Obamacare’s broad coverage.
NATO. During the campaign, Trump seemed sanguine about turning one of the most vital military alliances in world history into a loose, mercenary entity.
He called the North Atlantic Treaty Organization “obsolete” and floated the notion that he might not honor its mutual-defense agreement unless other countries started paying their fair share.
After meeting with Trump, President Obama Monday said that the President-elect “expressed a great interest in maintaining our core strategic relationships [including NATO].” Time will tell.
Immigration. Candidate Trump’s promise to find 11 million undocumented immigrants, using a federal deportation force, and “throw them all out” was a rallying cry, the pledge that distinguished him more than any other from a more accommodationist Republican field.
Post-election, Trump is focused on removing 2 to 3 million “criminal aliens” — that’s about how many Obama deported — with the how still unspoken.
And the 2,000-mile wall Trump promised to build along the southern border? Some of that could become a fence.
“Lock her up.” Candidate Trump, verging into banana republic territory, threatened in a debate to put Hillary Clinton in prison for using a private email server as secretary of state. Now he withholds judgment, calling her and her husband “good people” he doesn’t want to hurt.
Trump still holds firm to lots of bad ideas, like weakening federal gun-safety laws and initiating potentially debilitating trade wars with major economic partners.
But the whiplash-inducing abandonment of other signature pledges is welcome. Better whiplash now than mortal wounds later from seeing Trump follow through on his worst ideas.
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Should we believe the double talking now?
Donald Trump has shown himself to speak out of both sides of his mouth.
When informed about the violence by his followers, he said ‘stop it’ into the cameras.
He called for Hillary Clinton’s imprisonment and now says the Clintons are ‘good people’?
He questioned President Obama’s birthplace, said terrible things about him and now Obama is a ‘good man’?
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