America's enemies are on notice: The president is no longer an eloquent pushover professor-president but a ruthless real estate developer and television network brawler-president whose principle weapons are blunt candor and walking away from the table.
There are four real crises in the world, and the most important one is reaching boilover status. It would be useful if we all would put aside our views on 2020 and focus on them.
The first emanates from Beijing. "If the U.S. goes ahead with its tariff measures against China, China will have to resort to necessary counter-measures," a spokesperson for the Chinese government warned. More and more warnings, increasingly ominous, from various sources have followed.
Alongside this abrupt and sinister ratcheting up of rhetoric from China is the second crisis: a series of acts of war believed to have been ordered by Iran against Persian Gulf shipping and Saudi pipelines.
The third crisis is the long-running Russian assault on the West's open social media platforms.
The fourth crisis is the catastrophe in Venezuela. Regime change is Trump's objective there: Nicolas Maduro must go. Crippling sanctions but not regime change for Iran could force behavior changes. But Venezuela needs regime change. Trump has been clear.
Trump is responding to both his domestic political opponents and America's actual enemies with the same tactics: blunt, repetitive messaging and use of the walk-off. He is sometimes rude, often full of unnecessary slashes, but always direct. (It often seems as if Trump answers more questions from reporters in a walk to the helicopter than President Barack Obama did in formal press conferences.)
Trump is not an adventurer, but he is a brawler. Syria has twice been on the receiving end of a fusillade of missiles for crossing red lines.
Whether it's Nancy Pelosi, the Chinese trade negotiators or the North Korean dictator, Trump will do a real deal or nothing at all. And he won't be played. He will just walk away, and then he will tell his side of the story, repeatedly.
Trump has abruptly and with finality simply voided long-held shibboleths among the foreign policy establishment. He holds summits with bad guys and he doesn't care if the media thinks he's unprepared. He's recognized Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, which it is. He recognized the annexation of the Golan Heights as a fait accompli, which it is. He has allowed Jared Kushner to put forward a peace plan for the Middle East, but everyone in the world knows he's got Israel's back.
"Clarity before agreement" goes the saying of my radio colleague Dennis Prager. Perhaps Trump's 2020 campaign can put that on a hat.
Editorial on 06/08/2019