As regular readers of this column know, I’m no fan of Donald Trump’s. But even a stopped clock is accurate twice a day.
Can we admit that Trump has achieved at least a couple of worthwhile things?
First: The border. For reasons that I don’t understand, Joe Biden and the Democrats didn’t mind having a ton of undocumented people enter the country. Trump’s stopped that. Good, right?
You might disagree with having the military join in the deportation effort, or having masked ICE agents round people up on the streets, or deporting people who have been living upstanding lives in the United States for years, or deporting people legally entitled not to be deported, or deporting people to countries with which they had no previous contact, or …
Wait!
I was supposed to be giving the devil his due.
Closing the border is good. It’s only the surrounding details about which reasonable people might differ.
I’m going to give Trump credit, and then I’m going to shut up.
What else has Trump done that’s undeniably good? Causing our NATO allies to commit to spending 5% of their gross domestic product for defense.
The United States has been bearing a disproportionate share of the cost of defending NATO for decades. The United States and many presidents before Trump have been urging the other NATO countries to contribute more, and those countries have simply ignored us. They’re not ignoring us anymore; instead, they’re committing to coughing up in their own defense.
That’s good.
Again, you might not agree with Trump’s methods. I’m not sure that basically threatening to abandon NATO to get the alliance’s attention was a great idea. But anything short of threatening abandonment didn’t seem to have worked. Thus, you might disagree with Trump’s methods, but his result — having NATO allies commit more resources to the cause — is a good one. Right?
Right.
Anything else?
Lifting sanctions on Syria may prove to be a good idea, and that’s probably a uniquely Trumpian achievement. Any other administration would have insisted on months of study before lifting sanctions on Syria. Trump didn’t care about governmental niceties; he just acted. And the world may ultimately benefit from that action. We’ll see.
I’m starting to struggle now.
Let me probe deep into the recesses of my mind. Did Trump do anything else that was good?
In the first term: Operation Warp Speed, which resulted in the COVID vaccine, was a great success, even if the Republican Party now appears to be abandoning vaccines generally. The Abraham Accords, establishing diplomatic relations between Israel and the UAE and Bahrain, were a good start. We’ll see where they go.
Uh-oh.
I’m running out of ideas, or imagination, or breath.
There are many, many things that Trump has done, before and during his second term, that are illegal, loathsome, or harmful. The pardons, tariff policy, cutting funding meant for medical research, threatening Panama and Greenland, shoot — don’t get me started. I’ve done that before.
But now, for the sake of civility, I’m giving Trump credit where it seems to be due.
Can we at least agree about that?
Mark Herrmann spent 17 years as a partner at a leading international law firm and later oversaw litigation, compliance and employment matters at a large international company. He is the author of The Curmudgeon’s Guide to Practicing Law and Drug and Device Product Liability Litigation Strategy (affiliate links). You can reach him by email at inhouse@abovethelaw.com.
The post Admit It: Trump’s Done A Few Things Right appeared first on Above the Law.
As regular readers of this column know, I’m no fan of Donald Trump’s. But even a stopped clock is accurate twice a day.
Can we admit that Trump has achieved at least a couple of worthwhile things?
First: The border. For reasons that I don’t understand, Joe Biden and the Democrats didn’t mind having a ton of undocumented people enter the country. Trump’s stopped that. Good, right?
You might disagree with having the military join in the deportation effort, or having masked ICE agents round people up on the streets, or deporting people who have been living upstanding lives in the United States for years, or deporting people legally entitled not to be deported, or deporting people to countries with which they had no previous contact, or …
Wait!
I was supposed to be giving the devil his due.
Closing the border is good. It’s only the surrounding details about which reasonable people might differ.
I’m going to give Trump credit, and then I’m going to shut up.
What else has Trump done that’s undeniably good? Causing our NATO allies to commit to spending 5% of their gross domestic product for defense.
The United States has been bearing a disproportionate share of the cost of defending NATO for decades. The United States and many presidents before Trump have been urging the other NATO countries to contribute more, and those countries have simply ignored us. They’re not ignoring us anymore; instead, they’re committing to coughing up in their own defense.
That’s good.
Again, you might not agree with Trump’s methods. I’m not sure that basically threatening to abandon NATO to get the alliance’s attention was a great idea. But anything short of threatening abandonment didn’t seem to have worked. Thus, you might disagree with Trump’s methods, but his result — having NATO allies commit more resources to the cause — is a good one. Right?
Right.
Anything else?
Lifting sanctions on Syria may prove to be a good idea, and that’s probably a uniquely Trumpian achievement. Any other administration would have insisted on months of study before lifting sanctions on Syria. Trump didn’t care about governmental niceties; he just acted. And the world may ultimately benefit from that action. We’ll see.
I’m starting to struggle now.
Let me probe deep into the recesses of my mind. Did Trump do anything else that was good?
In the first term: Operation Warp Speed, which resulted in the COVID vaccine, was a great success, even if the Republican Party now appears to be abandoning vaccines generally. The Abraham Accords, establishing diplomatic relations between Israel and the UAE and Bahrain, were a good start. We’ll see where they go.
Uh-oh.
I’m running out of ideas, or imagination, or breath.
There are many, many things that Trump has done, before and during his second term, that are illegal, loathsome, or harmful. The pardons, tariff policy, cutting funding meant for medical research, threatening Panama and Greenland, shoot — don’t get me started. I’ve done that before.
But now, for the sake of civility, I’m giving Trump credit where it seems to be due.
Can we at least agree about that?
Mark Herrmann spent 17 years as a partner at a leading international law firm and later oversaw litigation, compliance and employment matters at a large international company. He is the author of The Curmudgeon’s Guide to Practicing Law and Drug and Device Product Liability Litigation Strategy (affiliate links). You can reach him by email at [email protected].
