Approaching 1 year mark, DJT has been a success, though not unmitigated

Image result for trump xi jinping
The smear strategy that predicted Donald Trump's failure
as President has yielded zero evidence. Who predicted in 2016
that Trump as president would interact as well as he has with
the leadership of China and other major rivals? Not me. 
(Al-Jazeera)

Love Trumps Hate of 2016 proved to be a very ironic slogan, as Trump's bitter enemies from Clinton to Gutierrez are consumed by their own bitterness.

If you would have asked me at any point before November 2016 whether Donald Trump could be elected president, with majorities in both houses of Congress, and succeed in implementing any of his platform, I would have probably weaseled out of giving a straight answer. We have been used to being led by people that see themselves as statesmen and representatives of a system that pays lip service to being responsible to the American people. Is there any event that has happened since Donald Trump's election that has validated his opponents' doom predictions? 

Quackonomists refuse to admit their wrongs.

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Rather than admit the error of his ways, Paul Krugman has doubled down
on his doom and gloom attitude towards the Trump economcy. (Daily Beast)
Nobel Prize winner Paul Krugman, a Keynesian and the most bitter enemy of the Donald Trump agenda based on his post-election prediction that the market would "never recover", has continued to rant and rave against Donald Trump through his Twitter account. Today he claimed that Donald Trump "can't take credit for the soaring stock market". 

That's tall talk for a man that has been discredited for his unapologetic support for the Obamacare model that he thinks can be fixed with -- MORE MONEY. He famously said on video in September 2016 that Obamacare was "done on the cheap" while premiums were exploding across the country; that's not something that you can blame on Donald Trump. 

Since becoming president, the failures to repeal the Affordable Care Act should still be seen as the most important policy miss of the Trump Administration, but his decision not to enforce the individual mandate by executive order and his ending of the Cost Share Reductions (CSRs) which were both illegal and pointless corporate welfare were correct contingencies. In his many defenses of the ACA Krugman like all of its supporters never has acknowledged the idiocy of essentially bailing out Obamacare exchanges using the CSRs while simultaneously allowing both premiums and deductibles to soar. The objective of Obamacare was to lower health insurance premiums, not to subsidize higher ones that are still not affordable. If dismantled piece by piece market alternatives to the ACA will eventually scuttle it entirely. 

Globetrotting bonanza

When he was running in both the primaries and the general election, Trump's main detractors mistakenly believed that he would be a complete embarrassment in foreign policy and trade negotiation. Fast forward to today and that has been proven to be another joke played by the liberal establishment on themselves and their voters. Is it not ridiculous to think that a billionaire real estate mogul known for owning or having stakes in enterprises worldwide does not have some instinct for speaking to powerful figures of diverse backgrounds? When Trump's election effectively scrapped the TPP in 2016, the doubters mourned what they thought had been a once-in-a-lifetime trade deal and it continues to stumble even today. On November 9, 2017 Trump's independent trade policy yielded a $250 billion deal with China.

Those that scoffed at Trump's very ability to even function on foreign relations tours should take stock of the fact that he has reached a deal of any type, whereas Canada's Justin Trudeau, the darling of liberal Americans has failed to even begin a formal process to hammer out a trade deal with China.

No Bush or Obama redux

As with his support for Brexit, Trump has promulgated a general attitude that US foreign policy should be conducted on an independent and non-interventionist basis. He has fulfilled two different promises with regards to pulling out of the TPP and the Paris Climate Accord. He has also vowed to renegotiate NAFTA. Rather than causing a rift between the United States and the world, as the press likes to  portray reality, Trump has increased the power and influence of the United States throughout the world. In April 2016, The Guardian's David Smith and Julian Borger's prediction of Trump's performance should he be elected started with: "Dangerous, foolish, irrational, scary, terrifying, irresponsible, a clown, a disaster." 

It painted a picture of him alienating the Muslim world including Saudi Arabia despite acknowledging that President Obama had already caused rifts with many American allies. What stands out from The Guardian op-ed is this paragraph where he quotes a discussion of a European diplomat: 
He contemplated the prospect of a victorious Trump in November tentatively. “It would be incredibly damaging to transatlantic relations, I suppose, though we would hope that a President Trump would not be quite as extreme as presidential candidate Trump.” Then he banished the thought. “I don’t really think it can happen – do you?”
This analysis is telling not only for its obvious display of the diplomatic class refusing to contemplate that its agenda is unpopular, but that they were in denial that Trump's election could even happen.

 In terms of his foreign policy, Trump has accomplished several goals that he set out. Some of these are objectively good for US foreign policy, and others are up for debate:

  • The eradication of ISIS's territorial hegemony in much of Syria and Iraq. Rather than acknowledge Trump's success at eliminating the terror group by cooperating with Russia from that region, Vox decided in July to claim that he was just following Obama's plan. Any word on when they will acknowledge that ISIS's past success was a direct result of Obama's failed approach to Iraq and Syria?
  • Recognizing Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.
  • Repairing the dysfunctional relationship with the Philippines.
  • Opening the renegotiation of the NAFTA agreement. If the negotiations do not succeed,  Trump has promised to scrap the agreement entirely.
  • Pulling out of the Iran Nuclear Deal. Just today, it was revealed that under Barack Obama the US negotiation was so desperate to reach a deal that it squashed an investigation that revealed that Iran ally Hezbollah was dealing cocaine in the United States.

Calm in the face of the storm

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Rep. Luis Gutierrez (D-Ill.) has been one of the more vocal
proponents of the Donald Trump impeachment, yet he has now 
declared that he will retire from his seat.

Despite working for over a year now to bring about the reversal of the November 2016 election, Democrats are no closer than they were now, notwithstanding a bizarre victory in the Alabama special election for the US Senate vacancy created by Jeff Sessions' appointment. One cannot address the Trump presidency up until now without mentioning the Russia investigation and other ways that the Democratic Party and its allies have sought to oppose the legitimacy of his administration. To this day they have all been fruitless:
  • Street demonstrations: The Women's March and other similar public actions by protesters against Trump have petered out. Starting with 500,000 demonstrators in DC and 4.6 million worldwide on January 21-22, the effort has been hampered by its associations with people such as exiled black nationalist and cop killer Assata Shakur, Sharia law advocate Linda Sarsour, and  convicted murderer Donna Hylton. 
  • Judicial challenges: On several occasions state attorneys general and pro-immigration or anti-Islamophobia activists rushed to file lawsuits in order to overturn the Trump travel ban. As of December 5, it appears that the Supreme Court is dead set on allowing the ban to go forward.
  • The great media conglomerates NBC, ABC, CNN, Fox News, and their print media and online counterparts have been thrown into disarray due to their troubled business model, transparently ideological reporting, and the fall-out of the sexual harassment scandals in Hollywood that have spread to their own newsrooms.  
  • The Mueller investigation has been tainted by accusations not only of partisanship but of deliberate misconduct by former Chief Investigator Peter Strzok and others. While it has failed to yield evidence of an actual Russian relationship to the Trump campaign effort, it has inadvertently exposed the prosecution blunders and even crimes in and of themselves of the investigators.
It is arguable where this winding road of the Trump presidency will lead in the coming year of 2018 with the congressional midterm elections and other events on the horizon, but what should be clear is that we cannot expect those that have been completely wrong about it now to get better in the future.

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