WASHINGTON (TNS) — Only Donald Trump could inspire left-leaning MSNBC to air a long segment on “Morning Joe” in which a former president of the conservative American Enterprise Institute gets a respectful hearing and even some agreement for his argument that Harvard is going to be a better place after the president gets done ripping it apart.
That actually happened Wednesday morning when Arthur C. Brooks, also a Harvard professor, joined host and former Republican congressman Joe Scarborough to explain why the disruption of groupthink at the school, self-reflection among faculty and administrators on why it was targeted and the possibility of reform would make the Ivy League flagship a better place for students to learn.
Only Donald Trump could reach into one of the most-insulated, self-satisfied and richest institutions on the planet and make its leadership pay attention to the values of Americans they have long dismissed as irrelevant troglodytes.
I spend a lot of time bashing Trump. I could go into great detail about why some of the things he is doing to Harvard are counterproductive and even plain stupid. Cutting the school’s ability to enroll international students is just one.
But there is something for traditional conservatives and classical-liberal moderates to learn from this fake-tanned, fact-challenged moral degenerate.
One of the reasons Trump so easily and totally took over the Republican Party is that for so long, the party promised far more change than it delivered. Republican Presidents Ronald Reagan, George H. W. Bush and George W. Bush all ran as pro-life presidents bent on overturning Roe v. Wade. Between the three of them, they appointed two-thirds of the Supreme Court, yet each either appointed or tried to appoint a jurist who would vote to keep the divisive ruling that legalized abortion.
Donald Trump came. He did exactly as he said. Roe fell. Republicans remember that. If you went issue by issue, you’d lose count before you got to the end of a Trumpy parade of promises made, promises kept.
It is also true that Trump is openly on the take, using the presidency for personal gain. He does things — like have a dinner just for those who have invested in the president’s family crypto ventures, where no doubt backs were slapped and favors traded — so often that the cry over one can’t get loud enough to matter before the next one and the next one launch.
But Trump uses this method to deliver in policy matters as well, for instance making so many conservative reforms at the Environmental Protection Agency — stopping regulations, reversing regulations and ending grants — that environmental groups can’t even agree what they should be maddest about or mount a campaign to try to fight. There just isn’t enough oxygen to push back on what Trump has done.
And Trump doesn’t give up. Take his war on the funding of the nation’s leading abortion provider, Planned Parenthood. He’s taken away grants, written executive orders to block Medicaid funding for the controversial nonprofit and pushed into his “Big Beautiful” budget bill legislative changes to defund Planned Parenthood. It doesn’t matter so much what courts rule in any individual case because he is attacking from 10 different directions.
While the Trumpy majority of the Republican Party cheers (and even some never-Trumpers agree), Trump’s success send liberals into fits of rage, but if you ask a Trump supporter where Trump got his strategy from, they’ll tell you he stole the progressive playbook.
When Joe Biden lost the Supreme Court case about the bold plan to forgive $400 billion in student loans at $20,000 a person that he couldn’t get through Congress, the old liberal lion didn’t hang his head in resignation and move onto the next issue where courts and Congress might side with him. Nope, he simply started smaller and through dozens of actions across his term in office, he got away with giving away $190 billion to 5 million borrowers. While he’s home in Delaware, the court cases as a result are still kicking around.
While most Republicans fumed, Donald Trump was taking notes.
In the eyes of liberal historians who do crazy things like rank Jimmy Carter as average and George W. Bush as worse, Trump will be remembered for his vices. His corruption and dishonesty. His foreign policy naivety and economic policy vacillation.
But among his followers and politicians who aspire to his power, he will be remembered for virtues: The audacity of our most admired entrepreneurs and generals. The persistence of a true believer. And buried beneath a mountain of lies is a certain honesty that can’t be denied.
On Wednesday morning, MSNBC and “Morning Joe” came close to revealing the truth about Donald Trump’s successes. It will be found not in his defects, but in the political perfection buried beneath.
(David Mastio is a national correspondent for the Kansas City Star and McClatchy newspapers.)
