A fellow I do not know, but someone who reads this blog, has posed an interesting question that I have chosen to answer with a blog post.
He asks: (High Plains Blogger), other than stepping down, what policy could Trump enact to change your mind about him?
Fair question, right? You bet it is. It deserves an answer. So, here goes.
The president can surrender his effort to build The Wall. He can stop insisting that Mexico pay for it. He surely must know he cannot order another sovereign government to do his bidding. He should recognize that The Wall won’t solve anything. He should simply ask Congress to spend more money to enhance existing methods to curb illegal immigration.
Trump can stop demonizing refugees, implying that those seeking asylum comprise gang members, terrorists and assorted felons intent on murder, rape, human trafficking, drug dealing . . . you name it.
The president can acknowledge publicly that Russia is our No. 1 geopolitical adversary and that Russian operatives sought to influence the 2016 presidential election. Along those lines, he can demand the immediate extradition to the United States of the dozen or so Russians indicted for criminal activity related to that effort.
Trump can apologize for demonizing his foes. He can atone for the hideous insults he has hurled at the media, at members of his own Republican Party. One place to start would be to publicly apologize to the family of the late Sen. John McCain, the Republican who stood at the gates of hell while he was imprisoned during the Vietnam War. Trump’s statement that McCain was a “hero only because he was captured” was hideous in the extreme.
Donald Trump can learn to act like the president of the United States of America. He can behave with decorum and dignity. He can stop his ceaseless Twitter tirades. He can learn how to treat Cabinet officials with respect, and stop informing them of their departure through those petulant tweets.
Sure, a resignation would be my preferred solution to ending the Trump Era in modern presidential politics. Donald Trump need not exercise that option as the only way out. A close second-best option would be to see him denied the GOP nomination in 2020; absent that, for him to be defeated in the 2020 general election.
However, having laid out these notions, I do not expect the president to change his mind, enact any new executive policies that would make me or other critics better of him.
Therefore, the criticism from this forum will continue.