Don't Be Shocked: Trump Is Being Trump - Seib
(snip)
In fact, the week was a fitting end to 2018, a year that started with Mr. Trump starting to take off the shackles that he thought had bound him to a traditional Republican agenda in his first year. In 2017, the first year of his presidency, the focus was on tax cuts and deregulation, which were fine by him. But those items represented the establishment GOP’s agenda. So did the attempt to blow up Obamacare, which ended in a mess for which he blamed Republican leaders in Congress.
During that first year, the more conventional thinkers around him in the White House—principally National Economic Council Director Gary Cohn—had persuaded him to put off starting a giant trade fight with China. The more conventional Republican leaders in Congress—Sen. Mitch McConnell and Rep. Paul Ryan—had persuaded him not to get swallowed up by a divisive fight over immigration.
Meantime, his national-security team—Defense Secretary James Mattis, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and national security adviser H.R. McMaster—had persuaded him to keep a military presence in Syria and increase troop levels in Afghanistan. He did so grudgingly, though both were places he said repeatedly he wanted American forces to vacate. Then, at the outset of 2018, Mr. Trump said in effect: Enough of listening to those guys. What Mr. Trump really wanted to do was get back to what he considered HIS core issues—trade and immigration, and pulling back troops from the Middle East. That was the America-first message as he saw it.
So he started the process of moving in a different direction. He opened the year by picking a fight with Democrats, and some Republicans, in Congress over immigration... By the spring, he had moved on to the start of a trade war (a term he didn’t object to) with China, which got started in earnest after Mr. Cohn resigned his White House position in March... By the summer, Mr. Tillerson at the State Department and Mr. McMaster at the National Security Council had followed Mr. Cohn out the door.
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https://www.wsj.com/articles/dont-be-shocked-trump-is-being-trump-11545661846 (paid subscription)