As President Trump prepares to deliver his State of the Union address Tuesday, Fareed says the President deserves credit for his much-anticipated speech in Davos on Friday. The question, Fareed writes in his latest Washington Post column, is whether this represents a genuinely new, more conventional approach, or if Trump will “veer off in an entirely different direction.”
“The Trump presidency has been composed of three parts. Trump I is the circus — the tweets, the outlandish claims, the reality-TV-like show. Trump II is the dark populism and the demagogic assaults on minorities, the press and the judiciary. Trump III is the conventional Republican president, following a fairly standard GOP agenda — tax cuts, deregulation and a hawkish foreign policy, guided by mainstream advisers such as National Economic Council Director Gary Cohn and Defense Secretary Jim Mattis,” Fareed writes.
“We could be entertained by the circus, and we should be appalled by the demagogue, but we have to be encouraged by Trump the Republican. That’s not because I agree with all the ideas he has put forth in his agenda. I continue to think the tax cut is fiscally irresponsible, blowing a huge hole in the deficit that will starve public investment and effectively transfer government resources from the poor to the rich. On the other hand, his deregulatory push could be an important reform of an administrative state that has grown burdensome and overly complex.”
“I don’t seek to normalize Trump. But I do believe that, given the stakes, the United States and the world are better off for these moments when he behaves more like a normal president.”
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“The Trump presidency has been composed of three parts. Trump I is the circus — the tweets, the outlandish claims, the reality-TV-like show. Trump II is the dark populism and the demagogic assaults on minorities, the press and the judiciary. Trump III is the conventional Republican president, following a fairly standard GOP agenda — tax cuts, deregulation and a hawkish foreign policy, guided by mainstream advisers such as National Economic Council Director Gary Cohn and Defense Secretary Jim Mattis,” Fareed writes.
“We could be entertained by the circus, and we should be appalled by the demagogue, but we have to be encouraged by Trump the Republican. That’s not because I agree with all the ideas he has put forth in his agenda. I continue to think the tax cut is fiscally irresponsible, blowing a huge hole in the deficit that will starve public investment and effectively transfer government resources from the poor to the rich. On the other hand, his deregulatory push could be an important reform of an administrative state that has grown burdensome and overly complex.”
“I don’t seek to normalize Trump. But I do believe that, given the stakes, the United States and the world are better off for these moments when he behaves more like a normal president.”
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