This, the 83rd day of Trump’s presidency, has been a day of strange and abrupt reversals of longstanding policies, loyalties, and beliefs. The day fittingly began with Trump suggesting that Secretary of Nationalism Steve Bannon—whom Trump resents for being on the cover of Time magazine and being portrayed as the Grim Reaper on SNL—was on the verge of being fired. Bannon’s fall from grace has coincided with the rise of Gary Cohn, who people keep inexplicably referring to as a “liberal Democrat” even though he appears to have left the party after it gutted Glass-Steagall. (The Bannon wing apparently refers to Gary Cohn as “Globalist Gary” and sometimes as “🌎 Gary,” which is both hilarious and incredibly stupid.)
Shortly thereafter, Rex Tillerson met with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and Russian President Vlaidmir Putin, and the meeting appears not to have gone very well, despite the fact that Trump spent nearly two years cozying up to Putin on the campaign trail. (Bombing Syria will do that, I guess.) At a news conference after the meeting, Tillerson said that relations with Russia were at a “low point.” Trump reiterated that point at a news conference with the head of NATO. Apparently ignorant of the whole “brink of nuclear war” thing, he said that relations with Russia were at an “all-time low.”
At the same news conference with NATO chief/two-time runner-up in the “Most Norwegian Name” competition Jens Stoltenberg, Trump slathered NATO with praise, despite having referred to the alliance as “obsolete” on the campaign trail. Like a two-bit mobster, he had also threatened to cut funding for NATO unless member countries paid protection money. But standing next to Stoltenberg, Trump said NATO is “no longer obsolete.’’ What changed? Perhaps Trump, a known coward, would not have called NATO obsolete back in 2016 if Stoltenberg had been standing next to him.
But those were not the only reversals Trump made on Wednesday! In an interview with the Wall Street Journal, Trump said that he does not plan to label China a “currency manipulator,” despite the fact that he had previously pledged to do so on Day One of his administration. At this rate of three flip-flops a day, Trump will have a completely different policy platform by mid-April. And, while some of these reversals are probably better than his previous positions, he’ll still be Donald Trump so everything will still be bad.