We always knew the second Trumpian era would open with a blaze of glory, but nobody had any idea of the nature and scale of the spectacle. As it unfolds, something even more unexpected is happening: Donald Trump is looking like the least crazy president America has had in living memory.
Take Gaza. When Trump announced his plan this week to relocate the Palestinians and place the Strip under American control, there were two responses: Either you hyperventilated or you hyperventilated. The man was saying the unsayable! The liberals are still hyperventilating, of course; they haven’t stopped hyperventilating since 2016.
Those of sound judgment, however, quickly got over the shock and arrived at a realization. It wasn’t Trump that was crazy. It was — in reverse order — Joe Biden, Barack Obama and Bill Clinton. You could even include the Bushes on the list.
Think about it. For decades, these men, along with their allies, pursued a solution to the conflict that was proven not to work. Yet they kept doing it, chiding anybody who had the temerity to point out the obvious flaw in the plan.
There was the Oslo Accords, which dissolved in that carnival of murder known as the Second Intifada. There was Camp David, a full 25 years ago, when Yasser Arafat turned down a Palestinian state with a capital in East Jerusalem, plus 96% of the West Bank.
There was the 2008 plan put forward by Ehud Olmert, which offered a Palestinian state on 94% of the West Bank with 6% of Israeli territory to make up the difference, together with East Jerusalem, an international Old City, a tunnel connecting the West Bank and Gaza, and Israel accepting a thousand Palestinian refugees annually for five years, with financial compensation for the rest. You got it: Turned down.
Any sane leader would have drawn certain reasonable conclusions. Clearly, Palestinian did not want their own state alongside the state of Israel. Rather, they wanted their own state instead of the state of Israel. Not only did previous presidents ignore this truth, they gaslit the world into believing that they were the grown-ups.
Well, who looks like the big kids now? In one fell swoop on Tuesday, Trump slayed the shibboleth and suggested moving the Palestinians out of the rubble of Gaza. The idea was half-formed and may lead in all sorts of directions, but it offered a new vision. Cue furious breast-beating; but did anybody bother to speak to any actual Palestinians?
I did. My old friend from my foreign correspondent days, currently in Gaza City, was all for it. “Make Gaza great again,” he messaged me. He is desperate to leave the benighted Strip, plagued by destruction, jihadism and poverty. What future lies in Gaza for his children? Everybody he knows agreed.
Listening to him made the Western left seem downright wicked. They insisted Gaza was an “open-air prison”; now they want the Palestinians to stay? All over the world, people are migrating to the democracies from the impoverishment, corruption and instability of their homes. “Refugees welcome,” liberals cry.
Why are the Palestinians different? Why should ordinary Gazans raise their children in tents, relying on aid handouts amid bullying by jihadis, just to satisfy the fantasies of “grown-ups” in Washington and New York? Two groups of people wish the Palestinians to remain in Gaza: Hamas and Western liberals. Like I said, Trump is the sane one.
It’s not just about Gaza. For years, the fentanyl epidemic has turned American towns and cities into zombie encampments, spreading human misery. One whiff of Trump’s tariffs and Canada finds itself newly able to implement a $1.3 billion border plan, with helicopters, upgraded technology, a “fentanyl czar” and 10,000 frontline personnel. Was Biden’s softer position really one for the grown-ups?
On the opposite side of the country, Trump has called for the State Department to name Mexican drug cartels as “terrorists,” allowing a wider group of accomplices to be netted. For too long, the border has been an unfunny joke. Millions of illegals have poured into America in recent years — including many drug traffickers — taking its toll on the economy and social cohesion and making a mockery of the rule of law.
To Biden, this was no more than regrettable. Now, after a few Trumpian threats, 10,000 Mexican national guardsmen are deploying to the border. Again: Who was the crazy one?
The same is true of Iran. With Trump returning to his “maximum pressure” approach, the ayatollah knows full well that he faces the most unpredictable president of recent times. He knows 21,000-pound bombs could fall on his precious centrifuges tomorrow, even tonight. Is it not a good thing that the ruler of one of the world’s most malign regimes feels so deeply vulnerable? And what does that tell us about the craven “minimum pressure” policies of Biden and Obama, which allowed Tehran to run rings around Washington?
The world is witnessing something epochal: The postwar liberal consensus is collapsing under the weight of its own dogma. For decades, former presidents shored up their failures by rendering naysaying taboo; but the 47th has no time for such cant. We were told we were being led by grown-ups. Turns out that America has been governed by crazies all along.
This story originally appeared on NYPost
