Game Over…A President Who Won’t Be Played
Let’s face it.
When it comes to playing U.S. Presidents, much of Washington, the mainstream media, not to mention the entire world for that matter, have all enjoyed a mighty good go of it. A brief look back recalls how past presidents have been played to a T.
Barack Obama
– Played by Iran into forking over billions in cash for a feckless, toothless and flawed JCPOA Iran nuclear deal;
– Played by North Korea who “psyched” Obama into a policy of “strategic patience,” essentially doing nothing regarding their growing nuclear threat;
George W. Bush
– Played by Democrats and the media into a feckless position of timidity with regards to political correctness, constantly having to constantly substantiate his own “credentials” of tolerance and bi-partisanship;
– Played by allies to “foot the bill” in Iraq and Afghanistan under the guise of a supposed international peace-keeping force (Bush wasn’t the only one) …played by Pakistan into continued financial support while that government abetted the Taliban in Afghanistan…and succored into implementing concessions to North Korea, prior to negotiations, on nuclear arms commitments made in bad faith;
Bill Clinton
– Played by North Korea into forking over billions in cash (sound familiar?) in exchange for nuclear non-proliferation by which they never intended to abide, in the first place;
– Played by his own wife, Hillary Clinton, who convinced him that she could put together a health care “plan” that would pass muster in a Congress and a Senate, on the premise that they would cede management of the entire national health care industry by placing it under White House control;
George H. W. Bush
– Played by both houses of Congress into breaking his “read my lips, no new taxes” campaign pledge in exchange for commitments to spending cuts that never took place. Doing so effectively wrecked his re-election campaign and paved way for both of the Clintons to replace him;
– Played by an old business rival and nemesis, one H. Ross Perot, who had enough money to launch a presidential campaign whose sole purpose was to prevent Bush from being re-elected.
Enter one Donald J. Trump who spent his entire career, and even authored a book on the Art of the Deal. Ever the tough negotiator in all his many non-political pursuits, here is a man we all got to know very well, since he thrust himself onto the national scene back in the mid-1970’s. Legendary for the boldness he exerted into contract negotiations, and for his sheer stratagem of self-promotion unlike any other ever seen, Trump’s name was practically everywhere and on everything, for decades. To those who knew him well, his announcement to seek the presidency in 2015 was neither surprising nor capricious, and his nomination to head the GOP ticket seemed a certainty, despite a mainstream media who mistakenly took it for nothing more than a stunt. To a nation that was told, even by members of his own party, that he was a fraud and a fool- one who had absolutely no chance to defeat Hillary Clinton in the 2016 election, Trump’s victory seemed all but impossible, and yet he won the election despite all of the varied forces united against him.
In office, Trump has defied all of the so-called “experts” in his statecraft, and in how he has managed to bring about a North Korea to go where no one thought possible. Just this week, a commitment to de-nuclearize the entire Korean peninsula and bring about a formal armistice to end the Korean War, sixty-five years after the 1953 cease-fire, has been made by both North and South Korea. Anyone who would otherwise be skeptical about President Trump’s role in all of this should ask South Korea Foreign Minister Kang Kyung-wha who told Fox News:
“I think clearly he (President Trump) saw this as an immediate, the most challenging global security agenda, not just for the United States but for the whole world… President Trump’s tough talk on North Korea has not negatively impacted peace talks…the daily messaging is one thing… the longer-term effect of those messages is what really mattered, and it has forced the North Korean leader to change his calculations.”
So here we have the South Korean diplomat, crediting President Trump in bringing about an opportunity to achieve what was once thought to be quite impossible. In the face of NeverTrump Republicans, Democrats, their fellow travelers in the State Department and the mainstream media, and all of the aforementioned former Presidents, who thought Trump’s tweets about “Little Rocket Man” would lead us to global thermo-nuclear war, it would seem that Trump is on the path to achieve quite the opposite. Sitting beside German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Trump said that the U.S. won’t be “played” by North Korea, as his administration prepares for a meeting with North Korea’s Supreme Leader Kim Jong Un:
“We’re not going to be played. OK? We’re going to hopefully make a deal, if not that’s fine…the U.S. has been played beautifully, like a fiddle, but this time is different…we won’t play games like we have in the past.”
There are many other arenas in which Trump has refused, time and time again, to be played, especially by those fixated on their opposition to his presidency.
For instance, in the constant cloud of suspicion that has hung over his presidency in the wake of the Mueller investigation, other presidents would have been cowered by such an inquisition, but not Trump. Just recently, the president confessed that he has purposely stayed away from intervening in the Justice Department and their investigations, but that at some point, he would get involved, calling the Mueller probe a “disgrace.” In the wake of the release of the House Intelligence Committee report which absolved the president of any wrongdoing with regards to allegations that his campaign colluded with the Kremlin, even his reticent and oh-so-recused Attorney General Jeff Sessions has finally called for an end to the Mueller investigation.
Whatever President Donald Trump lacks, insofar as the absence of “Teflon coating” is concerned, he more than makes up for it with a seemingly-impenetrable suit of armor, which enables him to charge ahead in the face of unprecedented opposition, from all sides. Neither a hostile media, nor a recalcitrant Democrat opposition, nor Anti-Trump and NeverTrump Republicans, nor a cacophony of presidential predecessors have managed to take this president “off-task.” The fact of the matter is that he just won’t be played, by anyone or anything…and it’s “game over” for anyone who is tempted to think otherwise.
Once again, advantage Trump.
-Drew Nickell, 27 April 2018
© 2018 by Drew Nickell, all rights reserved.
author of “Bending Your Ear- a Collection of Essays on the Issues of Our Times”
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