There must be a hundred columns out there appraising President Donald Trump’s first 100 days. Most don’t rate them well. Mine certainly wouldn’t. But this column isn’t about what I think.
I emailed almost 30 conservative friends who I figured might have voted for Trump. This is about what they think.
I knew I’d hit the mark when one wrote back, “Wow. I am humbled and honored that a liberal would want MY opinion. Most just want to call me stupid for voting for Trump.”
I asked everyone the same questions. The first one was: Are you just as enthusiastic now as you were on Election Day? The answer across the board was yes, with a few caveats. Like this one: “In my mind I didn’t vote for Donald Trump, I voted for Mike Pence — a man of character — and I voted against Hillary Clinton.” Another qualified her answer this way: “We didn’t vote for him because we loved him. We didn’t want Hillary.” Another put it bluntly: “It was as much (maybe more) about not giving the Left another four years as it was Trump.”
Others were purely positive. One said, “Trump has surrounded himself with experienced business people and I think a perspective on what is going on not only in the United States but worldwide. I think it’s also encouraging that he questions so many things.” Another explained that he’s “getting more accustomed to Trump every day.”
The next question was: Do the president’s reversals on any issues bother you at all? Which got a virtually universal answer: No! One friend said, “You get to be president, reality hits you square in the face and sometimes you have to change your mind to face situations you didn’t anticipate. I’m glad that he’s willing to do that.” Another called the president’s reversals “a real plus. It hopefully gives you humility, the responsibility to be the leader for 330 million of us, not just for the 63 million who voted for him.” One justified Trump’s reversals saying, “Rhetoric meets reality.” The worst thing anyone said about any reversals was, “Yes, they bother me a little. But nothing like Obama’s long list of broken promises.”
Another question was about the president’s accomplishments: What are your favorites? One friend said, “His moves to deregulate stuff that never needed to be regulated in the first place.” Another said, “Reducing the size of a bloated government … and allowing a major buildup in our depleted military.” Another gave me a laundry list: “Getting us out of TPP, pipeline, cutting red tape, keeping jobs in the U.S., pro-Israel stance, bombing ISIS, and immigration stance… all good.” One friend is glad Trump has changed from a “lead-from-behind and apologetic strategy back to one of U.S. leadership.” Hands down, most invoked the installation of conservative Neil Gorsuch on the Supreme Court.
I asked about the president’s personal style. If anything brought mildly negative responses, it was Trump’s tweets. One even called them “sickening,” although another admiringly called them “unfiltered Donald Trump.” Another saw value: “They’re getting his message out when the media is not.”
Finally, I asked whether Trump is growing in the job. All said yes. One credits the president’s advisers: “He’s not afraid to say, ‘These guys advise me differently than what my gut tells me but I’m going to listen to them’.” According to another, “He hasn’t tried to be the bully saying ‘It’s our way or the highway.’ That’s how he campaigned and he’s growing into the job.”
What it comes down to is, the Donald Trump I see through my lens — a president with a paucity of credibility or convictions — is not the Trump my friends see through theirs. But they’re not stupid, I respect them, and believe we all want the same virtues for our nation — security, prosperity, liberty. We just have different notions of the best ways to get there.
Greg Dobbs of Evergreen is an author, public speaker, and former foreign correspondent for ABC News.
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