There are times when Trump genuinely appears to be a changed man, and we’re experiencing one of those moments.
How many times have we been told that this is a “new Trump?” Can we even count the moments when Donald Trump “became president,” shedding his pugilistic affectation and everyman demeanor for the deportment of a statesman? Those moments abound, just barely keeping pace with political observers’ demand for them. And yet, there are times when Trump genuinely appears a changed man.
We’re experiencing one of those moments. In the aftermath of the strikes Donald Trump ordered on Iran’s nuclear facilities, he has emerged as Scrooge from the sleepless torment to which Dickens’s apparitions consigned him — his heart overflowing altruism, Trump has thrown open the shutters to bask in the adoration of the grateful, promising the streets below more charity to come.
The president appeared buoyant as he emerged from Air Force One. He beamed for the cameras before ceremonially donning a baseball cap. For the occasion, he eschewed the traditional red “MAGA” hat in favor of a white, fitted cap that read only “USA.” Jauntily, he stepped onto Dutch soil, where NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte greeted him. Later, the two proceeded to a summit of NATO nations at The Hague, where the president effused goodwill toward America’s allies.
“As far as Article Five,” the president said of NATO’s bedrock mutual defense provision. Trump trailed off for a moment. “Look,” he eventually continued, gathering his thoughts, “when I came here, I came here because it was something I’m supposed to be doing, but I left here a little bit differently.”
“I left here saying that these people really love their countries,” he said of his European counterparts. “It’s not a rip-off, and we’re here to help them protect their country.”
What a change of heart. Donald Trump has declared the NATO alliance’s security guarantees a scam so often that it has become a central tenet of the MAGA faith. What revelation has so shaken this central feature of Trump’s political persona? The nearest equivalent may be Ronald Reagan’s 1988 admission to reporters in Red Square that the Soviet Union was no longer the “Evil Empire” he had for so long assessed it to be. A sea change was upon us then. One may be upon us now.
Sure, the reversal may have something to do with the flattery which the alliance’s prudent functionaries reserve for Trump. It may also be attributable to the alliance’s adoption of Trump’s preferred defense spending targets, which have grown from 2 to 5 percent of domestic GDP, per the president’s wishes. You “will achieve something no American president in decades could get done,” Rutte told the president. “Europe is going to pay in a big way, as they should, and it will be your win.”
Flattery alone fails to explain away all the president’s magnanimous gestures. In a moment that has been promoted far and wide by the White House’s communications staff, Trump allowed himself an emotive moment, wholly unbidden, when a Ukrainian reporter asked about Ukraine’s ability to purchase American interceptor missiles. Trump quizzed the reporter on her personal conditions and the status of her family, including her husband, who is presently fighting against invading Russian forces. “They do want to have the anti-missile missiles,” Trump said. “And we’re going to see if we can make some available.”
This unprompted emotional connection seemed reflective of the president’s clearer understanding of that conflict. “As far as money goes, we’ll see what happens,” Trump replied when a reporter asked if he would seek additional funding for Ukraine after Biden-era aid tranches are exhausted. “Look, Vladimir Putin really has to end that war,” he said. “People are dying at levels that people haven’t seen before for a long time.”
As for Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelensky, once a figure of contempt among the president’s acolytes, he “couldn’t have been nicer” in Trump’s estimation. “We had a little rough times,” the president said of his meeting with Ukraine’s wartime leader, “but I took from the meeting that he’d like to see it end. I think it’s a great time to end it.” While ruminating on his experience with Zelensky, Trump offered some less charitable thoughts about the despot in the Kremlin. Trump recalled a phone call with Putin in which Moscow offered to help mediate the conflict between Iran and Israel. “I said, ‘No,’” Trump recalled, “‘you can help me with Russia.’”
Trump can be a mercurial figure. It’s wise to remember that the president can revert to a more familiar form with little notice. And yet, the hopeful might also be forgiven for wondering if the president hadn’t left the cantankerous, neo-isolationist persona he’d crafted for himself buried beneath the smoldering ruins of the Fordow enrichment plant.
Trump owes so much of his political career to his skillful exploitation of America’s snakebit post-Iraq War hangover. It is ironic that he and his precise strikes on Iran’s nuclear targets are leading the nation out of that paralyzing funk. It probably doesn’t hurt that Trump is now the recipient of effusive praise from quarters of the American right that have long regarded him with suspicion. All it took was for him to execute an operation they had advocated for the past two decades.
Regardless of the motives that led to this about-face, the results are clear and highly desirable. The “restrainers,” the iconoclastic podcasters, and anyone else who thought they could define Trumpism in the president’s stead may be despondent today — a perverse response to a strategic victory against an avowed American enemy. But the president’s own heart laughed. And that was quite enough for him.