The Art of the Deal was the title of Donald Trump’s first book almost thirty years ago. We have now seen what that means in the past year: say and do anything to get what you want.
As I read the news every day since the election, I notice that he is backing away from the firebrand rhetoric that he used to rally people to vote for him. He is not going to prosecute Hillary Clinton or her Foundation. He is not going to put her in jail. He is reconsidering climate change, deporting all Muslims, and his damnation of the press. At first he refused to meet with the NYTimes. His reasoning being that the press has not treated him fairly, that they have “failed”, and he threatened to sue them for libel. He has attacked television network executives and anchors and said that the networks had been dishonest in their coverage of him. Then he decided he would meet with the NYTimes and said the meeting was “cordial”.
What is happening to Donald Trump? The art of the deal may get you in the door, but it may not keep you there. This is becoming apparent to him, I assume, as he seems to realize that he can’t bully the whole world into submission. Now he wants to be nice and have people be nice to him.
Well, that doesn’t help the more than 700 people who have been attacked, harassed and intimated by hate crimes since the election. According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, these hate crimes include anti-immigrant, anti-black, anti-LCBT, Swastika, anti-Muslim, anti-women, anti-Trump, hate group recruitment, anti-Semitic and other multiple acts. He seems to have no awareness of the world around him and what he has unleashed. It’s all a game, a deal in his favor. A President for all the people? Really? Then why is he hiring all white males for his Cabinet?
Only time will tell what Mr. Trump will give to, or take away from, the democracy of the United States and its hard won freedoms. It has taken more than two hundred and fifty years to build our country. Let’s hope he doesn’t tear it down in four.