Good Trump - Bad Trump

Hostage negotiator, Adam Boehler

I know I sound like a broken record, but I can’t help but notice how much the President is doing for Israel and the Jewish people. (I say this knowing full well the absolute disgust so many of our own people - many of them Orthodox - have for the man. And for good reason. Much of which disgusts me as well. More about that later.)

This has been demonstrated again by Fox News - the network liberals love to hate and distrust. But as Chazal tell us, accept the truth from whoever says it.

There were two things Jewish discussed on Fox News Sunday that moved me to talk about this. The first was an interview with Trump’s hostage negotiator, Adam Boehler. He was asked about what seemed to be a betrayal of Israel in the administration having direct talks with Hamas. In fact, Netanyahu  adviser, Ron Dermer was reported to be outraged at that - expressing his concern directly to Boehler.

Boehler calmed Dermer down and reassured him that Trump had not changed his views. Instead, he explained that meeting with Hamas was Trump doing what I expected him to do at that meeting. He told Hamas directly that if they don’t release ALL the hostages, this will be their end.

When asked by host Shannon Bream what that means - what kind of ‘hell’ they would pay - Boehler wasn’t going to reveal exactly what that was. What he did say was that when the previous administration had opportunities to eliminate the Iranian savage butcher, IRG General Qasem Soleimani, they refused to do so for fear of the consequences. Trump, in his first term, ordered that it be done at the first opportunity, which the U.S. carried out with pinpoint accuracy. Boehler’s point was that the U.S. has ways of eliminating Hamas that are not available to Israel, and they will use them. I take Trump at his word. How much time he gives them to do that remains to be seen, but that time will surely arrive if ALL the hostages are not released soon.

Asked about Iran’s future, again, Boehler did not go into details but said that even though Israel does not have the capacity to destroy Iran’s nuclear program, the U.S. does. And should it come to that (if Iran does not agree to the terms of a verifiable nuclear deal that would include stopping their spread of terrorism) the U.S. and Israel would jointly take care of that problem. (I assume militarily).

I should add that Trump’s recognition that Israeli settlements are not the real impediment to peace but that Palestinians living in Gaza, Judea, and Samaria are, and his expression of willingness to expel them from Gaza (for starters) and maybe even Judea and Samaria, shows an unprecedented understanding of where the real problem is and who is really to blame for the impasse in the peace process.

Please do not misunderstand. As I have said before - for a variety of reasons I do not believe either of those options will happen. But the fact that the leader of the free world now acknowledges this reality is unprecedented. The reason for which is that previous administrations were unduly influenced by career Arabists at ‘Foggy Bottom’.

On the domestic front, Trump has taken the antisemitism on college campuses seriously and has actually done something about it. He didn’t just wag his finger at those schools and tell them to stop it. He threatened to cut federal funding if they don’t change the antisemitic culture  - masked as protecting free speech.

They, of course, all promised to do that and claimed they take accusations of antisemitism seriously. But on Thursday, this happened at Columbia:

Pro-Palestinian protests broke out on the campus of Columbia University and its affiliate, Barnard College, where nine people were arrested on Wednesday when police cleared an encampment. A strong and determined group of protesters chanted for a "free Palestine" and against an NYPD presence on campus Thursday afternoon…

It comes roughly 24 hours after a chaotic scene within the gates of Barnard College that saw NYPD officers in riot gear and protesters in handcuffs being physically removed from campus. Nine demonstrators were arrested and charged with obstructing governmental administration, trespassing, and disorderly conduct. They were all issued summonses and released.

The following was Trump’s response:

The Trump administration on Friday announced that it would cancel approximately $400 million in federal grants to Columbia University "due to the school’s continued inaction in the face of persistent harassment of Jewish students."

I should add that the panel that discussed this on Fox News Sunday consisted of four people, two of whom could be classified as Trump supporters, one who was a Reagan conservative, and one that served in the Biden administration. The Reagan conservative noted that he spoke to the president of Columbia, who told him that between 20% and 30% of the faculty use their classrooms to teach hate and that the rest of the faculty is silenced.

There was unanimous agreement among the panel that the last administration did not do enough to protect the civil rights of Jewish students, and that Trump was doing the right thing here.

If there is any more pro-Israel and pro-Jewish policy than this, I’d sure like to know what that is. No administration has done more to promote Israel’s right to the land of Israel - and none has done more to protect the civil rights of Jewish students than Team Trump.

That being said, Trump’s domestic policies are mixed. On the plus side, his turn toward moving the country toward the religious values of all three major faiths is something Orthodox Jews should be quite pleased with, as we should be about extending the distribution of federal education dollars equally to all citizens.

But some of his policies are a disaster of major proportion. His tariff policy is wrecking the economy. His goal of returning manufacturing to this country is noble, but it comes at the expense of the consumer. Tariffs on big-ticket items like cars (which the UAW president Shawn Fain has openly embraced) will make them out of reach for the average consumer. Retirement savings - much of which is invested in the stock market, is experiencing a freefall.

His goal of balancing the budget is also a noble goal. But taking a hatchet to the workforce in vital federal agencies like the NIH or air traffic controllers will negatively affect all Americans.

His foreign policy decision with respect to proximate neighbors, Canada and Mexico, is pretty foolish on its face. His turn against Zelenskyy and Ukraine in favor of Russia is not in the interest of world peace.

So although I could not be happier with Trump in certain areas, in other very vital areas, I could not be more disappointed.

Which brings me back to the point I always like to make about Emes. The idea of constantly defending everything Trump does is just as stupid as condemning everything he does. What we all need to do is follow Chazal’s directive to believe the truth from whoever says it. Because that is the only thing that makes sense.