Yes, he should stay off Twitter. But is Trump really all bad?

President Donald J. Trump and Israeli Prime Minister walk together and pose for photos on the West Wing Colonnade Monday, March 25, 2019, at the White House. (Official White House Photo by Shealah Craighead)

Playing a Bad Guy on TV

He didn’t collude with the Russians to steal the election from Hilary Clinton. He didn’t really say Charlottesville white nationalists were fine people.

Yes, David Duke likes him. But David Duke has also called the darling of the progressive left Rep. Ilhan Omar the most important member of the U.S. Congress, so Democrats can hardly hold Duke’s endorsement against Trump.

“Keeping kids in cages,” upon closer inspection, revealed a far more nuanced and in many ways much sadder story. One in which the U.S. Border Patrol was overwhelmed by an influx of children and families that was acknowledged as a humanitarian crisis by President Obama in 2014. A border agency trying and failing to operate like an immigration agency, a bad policy soon reversed, doesn’t make Trump a monster.

Many of those children were separated for their own safety; but the vast majority were simply unaccompanied. Reuniting them has been further complicated by some families refusing to take them back.

And yet, in spite of taking a near-constant beating in the press, the Trump Administration has managed to accomplish some fairly good things, according to Democratic Party standards.

Being a Good Guy in Real Life

There have been massive troop draw-downs in long-occupied Middle-Eastern nations- in direct opposition to the wishes of the military complex and political party leaders on both sides of the aisle, and a victory over ISIS.

On Trump’s watch the U.S. has seen significant criminal justice reform beginning to address racially-biased sentencing.

Israel has been more fully and openly embraced by a sitting Presidential administration at last, with Benjamin Netanyahu calling Trump recently the best friend Israel has ever had. In any other time in history, this would be great news for the Democratic Party rank and file.

North Korea is at the negotiating table and Trump is making steady progress. Even in walking away from the most recent peace talks, Trump was correct. Capitulating to what Kim was asking was exactly what American liberals were hoping Trump would not do.

Trump obviously agreed.

President Trump’s work in North Korea has even resulted in a nomination for the Noble Peace Prize. Don’t be surprised if you haven’t heard it reported on CNN or MSNBC.

I only know about this because I read Mother Jones. That’s right; I read about it originally on the extremely liberal new site Mother Jones because the writers over there made a serious miscalculation:

They thought other news outlets might cover the story.

They were wrong, of course. So their preemptively negative article, “Report: Japan Nominated Trump for the Nobel Peace Prize at the White House’s Request,” pointing out that it wasn’t exactly Japan’s idea to put forth the nomination, was completely unnecessary.

No one even knows about it.

Nor is Trump likely to receive the prize, even if he succeeds at putting North Korea firmly on the path to denuclearization. Sadly, the former U.S. Presidential recipient of the prize Barack Obama didn’t do much for its credibility.

Nobel Prize officiants were perhaps a bit premature in awarding it to someone who went on to become the ‘War President’.

That blow to the reputation of the prize is something that prize committee members have been quietly lamenting in the past years. Quietly, Obama’s name was even removed from their landing page.

Quietly, because of course no mainstream media outlets in the U.S. are even remotely interested in anything that reflects a less than stellar performance by President Obama.

He was just such a nice and likable guy. A bankable star.

The U.S. media is especially disinterested in anything that hints at, however obliquely, anything that Trump has managed to accomplish where Obama couldn’t- or wouldn’t.

Peace with North Korea, peace for the North Korean people; these are processes that are going to take many years, and could likely to outlive both administrations.

People wishing to downplay the progress for political reasons can find no legitimate reason for doing so. Or they can do so only by pretending decades of isolation in North Korea has done anything for human rights in that country, and that decades more isolation is a viable strategy for improving human rights in the future.

Words Speak Louder Than Actions

These accomplishments pale in comparison to properly talking the talk. Walking the walk is boring and doesn’t fit well in the context of 140 characters.

Twitter flame wars, grandiosity, wild hyperbole, name-calling, school-yard bullying; none of these abrasive personality traits will ever endear Donald Trump to American liberals. Unlike their liberal counterparts in South Korea, who are willing to overlook Trump’s personal foibles in light of his dealings with North Korea.

Are South Korean liberals simply capable of being more objective where Trump is concerned, or are they only single-issue voters? Understandable, since their single issue would be aversion to dying in a nuclear strike.

As far as public perception, Trump is the opposite of Bill Clinton: Bill Clinton can make a lie sound like the truth. Donald Trump can make the truth sound like a lie. Liberals shouldn’t like Bill Clinton, but they do. Liberals should like Donald Trump, but they don’t

Is a charming lie really better than a rude truth?

What is more important to American voters, style or substance?

(contributing writer, Brooke Bell)