The Trump Chronicles, Volume 59: This Is Exactly What We Feared

Last month I wrote about President Trump’s admission that he was surprised that health care was complicated. This alarmed many of us as he appeared to the be last American who understood this.

Alas, he campaigned on a platform that claimed everything was easy for him and if we voted for him he would fix everything. Famously he announced that I alone can fix it, speaking about all the troubles we face.

He told us he had a plan to defeat ISIS a year ago. Several times he’s promised to defeat North Korea without telling us how. He continues to blame President Obama for the carnage in Syria but promises a solution without telling us what it is.

In the last few days he’s learned that Syria is also complicated. As I write this he is ordering an airstrike against a Syrian airfield. I appreciate he is choosing some action instead of complaining about the “mess” he inherited. But I fear he thinks this will end the conflict in Syria. It won’t. Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad won’t surrender and Russian President Vladimir Putin won’t change his support from President Assad to President Trump.

And if Syria isn’t enough, Mr. Trump is also dealing with an ongoing crisis in North Korea. President Kim Jong Un clearly allows his people to starve while he concentrates on building a nuclear weapon that can reach the United States.

As I write this, Chinese President Xi Jinping is meeting with Mr. Trump in Florida. Simply put, only China can seriously pressure North Korea to do anything, but China has little reason to do so. North Korea has no desire to bomb China and China fears not a nuclear North Korea but a collapsing North Korea. Anything that destabilizes North Korea runs the risk of creating the kind of chaos that would cause thousands, and perhaps millions, of starving North Koreans to pour into China. Clearly China doesn’t want this, and Mr. Trump could probably only suggest they build a wall.

Being President is hard, and I think Mr. Trump is only now recognizing this.

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