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New York Times opinion columnist Jamelle Bouie argued on Wednesday that President Donald Trump is much more of a “normie Republican” than both his supporters and critics may lead one to believe.
Bouie’s opinion piece, titled, “Face It. Trump Is a Normie Republican,” contended that Trump has governed as a “mostly orthodox Republican” over the duration of his second term, and compared his first term to a hypothetical third George W. Bush presidency.
“Perhaps the most underappreciated fact about President Trump is that he is a Republican,” Bouie stated, noting that “nearly every commentator under the sun” has considered Trump to be unique “in ways that defy traditional categorization.”
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The columnist pushed back on the notion that Trump cannot be considered a typical Republican due to his uniqueness, arguing that the “most salient detail” about the current president is that he’s a “Republican politician committed to the success of the Republican Party and its ideological vision.”
“We saw this in his first term, with his signature legislative accomplishment, the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act. Was this his promised transformation of the American economy, the populist blow for those Americans left behind by the nation’s failed political and economic leadership?” he questioned. “No, it was a massive upper-income tax cut designed to pay huge benefits to the wealthiest Americans, including the president, his family and their friends.”
Bouie continued, listing off actions taken by Trump during his first term, summarizing that, in short, “Trump governed like a Republican.”
“And it is not a stretch to say that much of his first term was, on the domestic front, more or less indistinguishable from a hypothetical third term for the previous Republican president, George W. Bush. Trump even ended his term, as Bush did, with a rolling set of crises and disasters, each exacerbated by his mismanagement,” he added.
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The columnist claimed that Trump’s “big, beautiful, bill” lines up with “what any Republican president would do,” but has been cloaked in “the rhetoric of populism” by the president.
As far as Trump’s foreign policy goes, Bouie argued that the president’s recent strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities was reminiscent of the foreign policy of two former Republicans.
“With one decision, Trump fulfilled the dreams of a generation of Republican hawks who have been clamoring for war with — and regime change in — Iran since President Bush proclaimed that it was a member of the ‘axis of evil’ in 2002. You could, if you were so inclined, draw a straight line from that speech to John McCain’s ‘bomb Iran’ quips in 2007 to Trump’s appointment of Mike Pompeo, a noted Iran antagonist, as secretary of state in 2018 to his airstrike last month,” he claimed.
The columnist concluded that some of the “worst” aspects of the Trump administration can be chalked up to the “specific authoritarian vision” of the president and his allies — but for the most part — this is “simply what happens when you elect a Republican to the White House.”
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