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There Were No 'Decent Outcomes' in Trump's Foreign Policy

There Were No 'Decent Outcomes' in Trump's Foreign Policy

No one can honestly look back at Trump’s record and claim that it was full of “decent outcomes” when it was mostly a series of dangerous and destructive failures.

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Daniel Larison
Sep 16, 2024
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There Were No 'Decent Outcomes' in Trump's Foreign Policy
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Ross Douthat gives Trump way too much credit:

But this unfit man was already president for four years, and for three of them his personal chaos coexisted with decent outcomes [bold mine-DL] in arenas — foreign policy, inflation and immigration — where things have been much worse under the rule of the serious people, the good meritocrats, the smooth and respectable elites. And even when Covid overmastered his administration, his flailing was matched by progressivism’s period of mania, and his White House still managed to keep the middle class solvent, the stock market high, and also delivered a Covid vaccine faster than almost anyone expected.

Douthat is trying to explain why the election is as close as it is, so it is worth pointing out that his assessment of Trump’s record is badly wrong. Just take the foreign policy part. What “decent outcomes” were there in foreign policy under Trump?

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