How Donald Trump became Washington’s unlikeliest centrist

Love or hate him, there is no denying that President Trump is on a roll, at home and abroad. 

The president secured passage of his signature “Big Beautiful” tax reform legislation that includes his “no taxes” on tips and overtime.

Most market watchers expect the economy to surge.     

His bunker-buster strike effectively de-nuked Iran’s threats against the US, Israel, and throughout the Mideast.  In the process, US deterrence — “peace through strength” — was effectively restored after the disastrous Obama and Biden appeasement policies and the Afghanistan embarrassment. Russia and China were sidelined in the region.  

And the stage is set for a historic pro-peace, pro-West realignment in the Mid-East under an Abraham framework — the stuff of which Nobel Peace Prizes are made. 

Trump also brokered a peace agreement with Rwanda and Congo, reversing the shameful blind eye of the West that enabled a horrific holocaust in East Africa in 1994.

He brokered a crucial peace deal with the India-Pakistan conflict that teetered into full-blown war between two nuclear states. The press hardly noticed, and campus protestors were tellingly indifferent. 

Trump successfully pressured NATO countries to raise defense spending to 5% of GDP — from the free-riding sub-2% mark. After being persuaded (shamed?) out of their decadent dependency on the US defense, the Europeans gushed applause for Trump like he was Dos Equis’ most interesting man in the world. 

The southern border is now closed as 80% of the American people want, with virtually no illegal crossings in May. As I predicted on these pages in February, Trump has again outsmarted the left-wing legal establishment as the Supreme Court gives him victory after victory — on deportations, pediatric gender transitions, story hours, and universal injunctions.   

The University of Pennsylvania bowed to the president on biological men in women’s sports, and the administration’s Title VI investigation into the anti-Jewish bigotry at Harvard will surely force the university to reform its increasingly intolerant and often bigoted monoculture.  

Trump also got major concessions from the Chinese on rare earth minerals, and from Canada and likely the EU on envy-taxes on US tech. 

New trade deals are on the horizon with Vietnam and elsewhere, the result of which will put American workers on a more competitive footing — a stated goal of Democrats just a generation ago.

The Cassandra predictions of the economist-left on tariff inflation seem to be another boy who cried wolf moment — the stock market is at a record high, inflation has subsided, and unemployment hovers safely around 4%.   

You can agree or disagree with the accomplishments; Democrats will argue all these policies are “authoritarian” — their shopworn epithet. 

And many may take aim at Medicaid cuts. But at 46% approval in the RealClear Polling average, Trump’s public approval is as high as any 21st-century president at this point in their second term. And there is no denying the historic pace and scope of his accomplishments. 

But there is something deeper occurring.   

Democrats are moralizing themselves into oblivion. They have become captive of a pagan religion of sorts, a messianic delusion whose meta-narrative is that Democrats are liberators of “oppressive” Western traditions.   

The problem is that few agree with this anti-Western dystopic worldview.  Most think of the West, for all its faults, as having done more than any civilization ever to lift humanity out of poverty and usher in individual rights and liberties.  

So the messianism not only places Democrats in an intellectual space out of touch with voters, it drives a culture of reflexive obstructionism, extremism, and internal contradictions that are making the party weaker, smaller, and more regional. 

De-nuclearize Iran?  “Violation of War Powers Act!” Democrats claim, ignoring that Obama dropped 26,000 bombs in seven countries in his last year in office. Secure borders and deport violent illegal migrants at a pace slower than Obama’s 3 million deportations?

Our affiliated left-wing street activists will riot in the streets. During the desegregation battles of the 1960s and 1970s, the left insisted on the critical role of federal law enforcement. Now the nihilists on the left take the opposite position. Sanctuary cities and attacking/obstructing ICE agents are fundamentally secessionist.     

Beyond this nihilism, Democrats also have to grapple with profound internal contradictions as the party attempts to coddle the “intersectional” omni-cause.  

For example, with Iran as its benefactor, Hamas is the world’s most oppressive, racist, genocidal movement today on the planet Earth. 

But Democratic mayoralty candidates like Zohran Mamdani in New York embrace organizations that drape themselves in the rhetoric and goals of the Nazi-like terror group — a group that today is executing Palestinians in Gaza who help feed starving civilians.   

Obstructionism. Cultural extremism to the point of self-contradiction. Voters used to know Democrats as a party that “builds bridges” to our future economic challenges.

But now voters know Democrats as a party that defends an ever-growing socialist welfare state headed for bankruptcy within the decade, extreme cultural leftism, Nazi terror groups abroad, failed educational institutions at home, and angry-mob street protests.  

In the wake of this, Trump slowly claims the centrist lane of American politics. Think of it — abortion (12-week ban), closed borders, balanced budgets, equal opportunity (not equal results) and anti-bigotry on campuses, peace through strength on the global stage, education reform. 

Trump is claiming the political center as the Democrats fulminate in a morality cartoon most Americans don’t recognize.