Thomas Friedman, Pulitzer Prize winning columnist for the New York Times (in fact, he’s one three of them) hates Donald Trump’s guts. And his latest column makes this eminently clear.
But, embedded within his column, is an excellent analysis of why Mr. Trump is so popular with enough people who usually vote Democrat that their votes propelled him into the Oval Office.
Here it is:
It’s vital for Democrats to connect with them and take them in a constructive direction.
What issues? Here’s my list:
• We can’t take in every immigrant who wants to come here; we need, metaphorically speaking, a high wall that assures Americans we can control our border with a big gate that lets as many people in legally as we can effectively absorb as citizens.
• The Muslim world does have a problem with pluralism — gender pluralism, religious pluralism and intellectual pluralism — and suggesting that terrorism has nothing to do with that fact is naïve; countering violent extremism means constructively engaging with Muslim leaders on this issue.
• Americans want a president focused on growing the economic pie, not just redistributing it. We do have a trade problem with China, which has reformed and closed instead of reformed and opened. We have an even bigger problem with automation wiping out middle-skilled work and we need to generate more blue-collar jobs to anchor communities.
• Political correctness on college campuses has run ridiculously riot. Americans want leaders to be comfortable expressing patriotism and love of country when globalization is erasing national identities. America is not perfect, but it is, more often than not, a force for good in the world.
Don’t worry, Democrats: Mr. Friedman’s Trump-despising commentary predominates before and after this list.
But the list itself pretty much nails why, as of January 20th at noon, it became Mr. President, not Madame President.
Nice going, Mr. Friedman.
How could he be so right about that and so wrong on everything else???