What do you think he's done right?
Not many things, for sure, but some:
- Confronting China on trade, currency and intellectual property problems it's causing
Confronting China on trade would be good if he was going about it properly. But imposing tariffs on imports from China hurts Americans far more than it hurts China. And it's hardly a good thing if Trump's trade wars lead to a recession.
and backing the Hong Kong protesters;
He is only backing the protesters because they are opposing China and he wants to be seen as tough on China. He doesn't care WHY they are protesting, and if those types of protests happened in the US he would behave far more like China than a democratically elected leader should.
- Leaning on NATO partners to shoulder their burden of defence spending rather than having them sit back and rely on the USA;
The spending levels that Trump is referring to (but doesn't understand) is not money that is paid into NATO. They aren't membership dues that go into NATO's bank account. They are defense spending goals. For example, Canada isn't meeting the goal of spending 2% of our GDP on our military. That is a goal that we agreed to meet as part of being a member of NATO... but that money isn't going to NATO.
And frankly, Canada does a lot to defend the United States. We often have to intercept Russian bombers that fly through our airspace. In a war those bombers would probably ignore Canadian targets because their goal would be to reach the US. So all of that spending we have done on air defenses and early warning radar installations in our far north has been to benefit the US.
- Making agreements with both parties in Congress over debt limits ('good' in the sense that it shows he's perfectly capable of making agreements with the Democrats and isn't always mindlessly criticising them);
I'm not sure if this has actually happened. Trump's $1.5 trillion tax break to the wealthy makes me doubt he cares about debt limits.
- Confronting Russia and backing Russia's neighbours;
Again, I don't think this has ever actually happened. If it has it has been more like "Hey Putin... don't attack your neighbours.
"
Sanctions were imposed on some Russians after Trump took office, but he resisted doing so.
- Arguably, making a deal with Kim Jong-un (sure, the deal hasn't achieved much, but 'good' in the sense that it gave Kim Jong-un the publicity he wanted without giving too much away);
This is another one of those things that I agree would be great if it was actually working as intended. But so far all that Trump has accomplished is giving Kim Jong Un more legitimacy on the world stage. How does it look to have Kim Jong Un standing next to the President of the United States as an equal, and then ignoring demands to denuclearize?
- Arguably, pulling out of the Iran deal ('good' in the sense that I've heard credible commentators criticising the original deal as made).
I don't see how a deal (any deal) is worse than no deal at all. A lot of the criticisms of the deal coming from the right are nonsense.
Another thing to consider is that Trump has maintained his power-base even though it contains groups which theoretically have conflicting objectives (for example, the foreign policy hawks vs the isolationists, or the moral conservatives vs the libertarians). This isn't necessarily a good thing, but it's a thing to be aware of. People who've supported him or worked for him have later criticised him (Anthony Scaramucci, Ann Coulter and Chris Christie all come to mind) and yet it seems to have no major effect on his popularity. However, the more noise that's made about impeaching him, the more strongly his base supports him.
Yes, he has his base under some kind of magic spell. The racist man who has committed adultery on all 3 of his wives, slept with porn stars, sexually assaulted women (and possibly children), has never read the bible, never goes to church, and is frequently blasphemous has somehow convinced the evangelicals that he was chosen by God.
The fact that he has the magic ability to hold onto his base even though he is a walking example of every one of the 7 deadly sins, doesn't make him a good leader.
