Today, I’m more pro-Trump than I ever have been.
A video from the summer of 2018 has resurfaced in which you watch Trump, at a fancy dinner table, quite sternly deride the NATO General Secretary for engaging in actions that cripple Germany and cause them to become more dependent on Russia. In the exchange Trump rightly predicts that such actions hurt the US because of NATO’s reliance upon our nation’s military enforcement.
Trump’s main issue in the video can be distilled into one sentiment: “It’s not fair to Americans.” He’s right; his instincts have always been quite good when it comes to foreign policy, though unfortunately he did not always follow through on them. But the motivating factor behind these instincts is what’s most important: it is not Germany or Russia that he’s worried about, it’s the country he has been tasked with leading.
I have recently come out of a political ideology that maintains a strong dislike and distrust for authoritative figures, oftentimes justifiably so. However, “every man an individual sovereign, a king for himself,” results in too much political and philosophical enslavement. Not every man is a king, and therefore, in a culture in which weakness is lifted up as a virtue, those who espouse a pathetic and degenerate version of Individualism have created an environment of perverse tyranny.
Trump is an authoritative strong-man, albeit one who struggles with words (though in the clip above he’s clear and concise, which is telling). This is why I was against him in 2016, but why I’m sympathetic to him—as well as his greatest supporters—now. Biden is weak; Putin has pounced, largely because of this weakness as well as the overall weakness of the NATO alliance.
A common trope from the Left at the moment is “the Right is now pro-Putin.” We’re not pro-Putin, we’re pro-strong leaders in a landscape in which very few are to be found. I have no qualms with saying that Putin is a better leader for his people than Biden is for his, while still not cheering on Russia’s military invasion of Ukraine. It’s as simple as that. We need better leaders.
Even as I was fully entering into the philosophical malaise of libertarianism, my instincts were fighting against this entrance as I listened to what Trump had to say at that NATO summit in 2018. At that time I thought, “Well if we’re going to have leaders, I want them to have Trump’s mindset in this: America First.” Now, I don’t feel the need to provide the opening clarification. It’s simply, “We need leaders who are America-First.”
Trump's instincts are often right. Sadly he doesn't always follow them, being oft derailed by his supposed 'advisers.'