Trump loves making enemies and that's a problem: Column

Most Americans would probably tell you that they adore exhibitions of uplifting rhetoric from our presidents. They tell themselves they want to hear about the better angels of our nature, and how there really are no red or blue states. They tell themselves that, but it’s more an aspiration than a candid self-evaluation.

Americans love political combat. The theater of politics requires well-defined good guys and bad guys, and President Trump is nothing if not a master showman. In creating adversaries to make himself look good, however, Trump is encircling himself with enemies. It’s a strategic choice he and his administration may soon come to regret.

It is a testament to the Democratic Party’s decimation over the course of the Obama years that Trump and his team feel the need to create new and different opponents. Chief among them is the political press. On Day Two of his presidency, Trump confessed that he is prosecuting a “running war with the media.” Within a week, White House chief strategist Stephen Bannon had told The New York Times, “The media here is the opposition party.” Four days later, Trump himself said the same thing.

Making an antagonist out of the political press has its benefits. It unites the right and channels conservatives’ long-held antipathy toward what they regard as a carefully tended, ideologically homogeneous garden of like-minded liberals. As a political strategy, though, turning media into the “opposition party” is of limited utility.

Media didn’t force Trump to sign a sloppily implemented order on refugees with no forewarning on a Friday evening. Media didn’t prevent interagency consultations or compel poorly briefed U.S. officials to improvise. Media didn’t create a brigade of sympathetic victims of an inflexible government. Media didn’t compel a variety of federal judges to put emergency injunctions on this draconian regulation. In short, media didn’t thwart the president’s ambitions; it was the courts, judges, and the American Civil Liberties Union. On top of that, the order was a gift to a Democratic Party desperate for organic enthusiasm. The assurances of the Trump faithful aside, this is not what winning looks like.

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The news media are far from the only enemy Trump has cultivated in a busy two weeks in the Oval Office. He has not only prioritized renewed confrontation with America’s traditional adversaries and competitors, such as Iran and China, he is roiling relations with allies as well.

Trump won a victory when House Speaker Paul Ryan pledged to secure up to $14 billion to build a physical barrier along the border with Mexico. But that was not enough for him. He had promised his supporters revenge for the perceived slights done to them by America’s Mexican neighbors, and he would have satisfaction.

So Trump signed an executive order that seemed to explore ways in which the Mexican government might be punished for not reimbursing U.S. taxpayers for the cost of the wall. Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto quickly canceled a planned trip to the Washington, and his government promised it would respond with “mirror action” if the U.S. slaps tariffs on Mexican imports. Trump’s antagonism has already led to a grassroots boycott of U.S. goods and U.S.-based companies in Mexico.

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This week, The Associated Press reported that Trump told Nieto he might send U.S. troops into Mexico to handle his “bad hombres” because “I think your military is scared.”  Trump’s trade adviser, Peter Navarro, accused Germany of being a currency manipulator — of gaming the Euro’s value to “exploit” the U.S. And according to sources on both sides of the Pacific, Trump had a bitterly confrontational call with the prime minister of Australia, of all places.

Trump surely doesn’t regret being seen as ruthlessly pursuing “America First” foreign, immigration and trade policies. If that rankles friend as well as foe, then so be it.

But the problem with creating enemies at this pace is that, eventually, you’re surrounded. As a Republican president, Trump’s only true opposition is the Democratic Party and its liberal base. The longer he and other Republicans take their eye off the ball — focusing instead on the media, the ACLU, the courts, Mexico, China, and who knows how many enemies of the people yet to come down the pike — the stronger their true opponents will get. And 2018 is right around the corner.

Noah C. Rothman is the associate online editor for Commentary magazine. Follow him on Twitter: @NoahCRothman.

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