President Donald Trump is the best Democrat to have held the office since Franklin Delano Roosevelt introduced the New Deal and fought the Second World War.
Obviously, Trump is a Republican, and not a Democrat — at least, not officially, and not anymore. But his policies are those that many Democrats used to champion, and that many would still embrace, were it not for the fact that Trump and the Republicans are the ones backing those policies today.
Take, for example, Trump’s reciprocal tariffs, announced on April 2nd — “Liberation Day” — in the Rose Garden. Until the Clinton era, union-friendly Democrats like Dick Gephardt would regularly argue for tariffs, and against deals like the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). Both of the major parties, in fact, were split on trade issues, but Democrats tended to lean toward protectionism. Now, they denounce Trump’s tariffs, predicting doom.
Or take peace between Russia and Ukraine. Democrats, who long had a soft spot for communism, were easy to parody as pro-Russia during the Cold War. When President Barack Obama came into office, he adopted an appeasement strategy toward Russia that, predictably, failed.
But after Russia made a fool of Obama by invading Crimea, and after Democrats convinced themselves that Russia had stolen the 2016 election for Trump, they turned into Russia hawks.
Trump, who was far tougher on Russia in his first term than either his predecessor or successor, campaigned in 2024 on ending the war with Ukraine after several years of stalemate. Democrats have strenuously opposed his efforts to drag the two sides to the negotiating table, preferring instead to see the war continue, apparently without end.
It is Trump, Republican, who has lifted the banner of peace once carried by Eugene McCarthy and Robert F. Kennedy Sr.
Democrats used to be the pro-Israel party, while Republicans were haunted by the old prejudices of the pro-Arab “realist” establishment, as well as the antisemitic rhetoric of the nationalist right.
Today, Republicans are the pro-Israel party, and Trump is the most pro-Israel president in American history, while Democrats are somehow lining up to protest the deportation of pro-Hamas foreign activists who spread antisemitism on American college campuses.
Trump has also taken a hatchet to the “diversity, equity, and inclusion” (DEI) orthodoxy that the Democratic Party embraced from the late 1960s onward. But it turns out that many minority voters agree with him, even if many do not. Trump’s anti-woke policies, and his efforts to dismantle the Department of Education — which has done little for minority children since the Carter administration — may be the best thing to happen to the black community in years.
It is still Democratic dogma that Trump’s tax policies benefit the wealthy, and the corporate elite. In reality, the tax cuts that Trump and the Republicans are hoping to preserve this year, which they originally passed in 2017, helped middle-class Americans the most, and actually caused some wealthy Americans, in blue states, to pay higher taxes. Prior to the coronavirus pandemic, Trump’s economic policies were helping the poorest Americans achieve success.
All of these policies make Trump a standard Democrat, circa 1962 or 1984 — perhaps a Reagan Democrat. Had he been elected with a (D) after his name, and the same policies, Democrats would be carving his likeness into Mount Rushmore.
The fact that Trump is embracing traditional Democratic priorities — a focus on the working class at home, and the pursuit of peace abroad — is also a measure of how far Democrats have strayed from their own voters.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of The Agenda: What Trump Should Do in His First 100 Days, available for pre-order on Amazon. He is also the author of The Trumpian Virtues: The Lessons and Legacy of Donald Trump’s Presidency, now available on Audible. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
