by
DON
EMMERT/AFP
via
Getty
Images)
As
regular
readers
of
this
column
know,
I’m
no
fan
of
Donald
Trump’s. But
even
a
stopped
clock
is
accurate
twice
a
day.
Can
we
admit
that
Trump
has
achieved
at
least
a
couple
of
worthwhile
things?
First: The
border. For
reasons
that
I
don’t
understand,
Joe
Biden
and
the
Democrats
didn’t
mind
having
a
ton
of
undocumented
people
enter
the
country. Trump’s
stopped
that. Good,
right?
You
might
disagree
with
having
the
military
join
in
the
deportation
effort,
or
having
masked
ICE
agents
round
people
up
on
the
streets,
or
deporting
people
who
have
been
living
upstanding
lives
in
the
United
States
for
years,
or
deporting
people
legally
entitled
not
to
be
deported,
or
deporting
people
to
countries
with
which
they
had
no
previous
contact, or
…
Wait!
I
was
supposed
to
be
giving
the
devil
his
due.
Closing
the
border
is
good.
It’s
only
the
surrounding
details
about
which
reasonable
people
might
differ.
I’m
going
to
give
Trump
credit,
and
then
I’m
going
to
shut
up.
What
else
has
Trump
done
that’s
undeniably
good? Causing
our
NATO
allies
to
commit
to
spending
5%
of
their
gross
domestic
product
for
defense.
The
United
States
has
been
bearing
a
disproportionate
share
of
the
cost
of
defending
NATO
for
decades. The
United
States
and
many
presidents
before
Trump
have
been
urging
the
other
NATO
countries
to
contribute
more,
and
those
countries
have
simply
ignored
us.
They’re
not
ignoring
us
anymore;
instead,
they’re
committing
to
coughing
up
in
their
own
defense.
That’s
good.
Again,
you
might
not
agree
with
Trump’s
methods. I’m
not
sure
that
basically
threatening
to
abandon
NATO
to
get
the
alliance’s
attention
was
a
great
idea. But
anything
short
of
threatening
abandonment
didn’t
seem
to
have
worked. Thus,
you
might
disagree
with
Trump’s
methods,
but
his
result
—
having
NATO
allies
commit
more
resources
to
the
cause
—
is
a
good
one. Right?
Right.
Anything
else?
Lifting
sanctions
on
Syria
may
prove
to
be
a
good
idea,
and
that’s
probably
a
uniquely
Trumpian
achievement. Any
other
administration
would
have
insisted
on
months
of
study
before
lifting
sanctions
on
Syria. Trump
didn’t
care
about
governmental
niceties;
he
just
acted. And
the
world
may
ultimately
benefit
from
that
action. We’ll
see.
I’m
starting
to
struggle
now.
Let
me
probe
deep
into
the
recesses
of
my
mind. Did
Trump
do
anything
else
that
was
good?
In
the
first
term: Operation
Warp
Speed,
which
resulted
in
the
COVID
vaccine,
was
a
great
success,
even
if
the
Republican
Party
now
appears
to
be
abandoning
vaccines
generally. The
Abraham
Accords,
establishing
diplomatic
relations
between
Israel
and
the
UAE
and
Bahrain,
were
a
good
start. We’ll
see
where
they
go.
Uh-oh.
I’m
running
out
of
ideas,
or
imagination,
or
breath.
There
are
many,
many
things
that
Trump
has
done,
before
and
during
his
second
term,
that
are
illegal,
loathsome,
or
harmful. The
pardons,
tariff
policy,
cutting
funding
meant
for
medical
research,
threatening
Panama
and
Greenland,
shoot
—
don’t
get
me
started. I’ve
done
that
before.
But
now,
for
the
sake
of
civility,
I’m
giving
Trump
credit
where
it
seems
to
be
due.
Can
we
at
least
agree
about
that?
Mark Herrmann spent
17
years
as
a
partner
at
a
leading
international
law
firm
and
later
oversaw
litigation,
compliance
and
employment
matters
at
a
large
international
company.
He
is
the
author
of The
Curmudgeon’s
Guide
to
Practicing
Law and Drug
and
Device
Product
Liability
Litigation
Strategy (affiliate
links).
You
can
reach
him
by
email
at [email protected].