Kayleigh McEnany - Trump voters, don't let liberals mislead you on so-called 'flip flops'...Trump did not move away from his statement, the other party moved toward him.

Trump voters, beware! The left is doing its best to drive a wedge between you and your president.

  
Don’t let it happen. Funnel these allegations of “flip-flopping” and “180s” through the same alert scepticism that you used in assessing the bogus campaign charges of racism, sexism, anti-Semitism, and every other negative “-ism” falsely alleged.
Liberals will tell you President Trump is a serial flip-flopper: Syria, Russia, China, NATO, Janet Yellen, and the Export-Import Bank — all in a week! And they are outraged by this.



But if the charges of change are true, why is the left so outraged?  Shouldn’t they be thrilled?  After all, they repeatedly announced aversion to anything and everything Trump stands for. Rather than hearing a chorus of praise for Trump purportedly “changing” on the issues, we hear a chorus of contrived criticism as they empathize with “the poor Trump voter” who has been misled.  Curious indeed.  

And since when did the left ever care about the Trump voter?  They don’t!  Recall that failed Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton herself called Trump voters “deplorable” and “irredeemable.”  

The left is deceptively trying to drive a wedge between Trump and his voters with allegations of flip-flopping.  It must be exposed.

In truth, there are several reasons why Trump changed his tone in some cases and evolved in others.  For one, as relationships changed, so too did Trump’s public characterization of these relationships.

His tone toward Syria, Russia, China, NATO, and Yellen all changed on the heels of meeting with representatives of these individuals or entities.  

For instance, during the campaign, Trump declared that NATO was “obsolete” but asserted more recently that the alliance is “no longer obsolete.”  The pronouncement followed Trump’s meeting with the NATO Secretary-General.  Did Trump push the NATO chief to repurpose NATO to address the myriad of terror threats we face?  Very likely. And did he express the need for NATO allies to pay their fair share into the alliance?  Absolutely.

In other words, Trump did not move away from his statement, the other party moved toward him.  Indeed, NATO allies began to migrate toward Trump as early as December when members vowed to contribute surveillance aircrafts, air defence systems, drones, and warships to the treaty organization with the impending Trump presidency in mind.

Likewise, Trump’s shift from wanting a cordial relationship with Russia to characterizing the relationship as “at an all time low” came only after Russia either ignorantly or willingly oversaw its de facto client — the murderous Assad regime — use chemical weapons to kill its citizens.  
And this change of the facts on the ground is what led to a shift in Trump’s nonintervention policy in Syria.  The Obama administration had announced to the world: “We struck a deal where we got 100 percent of the chemical weapons out (of Syria).”  When Trump advocated for no military action in Syria, he did so under this presupposition.
When the heinous regime used gas to extinguish innocent babies on April 4th, the facts changed and so too did Trump’s position, prompting him to retaliate with 59 Tomahawk missiles in a show of American strength.
Finally, in at least one instance, Trump’s position did change without an alteration in the facts or circumstances.  After once promising to get rid of the much-criticized Export-Import Bank, Trump now professes support after learning about its propensity to help small business and bring in a billion dollars in revenue.  
But Trump was candid about his change, saying “I was very much opposed to (the) Ex-Im Bank. … Instinctively you would say it’s a ridiculous thing, but actually, it’s a very good thing and it actually makes money.”
The fact is Trump has allowed what is best for the American people to guide him, as Press Secretary Sean Spicer noted.  “At the end of the day, this is always about developing a better situation for the American people,” Spicer observed.  And as “entities or individuals… (are) evolving towards the president’s position,” — in Spicer’s words — Trump’s verbiage has appropriately reflected that.
Don’t let liberals fool you, Trump voters. The president has not changed, and nor has the left, whose ploy to cleave away Trump voters will work as brilliantly as it did in the 2016 election.

Kayleigh McEnany is a CNN political commentator who recently received her Juris Doctor from Harvard Law School. She graduated from Georgetown University's School of Foreign Service and also studied politics at Oxford University. Follow her on Twitter: @kayleighmcenany. 

thehill

coco's note:
#Hmmmm....