Donald Trump Has Learned His Lesson

If you clicked on this headline hoping that Donald Trump had some kind of epiphany and realized that he needs to reconsider some of his rhetoric and policies, such as the brutal anti-immigrant crackdown or his desire to take over Greenland, then we are sorry to disappoint you.

That’s never going to happen.

However, there is a lesson that the president has learned: When the tide is turning against him, all he has to do is pretend to have had even the slightest change of heart, and his critics will immediately back off instead of pressing their advantage.

Take the situation in Minnesota, where public opinion quickly turned against the Trump and his administration after the execution-style killing of a 37-year-old American man at the hands of masked and unaccountable federal agents.

It didn’t help that several members of his inner circle absurdly asserted that the victim was a “domestic terrorist” or wanted to massacre his killers.

None of that played well with regular Americans. In the meantime, the few non-hypocrites left in the MAGA coalition weren’t thrilled when, following Trump’s lead, one Republican after another came out against the victim’s Second Amendment rights.

To sum it up, things weren’t going well for the president.

So, what did Trump do?

He posted a couple of social media posts detailing positive conversations he had with Minnesota’s Gov. Tim Walz (D) and Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey (D) and also sent Gregory Bovino, the “commander at large” of the Border Patrol, off into the wilderness.

And, just like that, without really changing a thing, the president received a lot of favorable coverage because of his “new tone.”

The reality looks very different.

On Thursday night, when he was asked whether the federal government was pulling back from Minneapolis, Trump responded, “Not at all.”

In addition, the president posted a message on his social media site that referred to Alex Pretti, the man who was murdered in Minneapolis last week, as an “agitator and, perhaps, insurrectionist.”

Finally, Bovino is being replaced with “Border Czar” Tom Homan, who referred to the twin cities as a “theater,” which is the term the military uses to describe a war zone.

In other words, there is no new tone, and Trump managed to dupe the media again. The only question that remains is whether that will also work on Senate Democrats, who are holding up the Department of Homeland Security appropriations bill until the administration commits to making real changes to the way ICE operates.

Based on their track record, there is a good chance that they will waste this opportunity.

The same could also be said for the European countries that finally decided to take a harder line in the face of Trump’s hostile rhetoric and actions.

After the president threatened to put in place new tariffs targeting a handful of countries that stood up in the defense of Greenland, European leaders vowed to fight back in ways that would hurt the US economy.

Trump immediately backed off and said he would not try to take Greenland by force.

Will that last? Who knows?

In any case, his imperialistic threats are only one way in which he has proven to be an adversary of Europe.

And still, for now, it seems as though those drastic countermeasures are off the table.

So, yes, Trump has learned his lesson: As long as he “strikes a new tone,” his critics will immediately back off and he can continue unimpeded.