He won’t win anything, but President Donald Trump took tremendous strides this week toward solidifying his legacy as one of the most consequential figures in American history.
Predictably, the president’s allies suggest that peace in Gaza marks Trump’s crowning moment as a legitimate guardian of global security. Senior White House officials, Republican operatives, and longtime advisers to the president argue that his record, just nine months into office, is Nobel Peace Prize worthy, despite many privately doubting he’ll be honored on Friday.
On the other hand, some critics also concede that, should peace in Gaza hold, the president will have attained a major, positive accomplishment, even if they maintain serious concerns about his domestic agenda.
White House spokeswoman Abigail Jackson told the Washington Examiner that “with each passing day, President Trump is only further cementing his legacy as an iconic American president who has delivered historic peace and trade deals, secured the border, restored law and order, and put America back on top of the world stage.”
“For generations to come, Americans will look back on his leadership — and incredible record of success — with admiration and awe,” she wrote in a statement.
Peter Loge, director of George Washington University’s School of Media and Public Affairs, cheered Trump’s “helluva” effort in Gaza, adding that he hopes “they can pull it off.”
Still, he ultimately couldn’t predict if, in the long run, history will favor Trump’s “accolades” over his controversies.
“How history judges him is a really good question, and it will be not even the totality of his career, but the highlights that get told about the totality of his career,” he explained. “Like most people, his life is complicated, right? None of us are all good and all evil. He’s just a bit louder and a bit more public than the rest of us.”
Andrew Bates, a White House spokesman for former President Joe Biden, similarly gave tacit approval of Trump’s overseas peace efforts while harshly criticizing his actions at home.
“Everyone should want the war to end, Israeli hostages returned to their families, and suffering in Gaza stopped,” he said in a statement. “I also hope the President will stop disrespecting the patriots who serve in uniform by turning them against American cities, that the ICE officers shooting pepper balls at priests will find decency in their hearts, and that the corrupt weaponization of federal law enforcement against Trump’s critics is reversed.”
As the president courts peace in the Middle East, he’s unleashed a different kind of war on American streets, one that seems to be simultaneously targeting illegal immigrants, Trump’s political enemies, and bona fide, violent local criminals. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials in Chicago and Portland are clashing with protesters and rioters, conflicts that are only ramping up with the president’s deployment of additional military assets to those cities.
When asked about the contrast between Trump’s international Good Samaritan act and his ruthless pursuit of law and order in the states, one senior White House official simply answered, “Democrats can lie about whatever they want to lie about.”
“Anyone who pays attention can see the truth. Look at Washington, D.C., where in a very short period of time, the president drove down violent crime, got lots of bad criminals off the streets, illegal drugs off the streets, criminal illegal aliens off the streets, gang members, you know, rescued missing children,” the official claimed. “It was so successful that the Democrat mayor praised the effort. She highlighted how crime efforts went down, and there’s ongoing cooperation between the mayor and the Trump administration to continue the success.”
The official continued, claiming that opponents of the president’s crackdown, including Govs. Gavin Newsom (D-CA) and JB Pritzker (D-IL), are “trying to drum up their anti-Trump, ‘Resistance Lib’ credits because they want to run for president.”
TRUMP TAKES GAZA VICTORY LAP DURING CABINET MEETING
Ultimately, Trump’s legacy won’t fully take shape until years from now, but it’s abundantly clear that he’s already upended decades-old political norms.
“I think disruptor is a good way to put it, like a flash grenade. A whole lot of noise, a whole lot of light, and the damage is hard to assess,” Loge surmised. “If nothing else, he will go down as a guy who helped reinvent American, and possibly global, politics. Probably for some better, probably for some worse. On balance, who knows?”