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Early Trump halved illegal immigration, approved pipelines and cancelled the Paris Agreement

Not surprisingly, the White House Democrats oppose Trump’s nationalist agenda and work to curb or reverse it, a goal furthered by Trump’s appointment of Gen. John Kelly to chief of staff. In this gatekeeper role, Kelly keeps the White House on an even keel by limiting who Trump sees and talks to, and even what Trump reads (perspectives from conservative websites no longer have pride of place in informing Trump’s views). As The New York Times recently reported, “Mr. Kelly has thinned out his package of printouts so much that Mr. Trump plaintively asked a friend recently where The Daily Caller and Breitbart were.”

Kelly has done his job well. The White House is more disciplined in its running and Trump is no longer being Trump. Where before he was fulfilling campaign promises in rapid-fire order, now he is delaying and even breaking them, and also succumbing to political correctness. Candidate Trump opposed sending more troops to Afghanistan; President Trump is sending them. More surprisingly, in his speech announcing his 180 on Afghanistan, Trump made no mention of either radical Islam or radical Islamic terrorism, omissions Candidate Trump would have mocked.

The toothless new Trump can also be seen in his Obama-like response to North Korea’s development of nuclear weaponry. To stop Syrian dictator Bashar Al-Assad from deploying a lesser weapon of mass destruction—chemical weapons—Obama drew a highly publicized red line, then wimped out when Assad crossed it. To stop North Korean dictator Kim Jung-Un from threatening the U.S. with nuclear weaponry, Trump threatened“fire, fury and frankly power, the likes of which this world has never seen before,” then folded when the North Koreans not only continued their threats but also unveiled a hydrogen bomb, 10 times more powerful than the atomic bombs previously tested.Trump’s policy on North Korea differs little from Obama’s much mocked “strategic patience.” Like Obama, Trump implausibly hopes that Chinese diplomacy will save him from taking decisive military action. Like Obama, Trump dithers while North Korea’s ability to harm the U.S. grows by the day, and America’s military counters correspondingly shrink.