The Parallels Between Nixon and Trump and Their Challenges to the Political Establishment

Nixon distrusted DC, the media, wanted to get America out of Vietnam, and on August 15, 1971 he slapped a 10 percent tariff on all imported goods.

A massive presidential political comeback that most mainstream pundits thought was impossible.

A president with deep distrust of DC bureaucrats and the liberal media.

A president trying to extricate America from a costly war, trying to reinvigorate the nation with new tariffs on foreign competitors.

Sounds a lot like President Trump, right?

But the president I was describing is Richard Milhous Nixon.

When President Nixon took office in 1969, it came after a 1960 loss to JFK in an election for the White House that few thought Nixon would recover from.

Nixon distrusted DC, the media, wanted to get America out of Vietnam, and on August 15, 1971 he slapped a 10 percent tariff on all imported goods.

Whether President Trump is consciously borrowing from Nixon’s playbook or not, the parallels are there.

He is hitting Canada, Mexico, and China with tariffs, pausing military aid to Ukraine, and defying the DC and media establishments.

Trump, like Nixon, sees the extreme costs both in Ukraine and in allowing a massive trade deficit to go unrectified.

Nixon based his foreign policy on the balance of power and believed in “more responsible participation by our foreign friends” in their own defense.

Sounds a lot like what President Trump is doing, doesn’t it?

Few realize that Trump and Nixon corresponded regularly in the 80s and early 90s.

“I think that you are one of this country’s great men, and it was an honor to spend an evening with you,” Trump wrote to Nixon in June 1982.

In December 1987, Nixon told Trump that his wife Pat had seen Trump on Phil Donahue’s talk show. “As you can imagine,” Nixon wrote, “she is an expert on politics and she predicts that whenever you decide to run for office you will be a winner!”

In 1993, on the occasion of President Nixon’s 80th birthday, Trump told Nixon, “You are a great man, and I have had and always will have the utmost respect and admiration for you. I am proud to know you.”

In his second administration, President Trump is finishing the job that President Nixon didn’t have the chance to.

In a recent New York Post op/ed, historian Niall Ferguson adroitly compared Donald Trump’s political comeback to that of Richard Nixon, recounting the many parallels between the two great statesmen.

Where Ferguson went awry in his well-researched but logically faulty piece was with his advice for Trump to change direction and not follow in the 37^th President’s footsteps. Ferguson chided Trump for his policies regarding Russia and Ukraine, which he calls “Trump Shock” as a ring back to the “Nixon Shock” policies of 1971 that included capital controls to combat rising inflation.

Ferguson stated correctly that many Europeans were deeply offended by President Trump and Vice President Vance’s press conference with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky where Trump and Vance dressed down the miniscule welfare leech on the grandest of stages. The result was a collapse in peace talks, and the U.S. deciding to finally cut off Ukraine from military aid.

In the aftermath, Europe has obsequiously groveled to Zelensky, a figure who was deified after the Russian invasion and turned into a god-like icon for democracy, human freedom, and all that is decent and wholesome in the world. Zelensky has soaked up hundreds of billions of dollars from Western allies, and Europe is apparently ready to give far more – perhaps for no other reason than to spite Trump.

If this is the prerogative for Europe, so be it. They can squander their treasure in a war zone where, as sober-minded observers have admitted for years, there is zero chance of victory for Ukraine. European nations can even put their own troops into the meat grinder if they feel hundreds of thousands of deaths is not enough, but putting America first as Trump was elected to do means removing our support from this disaster no matter how myopic and foolhardy our European “allies” may be with regards to this conflict.

Ferguson admitted in his op/ed that “the Europeans finally get that European defense is on them. The years of riding on Uncle Sam’s nuclear coattails are over. In that sense, Trump’s shock tactics worked.” This is the most important sense from the view of Trump’s core supporters. Trump was not elected to be President of Europe, he was elected to be President of the United States, and he is fulfilling his mandate even if that may ruffle the feathers of the globalist politburo.

Ferguson is an intelligent observer, but his fealty to European bureaucrats has clouded his judgment. The European powers are united around an abjectly false propaganda narrative. In contrast from his carefully curated public image, Zelensky is a petty dictator, a man who reads a script in front of the cameras on behalf of the military-industrial complex. This B-level actor is playing a role, and that role is to be a cheerleader for World War 3. The people of Ukraine are pawns in a proxy war that is about punishing Russia for supposed electoral interference and other phantoms created by an elite that cannot come to grips with how deeply unpopular and reviled they are becoming. If Europe cannot see the truth, then allow President Trump to “shock” them back to reality.

Additionally, if President Trump had been in office, there would have been no Russian incursion into Ukraine in the first place. Trump would never have hired meddlesome globalists like Victoria Nuland and put them into key positions. Trump never would have, unlike Biden, flirted with NATO expansion into Ukraine needlessly poking the Russian bear. Even though they may be ungrateful, Trump is a stabilizing force on the European continent even if many Western European countries are too boneheaded to recognize that fact. If the worst fears of Europe are realized and Putin were to advance beyond Ukraine, Trump will not stand for it. His response will be forceful and decisive. Trump’s strength will serve as a deterrent for any of Putin’s bolder ambitions.

President Trump should also look to Nixon’s engagement of China as a model for how diplomatic relations can be rebuilt with Russia after their conflict with Ukrainian winds down. Russia has been the punching bag of the contemptuous West for years, now regularly used as an excuse to upend elections when globalists do not like the results. The Western elites, including those lording over Europe, are insistent on rattling their sabers against Russia even if it means lighting the powder keg and initiating World War 3. This is not a sane, logical and rational set of behaviors. These are the actions of a late-stage decadent empire that has gone mad.

It is time for Trump to fully embrace the Nixonian comparison. He already overcame the deep state conspiracy that successfully removed Nixon from the presidency. Nixon failed only because of the institutional bureaucracy tripping him up in ways he could not have foreseen. The same tricks have failed to stop Trump, and nothing is preventing Trump from charting his course toward a truly America First foreign policy. Like Nixon, Trump is in position to make brazen maneuvers and forge unorthodox new alliances to achieve his wide-ranging goals. Any gaslighting from establishment commentators, entrenched interests and elitist bureaucrats will not be enough to weaken Trump’s iron resolve.