Many supporters are unfazed by reversals

Conservatives cite string of president’s recent victories.

WASHINGTON — As some on the right howled about a s e r i e s o f r e v e r s a l s b y President Donald Trump on a number of his c ampaign promises — conned, betrayed, sold out, they said — Rush Limbaugh asked his listeners last week whether any of that flip-flopping really mattered.

“See what Jeff Sessions is doing?” Limbaugh said of the attorney general, answering his own question: “Damn straight.”

“Have you seen what the job situation is?” he asked.

“Have you seen what the economic forec asts in the future are?” he went on.

The sentiment that Limbaugh was homing in on — the undented confidence that many Trump supporters have in the president as a get-thingsdone leader and deal-maker — is the reason many conservatives say they do not think Trump will suffer much as he abandons some of his policy stances. They are not inclined to punish him, they say, even after he backed off his hard lines on NATO, the Chinese and the Export-Import Bank, and ordered a missile strike in Syria after having opposed such intervention.

No matter how many people try to tell them they have been played for fools, much to their annoyance, that is not a conclusion they seem likely to reach before Trump even marks his 100th day in office.

They knew all along that they were not voting for a man with concrete convictions. And they continue to see that lack of rigidity — his preference for the transactional over the dogmatic — as a quality they want in a chief executive.

So while much of the coun- try sees the swerving on policy as another sign of White House dysfunction, many conservatives shrug it off as esoteric jockeying over foreign alliances, currency manipulation and economic policy. They are focused more, they say, on what they see as a litany of recent victories.

Ille gal border c rossings are down sharply, a development that Sessions promoted in a visit to Arizona last week. The Department of Homeland Security is accepting bids for construction of a border wall. A new Supreme Court justice adored by conservatives, Neil Gorsuch, has joined the court. And Trump signed legislation Thursday aimed at cutting off federal funding for Planned Parenthood.

“All of these things that people think are just minor issues, for people like me are huge,” said Joyce Kaufman, a conservative radio host in West Palm Beach who dismisses the cries of hypocrisy from others on the right. “They can wring their hands all they want.”

Whether or not the president was being hypocritical, many conservatives seemed not to care. And some who had been critical of Trump were cheering his more muscular approach to world affairs.

In addition to the Syria strike, the president also celebrated the bombing of an Islamic State refuge in Afghanistan, an action the longtime Trump critic and conservative columnist Charles Krauthammer wrote Friday was a sign that “America is back.”

As Trump’s policy reversals and other contentious moves draw scrutiny from the news media and criticism from his political adversaries, many Trump supporters seem to be rallying around him in the face of what they see as a relentless onslaught.

“That does tend to bond them to him — every day they see him attacked,” said Tim Phillips, president of Americans for Prosperity, which is Approve 39% Disapprove 49% Undecided 12% Approve 40% Disapprove 55% Undecided 5% Approve 48% Disapprove 52% Undecided 0% backed by the billionaire Koch brothers. The group has been canvassing voters recently in the suburban Atlanta district that will hold a special congressional election this week that many see as a bellwether for Trump’s popularity.

Listing a number of Trump’s conservative moves — Gorsuch, executive orders cutting back on regulation and proposed budget cuts — Phillips said many conservatives want to give Trump a shot.

“They’re hopeful on the policy front,” he added.

But the policy reversals have left some on the right feeling betrayed, often bitterly so. The writer and pundit Ann Coulter, in a column prominently featured on the Breitbart News home page under the headline “Lassie, Come Home,” said Trump had turned his back on supporters like her who want America less engaged in conflicts overseas.

“We want the ‘president of America’ back — not ‘the president of the world,’ ” she wrote.

Laura Ingraham, the radio host and writer, has said she worries that Trump is drifting from the tenets of his campaign: anti-globalism, a smaller military footprint and conservative populism. But she does not sense that everyone shares her disappointment.

“Trump supporters who call in to my show are all over the map,” Ingraham said.