1. It’s not that leaving Afghanistan (and Iraq, and Syria) doesn’t have a single downside. But I am very much in favor of getting out anyway. We can’t afford to keep spending on the order of $2.5 trillion dollars for a part of the world which is increasingly irrelevant as the US has become oil rich and indeed the world’s biggest oil producer — achieved under Trump by the way. Trump is very much anti-interventionist and wants the US to focus inward on building up our own country. Despite great ideals for spreading democracy, the US has a poor track record in the past.

[We should be using less oil every year, but as much as possible it should be US oil (we have to trade for varieties of oil that our refineries are setup to make gas from).]

2. We do not have a peace treaty with Kim, but relations are still markedly improved, particularly between North and South Korea. Kim was threatening to nuke Guam not that long ago, and testing missiles and underground nukes constantly. We’ve stepped back from the precipice. Kim walking away is part of the negotiating. Even if Trump is ultimately not 100% successful, his hard line and hard charging rhetoric still accomplished a lot with North Korea and didn’t give up anything.

3. Information sharing on who is coming into the country is essential for TSA to do their job. They need more than just the basic passenger manifests to know about who is traveling. This isn’t about illegal mass surveillance but basic systems we already had in place for many countries which were missing from even higher risk countries.

Trump absolutely uses disruption as a tool to effect rapid change. It’s impossible to know if he could have forced the countries on the travel ban list to put the systems in place without the ban to force action.

4. Yes, NATO is crucially important and the US is paying more than our fair share. There is a specific % of GDP countries are expected to pay and the US far exceeds it.

5. If ISIS was thriving you bet that it would be Trump’s fault. Generally the President at the time gets the blame and the credit for the result of wars, being the Commander in Chief.

6. Specifically Trump wants to stop incentivizing illegal immigration by closing loopholes like Catch and Release at the border, as well as increased border security, to disincentivize people and especially families from attempting the trip. Bringing a child along should not be a free ticket to remain if you are merely an economic migrant.

The media called it a manufactured crisis because they don’t want to talk about bad policy incentivizing dangerous behavior which is leading to a humanitarian crisis. The border is totally inundated with illegal immigrant families coming over, and those people need to be processed and accounted for even if you are going to turn around and just release them into the interior.

7. The Republican plan was always stated by Trump as repeal and replace. The Republican platform does stand for protecting pre-existing conditions. There are a lot of things that are not great about ACA, mostly around Medicaid expansion and how the credits work as effectively one of the biggest tax increases on the middle class ever. By the way, it is problematic if you protect pre-existing conditions to the point where someone doesn’t need to buy insurance until they get sick. ACA tried to prevent this with enrollment periods, but it can be gamed.

8. On the economy there are a massive number of things Trump has done. The biggest and most visible was going to war with the Fed when they badly misjudged with rate hikes. But slashing regulation mainly, and the tax cuts, played a big part.

9. Back to China, notably, Lou He did not cancel his trip. It’s too early to call, but past approaches have absolutely failed and the China markets took a much bigger hit after the new tariffs news came out than the US. IMO China will only respect a hardline negotiator who they know can and will use blunt instruments to force them to make concessions. I don’t know if Trump ultimately prevails but I think it’s the best chance we’ve got.