Trump critic changes his tune

 Newsmax:

A New York Times opinion columnist and self-proclaimed "Never Trumper" conservative says it's time for President-elect Donald Trump's "perennial" critics "to drop the heavy moralizing and incessant doomsaying" concerning the next chief executive and his incoming administration.

Bret Stephens, in a recent column, wrote that after nine years, he no longer considers himself a Never Trumper. He says that he and others like him never truly understood what made Trump popular and effective.

"Who, and what, is Trump?" Stephens asked. "He's a man and the symbol of a movement. The man is crass but charismatic, ignorant but intuitive, dishonest but authentic. The movement is patriotic — and angry."

Some of that anger, Stephens added, is "correctly directed at a self-satisfied elite that thinks it knows better but often doesn't."

Also, Stephens said, Trump understood during the 2024 campaign that "ordinary people" cared greatly about the high cost of living and the migrant crisis at the southern border.

The columnist basically said he and other Never Trumpers were hypocritical and ignorant when it came to Trump.

"How come so many who denounce Trump as a sexual predator were, 20 years earlier, Bill Clinton's steadfast defenders?" the columnist wrote on Dec. 17. "Why were the same people who demanded investigations into every corner of the Trump family's business dealings so incurious about the Biden family's dealings, like the curiously high prices for Hunter's paintings?"

In creating fear by insisting Trump could lead the U.S. into World War III, was too friendly with Russian President Vladimir Putin, and would ruin the Republican Party, Never Trumpers overstated the possibilities, according to Stephens.

"[We] missed that his working-class appeal would also reach working-class minorities — like the 48 percent of Latino male voters who cast their ballots for him last month," Stephens wrote. "And we were alarmed by Trump's protectionism and big-spending ways. But the economy mostly thrived under him, at least until the pandemic."

When it came to the Capitol attack on Jan. 6, 2021 – the No. 1 reason Stephens voted for Vice President Kamala Harris this year – Never Trumpers misread that, too.
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The Trump critics in the past were wrong about Trump on many levels especially when it came to the fear of World War III.  

Their attacks on Trump's business were also misplaced.  Having done legal work on large real estate projects the due diligence of lenders usually precludes the kind of shenanigans that have been asserted about the Biden family business.  Trump was building hard assets which resulted in a flow of funds to pay back lenders and fund operations.