The 'Never Surrender' President Retreats - Molly Ball WSJ

This week, President Trump said he had “no intention” of seeking the ouster of the Federal Reserve chairman, Jerome Powell—despite having called for his “termination” just a few days earlier. Hours later, he allowed that tariffs on China were “not going to be that high”—weeks after escalating them to 145%.

All in all, it was an unusual week for a president whose rallying cry has long been “never surrender.”

Those weren’t the only fronts on which the past week saw Trump backpedal. Having once pledged to broker peace in Ukraine immediately upon taking office, he now says the U.S. could walk away from the conflict entirely if the deal he’s put forward isn’t accepted. And having once boasted that DOGE would radically downsize the federal government, Elon Musk said this week he would step back from the effort, having reduced its top-line goal by 90%. “He was always going to ease out,” Trump told reporters Wednesday.

Taken together, the reversals were a startling pattern for a president who prides himself on never backing down, potentially denting his political brand as an unflinching fighter. As the 100-day mark of Trump’s tumultuous second term draws near, the climbdowns were a signal that his ebbing popularity may be forcing him to moderate some of his lofty goals.

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Many of Trump’s maximalist promises are better understood as trial balloons, and he has a skill for spinning reversals to his advantage, said Marc Short, who served as chief of staff to Trump’s former Vice President Mike Pence. But Short said he viewed the tariff climbdown as qualitatively different because it constituted Trump backtracking on one of his core beliefs in the face of adverse consequences. “He has a remarkable ability to pivot and present a new position as if it was always the old position. It’s one of his political talents,” Short said. “But he truly believes that we can bring a nostalgic manufacturing golden age back to America through tariffs, so that walkback is a little more stark.”

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To be sure, no president can be expected to fulfill all his campaign promises, which are rightly seen as aspirational, and voters have long accepted that Trump’s outlandish bluster isn’t necessarily meant to be taken literally. Where detractors see flip-flopping, Trump’s supporters see flexibility. Trump has acknowledged that unpredictability is a tactic he uses to his advantage: In an interview with The Wall Street Journal’s editorial board last October, he said Chinese President Xi Jinping wouldn’t dare cross him, “because he respects me and he knows I’m f— crazy.”

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