The Atlantic

Trump’s Character Betrays Him

In foreign policy, reputation means everything.
Source: Mandel Ngan / Getty

In the spring and again the summer of 2016, a large chunk of the Republican foreign-policy and national-security establishment publicly denounced then-candidate Donald Trump as unfit to serve as president. In the months and years that followed, those of us who took that stand have attracted a fair amount of reproach: We were a gang of unrepentant neocons; we were simply wrong about how much danger he posed; some, although not all, of us were morally suspect for having been in favor of the Iraq War.

However, we were right. And we were right because at the heart of our critique was a view of Donald Trump’s character, not his policy preferences. “He is

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