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Love him or hate him, any sane observer would have to admit that President-elect Donald Trump is utterly unafraid of taking his case to the media and the people.
He’s been candidly sharing his views with The Post. And witness his big sitdown with Kristen Welker of NBC News, which aired this weekend.
Trump sat and spoke with “Meet the Press” in a pre-recorded interview in which he addressed, point blank, the lies and distortions the legacy media has been hammering him with since 2016 (NBC chief among them).
And guess what?
He’s not turning the Justice Department into his personal jackboot service (unlike Joe Biden).
He’s not going to prosecute Joe Biden unless Attorney General Pam Bondi and FBI head Kash Patel advise him to (again, a marked difference from his predecessor).
He’s not going to cut Social Security.
He’s going to stay in NATO, though — as during his first term — he expects other treaty members to keep up their financial end of the bargain.
Again, Trump has never been shy about his policy vision.
Anyone who’s paid attention at all to American politics has known he’s basically said the same things — loudly and publicly — since the 1980s, well before he ever ran for prez.
You can agree or disagree.
And tens of millions of Americans do disagree, despite his big-league election victory.
What he doesn’t do is hide in the basement for years on end.
Or obfuscate and lie about what he believes in the hopes of pandering to various party factions or winning approval from journalists.
Those were the two strategies preferred by Biden and Trump’s election opponent VP Kamala Harris.
They failed miserably, despite the eager connivance of the press (which extended in Kamala’s case to doing editorial damage control over her disastrous, word-salad answers to softball questions).
Why?
Because Americans know when politicos are ducking and dodging and cowering.
And they don’t like it, no matter the tenor of their views.
So good for Trump — and three cheers for politicians who aren’t afraid of democracy.