Politics
Television and radio host Glenn Beck took to CNN to offer his thoughts on President Donald Trump's recent pivots from his earlier campaign promises to shake up Washington."My worst nightmare was that the President would ... go down this populist 'burn it to the ground' ideology," said Beck to CNN anchor Anderson Cooper on Thursday night. "The good news is he's not going that way."
After meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping last week, Trump said in an interview with The Wall Street Journal that he would not label China a currency manipulator - one of his major declarations from the 2016 campaign. The shift, Trump said, was intended to get China to help "solve the problem in North Korea."
Trump also reversed his previous statement on the Export-Import Bank, a bank that has been referred to as part of a "crony" capitalist system by the conservative factions of the Republican Party.
"But actually, it's a very good thing," Trump said in The Journal. "And it actually makes money - it could make a lot of money."
However, Beck wasn't as convinced. "The president is on the verge of beginning to look like another Republican who said stuff, didn't mean it, and turned into Reince Priebus or Paul Ryan - and that's not good," he warned.
Beck then hearkened Trump's recent change to a conversation with President George W. Bush in the Oval Office the day President Barack Obama assumed the White House.
"Candidate Obama said that he would just fly over the borders ... and if he had to, he would bomb Pakistan," Beck said. "I remember thinking, 'My gosh, you don't bomb an ally.'"
"And [Bush] pointed to his desk in the Oval Office and he said, 'Don't worry, whoever occupies that seat behind that desk ... will quickly find out that their hands are tied and they'll end up doing almost exactly as I have done.'"
"Who's he going to have left in the end?," Beck asked. "He doesn't have a core - he goes for the win. And that can be dangerous if things start to fall apart economically or in the world."