I was #NeverTrump. I've changed my mind.

This is one part of a point-counterpoint pair of articles. The other article is here.
One of my favorite lines from Dirty Dancing (yes, I’m okay with admitting I liked it) was when Jerry Orbach’s character told Patrick Swayze’s character, “I know you weren’t the one who got Penny in trouble. When I’m wrong, I say I’m wrong.”
After nearly a year with President Trump at the helm, it’s time for me to echo Jerry’s words.

President Trump, I know you’re not the one keeping the GOP in trouble. When I’m wrong, I say I’m wrong.

Before I get into why I’ve changed my mind, let me tell you what I expected and therefore why I was #NeverTrump to begin with. It all started with his speech at the Republican National Convention. Until then, I was skeptical, but the speech sealed it for me that he was not going to make a good president. From there, I realized he would be an awful president, perhaps only slightly better than Hillary Clinton. I looked at Gary Johnson. Nope. I looked at Evan McMullin. Nope.
There was something he said that caught my attention, though the words he said immediately afterwards were the focus for most in the media. “I have joined the political arena so that the powerful can no longer beat up on people that cannot defend themselves. Nobody knows the system better than me, which is why I alone can fix it.”
Most of the media zoomed in on his statement that “I alone can fix it,” but the part for me that stood out was, “so that the powerful can no longer beat up on people that cannot defend themselves.”
What a hypocrite! He has always been the powerful man who beat up on people who couldn’t defend themselves. From the moment he received the first batch of investment money from his family, squandered it, then got more money from them, he’s exemplified the abusive power of rich people. Of course, I’m okay with that. I don’t prescribe to the liberal falsehood that the powerful keep the powerless down. That’s what concerned me about Trump’s statement. He was making this about taking down the bad guys at the top. That’s all well and good, but it’s a progressive perspective. It’s the foundation of progressive perspectives. It’s the rallying cry for socialism, communism, and eventually despotism.
Things only got worse from there. His actions, words, and of course the “Access Hollywood” video made me wonder if he really was going to be slightly better than Clinton. At the end, I voted for him. Reluctantly.

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What’s changed?

Neil Gorsuch has been pointed to by many conservatives as justification for putting in Trump. I’ll give him a little credit though others on his list were more to my liking. That alone is not enough, though, to make me change my mind.
What ended up doing it for me is the body of work he’s accumulated without the help of Congress. I’m no fan of executive orders, but after a flurry of mostly righteous orders in the beginning that reversed many of Obama’s failing orders, he started calming down. The ones he ended up putting in place, from the various travel bans to pulling back on Obamacare to trying to cutting the bureaucracy down to size were all positives. I started saying fewer and fewer bad things about him because he simply wasn’t doing very many things worthy of complaint.
Then, there was Jerusalem. That’s what sold me. He did what every President should have done since 1967. This isn’t a 22-year-old endeavor. It’s a five-decade-old series of failures by American Presidents, including Ronald Reagan, that Trump finally corrected.
Things may change. He may start doing some of the things I feared. He could put out a peace agreement that includes a two-state solution. He might even move forward with his (or really Chuck Schumer’s) atrocious infrastructure scheme. If those things happen, I’ll reevaluate. Until then, I support the President of the United States. Now, if we could only get Congress to do something.