Very good, @zuerich. Would that people the world over adopt a similar mindset, which I believe has badly eroded in our lifetimes. By design? The answer to this question can be argued endlessly ...

My point? Simply that you have provided a balanced view, pros and cons, with some semblance of honesty, rationality, etc. Therefore, a meaningful dialog is possible.

Summed up and stating my point as succinctly as I can manage:

Reject

the "all or nothing"
mindsets of our time!

On both sides ... Your post does exactly that. "May your tribe increase" ...

More than one post, let alone comment, could be written, in response to a number of aspects of what you have shared with us. A comment on your post does not allow for that, nor does the available time.

Key to what unfolds from here?

"I don't know Trump's real intentions."

Nor do I. Nor, I would say, do very many people. He seems to operate with a remarkably strong and resilient sense of being able to "make the call" necessary, at any given point in "real time," based on his deeply ingrained sense of what is right and what is wrong. What will work and what will not.

That a "game" of "5-D Chess"(? how many dimensions would be correct?) is being played at the moment, where the stakes could hardly be any higher on who "wins?" Indisputable, IMHO ...

With that, a key mistake is making any decision about what is going on short-term, especially with the continuous and relentless "noise" from his adversaries all in synch (hard to overstate the importance of this => who / what is behind determining what they say / do in unison?) screaming how "we" are supposed to view it.

In the long-term, we will find out.

Along the way, I will personally be rejecting the "all or nothing tsunami" washing back and forth all over and around us, all the time, in the attempts to drive "the narrative" (lies) of what someone somewhere has predetermined we are "supposed" to believe.