What Promise Will Trump Reverse Himself On Next?

For every complex problem, H.L. Mencken wrote, there is an answer that is neat, plausible -- and wrong. Donald Trump should write that quote on his forehead -- backwards, so it's the first thing he reads in the mirror every morning.

The billionaire Republican presidential frontrunner bedazzles his fans with easy-sounding solutions that you probably have heard before, if you hang out in enough saloons.

But he's been backpedalling so much lately that my biggest question is: What he is going to reverse himself on next?

Take, for example, his recent thoughts on the supremely important topic of nuclear weapons. Please.

As if it were not unsettling enough to imagine President Trump in charge of the nation's nuclear defense codes, he said in a late March interview with The New York Times that he was OK with letting Japan and South Korea have nukes, too. Simple, right?

But during a later CNN town hall, Trump told host Anderson Cooper that he did not necessarily want the two countries to obtain nuclear weapons; he only felt that "at some point it could happen anyway" for both countries and maybe Saudi Arabia, too.

With his plan, Trump said, "They have to protect themselves or they have to pay us."

Right. Never mind 70 years of efforts to prevent nuclear weapons from spreading to more countries. Trump's idea wouldn't sound quite as troubling if he didn't sound like he is making up his campaign as he goes along.

Earlier in March, he declared himself in favor of torture -- including waterboarding and "tougher than waterboarding" -- and even the killing of terrorists' families, if it would extract valuable information from terrorists. Never mind that people will say anything to stop being tortured, which is why much of the information gathered through torture turns out to be false. That's pretty simple, too.

Oh, and torture also is illegal. Although Trump treated that like a minor technicality, former CIA director Gen. Michael Hayden said in an interview on HBO's "Real Time with Bill Maher" that U.S. armed forces would refuse to act on such an order. "You are required not to follow an unlawful order," Hayden said. "That would be in violation of all the international laws of armed conflict."

Later at the Grand Old Party's Detroit debate, Trump scoffed at the notion of our service members disobeying his orders, including illegal orders. "If I say do it, they're going to do it," he said. "That's what leadership is all about."

But in an abrupt about-face the next day -- after resounding condemnation from lawmakers and military officials -- he declared that he would not order U.S. military to violate laws, even to fight terrorists.

"It is clear that as president I will be bound by laws just like all Americans," he said in a statement, "and I will meet those responsibilities." What a relief.

What will Trump reverse himself on next? I suggest that he abandon his ill-informed scheme to tax the remittances that undocumented immigrant workers send home to their families.

Mexicans living abroad sent a reported $24.8 billion back to family and friends in Mexico last year, according to the World Bank. More than 95 percent came from Mexicans living in the United States.

Trump wants a one-time payment of $5 billion to $10 billion, he says, to pay for his proposed wall along the Mexican border. Pay up, he says, or the U.S. will crack down with new rules to block remittances.

I'm sure that idea goes over big with his supporters, especially when he calls those remittances "de facto welfare" -- as if our government was paying for them.

But remittances are not "welfare." They amount to a massive private-sector engine of economic development.

Funded by immigrants, remittances put more food on tables and create more economic development than any government aid program. Remittances to Haiti, for example, make up more than a fifth of the island nation's annual gross domestic product, according to the World Bank, and surveys indicate they are received by more than a third of the country's adult population.

Barring immigrants from sending money legally will lead to the sending of more money illegally and more incentives for Mexicans and other desperate Latin Americans to migrate illegally into the United States.

In short, Trump's wall policy is deceptively simple, barely plausible and very wrong -- like most of his campaign.

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(E-mail Clarence Page at cpage@tribune.com.)