During the 2012 campaign, Grover Norquist made a comment to the effect that the only thing he asked of the GOP nominee was to have enough fingers to hold the pen that would sign the Ryan budget. Trump has enough digits, and they appear to be large enough to hold the pen; the question is, would he sign?
On its face, no; Trump clearly has serious differences with Ryan on his spending priorities, particularly on entitlements. That said, a President Trump would be under enormous pressure from the leaders in his own party to ignore his campaign commitments and cut entitlements, and these are people with whom he would otherwise be making his amazing deals. Would we then see Don the Dealmaker, or Don the Demagogue?
The honest answer to that question is that I don’t know, and neither does anyone else, probably including Trump himself. One thing is for certain: any voter who blindly relies on his promises not to cut entitlements is making a mistake, given Trump’s willingness to change course on virtually every issue under the sun, and his need to get along with the leaders of his party to get anything done.