President Donald J. Trump has already, within just a year, defied the expectations of even those of us who had adamantly supported him.
He almost instantaneously soared to frontrunner status in a field of GOP presidential contenders unprecedented both for its size and the quality of its candidates. In virtually no time, one by one, the New York City billionaire mogul who had never held political office dispatched his competitors.
With only his army of “Deplorables” behind him, Trump defied The Big GAME (Government-Academic-Media-Entertainment complex), the Regime, to make history and become the President of the United States.
The Bushes; the Clintons; the Obamas—Trump defeated them all.
Despite 90% negative media coverage—courtesy of Democratic “journalists” and commentators, along with their neoconservative, NeverTrumping counterparts—as well as tireless efforts on the part of his legions of enemies in the Deep State, the Democratic Party, and even within the GOP, the 45th president has managed to achieve a truly historic first year.
Trump has made possible record-breaking Stock Market prices. He has rolled back dozens of Obama-era regulations, to say nothing of effectively relegating Obamacare to the dustbin of history by extinguishing the insidious “individual mandate” via Trump’s historic tax plan that the Republicans passed in December. American corporations are reinvesting in America, investing in their employees, and creating tens of thousands of new jobs.
Hispanic and black unemployment rates are the lowest that have ever been recorded, and the overall unemployment rate is lower than it’s been in decades.
For the first time in 50 years, within Trump’s first year as president, the ratio of national debt to the GDP has decreased by more than one percent. In stark contrast, in Obama’s first year in office, it increased by more than 14 percent. And Trump has succeeded in doing all of this while presiding over a GDP growth rate that nearly doubles that which his predecessor witnessed annually throughout his two terms.
Trump is restructuring the federal judiciary and has seated the pro-life, conservative constitutionalist Neil Gorsuch to the late Antonin Scalia’s spot on the Supreme Court. One of the nation’s most prominent pro-life organizations, Operation Rescue, recognizing the president’s efforts to protect the lives of the unborn, described Trump as the most pro-life president in “modern American history.”
Trump drew attention to the anti-Americanism of the NFL, tangled with other pop-culture celebrities, and exposed the Fake News media for the adjunct of the opposition party that it is. He has proven, in other words, to be something of a cultural warrior.
And, according to the Heritage Foundation, a widely regarded “conservative” think tank, Trump has appropriated significantly more of its policy prescriptions than Ronald Reagan adopted in his first year (64% and 49%, respectively).
Reagan fired the air traffic controllers who went on strike. Under Trump, however, more than 700 EPA workers are now out of a job, reducing the agency’s employment levels to those not seen since Reagan’s tenure in the White House.
Oh, and ISIS has been all but decimated in Iraq and Syria—even though the president has avoided putting troops on the ground.
Trump also is to be credited for backing down Charles Schumer and the Democrats on what his White House successfully spun as “the Schumer Shutdown” of the government—a “shutdown” that didn’t last even a full three days.
His many accomplishments aside, though, all is not perfect. In fact, things are far from perfect.
First, and most importantly, there’s the immigration issue. The so-called DACA recipients, along with their apologists in the Democratic Party who are counting upon their votes, are demanding—demanding—amnesty. And the president sounds like he’s willing to grant it.
Albeit, his offer comes at a price: An end to chain migration and the VISA lottery, tougher border security, and funding for a wall along the southern border. Republicans, evidently, don’t have the votes in Congress to get what Trump wants without making concessions.
Still, the Angel Parents, those American parents whose children were murdered by illegals, will surely regard this as an act of betrayal—as will scores of others who voted for Trump largely because he was the only politician who was willing to speak the hard truth on this awful issue.
Second, border crossings, after having dropped by nearly 70 percent during the months immediately following Trump’s inauguration, have returned to Obama-era levels.
Third, the heads of sanctuary cities continue to defy federal law with impunity.
Fourth, Trump has marvelously branded his enemies in the media as peddlers of “fake news.” This being said, though, he legitimizes them by continuing to grant them access to daily White House press briefings. As Newt Gingrich has pointed out on numerous occasions, the president should shut out all of those Fake News merchants who insist upon turning the press conferences into daily circuses designed to make Trump look bad.
Fifth, since his campaign, Trump’s supporters—those who Hillary Clinton characterized as “deplorables”—have routinely been demonized and even violently attacked by leftists. Hundreds, and possibly more, have been besieged simply and solely because of their support for the president.
And last summer, Republican congressmen were shot up by a Bernie Sanders-supporter.
Yet Trump has remarked relatively little about this. He has the bully pulpit, something that he’s not shy about using ordinarily, but he has failed to draw the attention to this phenomenon of rabid, violent leftist intolerance, that it deserves.
There has been much good since Donald Trump was elected to the presidency. There are also things that are not so good. What the president and D.C. Republicans must recognize before it’s too late is that if they lose in 2018 and 2020, it’s not going to be because of Democrats and independents.
If the GOP experiences a reversal of fortunes, it will be because of folks like me.
Republicans will lose because Deplorables will refuse to any longer vote for a party that failed to support their president’s agenda.
And if Trump loses his bid for reelection, it would only be because his base felt betrayed.
So, in short, it is imperative that Trump and the GOP implement the MAGA agenda on which Trump campaigned. As long as they do this, the base will be energized and Republicans will prevail.
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