Author: Joe

Millions of Americans have begun the process of inoculation, leading to an eventual reality where COVID-19 becomes a bad memory. The speed of this achievement defied skeptics and amazed scientists everywhere. Along with the brilliant government researchers and innovative private sector pharmaceutical companies, President Trump deserves enormous credit for his inspiring leadership of Operation Warp Speed.

The “America First” uprising pre-dated Trump’s entry into politics, with roots in the Tea Party cause. But the movement found its indispensable leader in Trump. Not content with his upstart victory of 2016, Trump massively broadened the movement, in every sense. Geographically, Trump gained vote share in each of America’s four largest cities (New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, and Houston) in 2020 vs. 2016. He added 500,000 raw new votes in Los Angeles County alone. Among the 11 million new voters rallying to Trump’s candidacy were millions of Latinos, as the president split the Hispanic vote in Florida and gained 10 percentage points over 2016 to earn 40% of the Hispanic vote in Texas. Under Trump’s leadership, in 2020 the America First cause morphed into a large, sustainable, multi-ethnic, cross-racial workers’ movement.

For the first time in a quarter-century, Arab nations agreed to normalized relations with Israel. President Trump harnessed diplomacy combined with toughness toward Iran to forge truly historic new ties in the region. The 2020 agreement among Israel, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain represents a massive breakthrough, one that encouraged similar pacts with Morocco and Sudan.

The rally from the spring lockdown lows defied all predictions, and included massive surges in home and automobile sales, as pickup truck purchases soared to all-time highs. The U.S. economic performance was the envy of the advanced world. The U.S. stock market roared back far higher than the indices of Japan, Germany, and the United Kingdom. Simply put, in 2020 the United States was an island of growth amid an economically stagnant

Contrary to the media narrative, considerable progress has been made in building the president’s controversial border barrier, despite constant obstructionism from both Congress and the courts – and the unrelenting hostility of the press. Some 423 new miles of impressive border walling now stand guard at our southern border. Officials of Customs and Border Protection make it clear that the wall plus Trump’s “remain-in-Mexico” asylum policy regained control of our previously lawless border region.

For decades, our government pursued disastrous trade deals at the behest of K Street lobbyists, benefiting foreign nations plus the top executives of American multinationals, regardless of the harm to American workers. Donald Trump won the presidency vowing to fix these untenable trade structures, and in 2020 he signed the USMCA pact with our neighbors Mexico and Canada, a material improvement over the outdated and unfair NAFTA championed by bipartisan globalists. This success led to the Phase Two agreement with China as well, continuing the process of holding Beijing to account for its massive abuses of America via product dumping, industrial espionage, and a dearth of trade reciprocity.

This commander-in-chief pursued an America First foreign policy of realism and restraint. It paid off. As made clear by the December 2019 bombshell “Afghanistan Papers,” published by the Washington Post, Trump’s predecessors misled our citizens while wasting precious American lives and treasure during that pointless two-decade war. Trump is winding down such adventurism and reached a historic peace deal with the Taliban in 2020. Despite howls from the “America Everywhere” foreign policy establishment inside the D.C. Beltway, Trump’s deal to end the Afghan war has won rare, broad, bipartisan support among voters.

Instead of wasteful and unsuccessful mass invasions or grandiose commitments to “nation-building,” this president used surgical strikes to eradicate threats to our security. After America’s successful hit against ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi in 2019, the 2020 strike against Iranian military leader and terrorism exporter Qasem Soleimani eliminated perhaps the most dangerous terrorist in the Middle East. Soleimani directly engineered the slaughter of American troops in Iraq, and he met instant justice courtesy of American missiles in an attack ordered by an intrepid commander-in-chief.

The first new branch of the U.S. military in decades, President Trump showcased his vision as an unpredictable political leader in establishing Space Force as the sixth U.S. military branch as part of the 2020 National Defense Authorization Act. America now stands as the only country with an independent, dedicated military space force. Such foresight highlights Trump’s willingness to think in unconventional ways.

Donald J. Trump became the first U.S. president to attend the annual massive pro-life march in Washington, solidifying his stature as the most pro-life president in American history. In so doing, he fulfilled campaign promises to protect unborn life as well as religious liberty. The president boldly declared that “every child is a precious and sacred gift from God.”

The stunning recent news on employment proves, more than any other metric, the efficacy of President Trump’s growth doctrine of economic nationalism and the diffusion of power. Defying globalist skeptics from Wall Street, academia, and the corporate media, payrolls surged in America in 2019. The most recent jobs report revealed a plethora of records and extended the wage-growth winning streak to 16 straight months above a 3% pace, a mark seen only three months total during the sluggish Obama years. In addition, the fastest wage gains now flow to those groups that formerly lagged badly in the slow-growth recovery following the Great Recession. For example, the lowest 10% of earners saw income grow at an astounding 7% rate over the last year. Similarly, those without a high school diploma welcomed 9% wage acceleration in 2019.

2019 represented a seminal breakout year for the America First movement as the Republican Party changes to a workers’ party. This new focus translates, already, into significant signs of ethnic, racial, and geographic diversity for the GOP. For example, a recent CNN poll in deeply blue California reported 32% minority support for Trump vs. current Democratic front-runner Joe Biden. Similarly, recent polls by The Hill and Emerson show Latino approval for the president at nearly 40%. It is difficult to overstate the importance of this kind of minority support, both for politics and, more importantly, for the overall cohesion of our society.

Though a near-term détente in trade tensions was reached, Trump proved to the world in 2019 that tariffs can be effectively deployed to force the Chinese Communist Party into a bargaining posture. The soaring economy in America demonstrated that tough trade policy can indeed coincide with growth.

In contrast to the mostly contentious trade chess match with Beijing, Trump proved that America First hardly means America alone. The USMCA was finally ratified by the House of Representatives this year and points to a new era of prosperity with our neighbors as the global supply chain reorients from the Far East back to the Americas. Similarly, a breakthrough agreement was signed with Japan and the new U.S.-Korea trade pact took effect in early 2019.

While Nancy Pelosi dithers and corporate media obsess over the sham impeachment inquest, President Trump and Senate Majority Leader Mitch Mitchell quietly pile up a historic pace of judicial confirmations. Trump in 2019 secured his 50th federal appeals court judge in only three years, compared to just 55 for President Obama over eight years. Over the long term, remaking the federal judiciary into an originalist, constitutionalist branch of government may create Trump’s most enduring legacy.

Our country still needs to drastically reform its inane asylum laws and provide vastly more border wall funding, but nonetheless President Trump found a fair and effective near-term solution for border control by requiring asylum seekers to apply from Mexico rather than trespassing across our sovereign border. Not surprisingly, according to NPR, less than 1% of the economic migrants who apply actually qualify as refugees. Trump’s 2019 move, therefore, provides a deterrent and averted a full-scale crisis at our border.

Though admittedly not an active achievement, nevertheless the long-awaited Mueller report validated the president on two key topics. First, that no one in the 2016 Trump campaign actively cooperated with Russia or with any other foreign power. Secondly, Democratic Party chieftains such as Rep. Adam Schiff, along with a complicit media, repeatedly fed the public demonstrable lies for years about supposed “proof” of conspiracy.

The October special forces raid that eliminated the terrorist Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi proved that America can aggressively hunt down terrorists and dispense with enemies without nation-building and concomitant large-scale troop commitments. Some brave U.S. fighters, along with a terrific dog, highlighted that surgical strikes can protect our homeland without the massive outlays of blood and treasure employed by Trump’s predecessors.

Early in the Trump presidency, America became a net natural gas exporter for the first time since the Eisenhower administration. In 2019, this trend expanded in earnest, with an astonishing 60% growth rate of liquefied natural gas exports for the year. Establishing America as an energy superpower drives domestic prosperity, particularly in heartland energy regions, and facilitates affordable energy to power the on-shoring manufacturing renaissance that has produced 500,000 new factory jobs under Trump. In addition, American energy dominance benefits the geopolitical security of the entire globe.

Establishing the sixth military service branch in 2019 was pure Trump: imaginative, bold, forward-looking, and – predictably – roundly derided by establishment critics. In alignment with his outsider perspective, Trump correctly ascertains the potential of space as a warfighting domain, and that America must dominate there. As satellites increasingly guide the behaviors of our everyday lives, the U.S. Space Force will protect our security and economy far into the future, forming a lasting legacy for this most unorthodox president.

As messy and unfair as the process was, his confirmation secures another conservative jurist with an originalist constitutional approach and a restrained view of judicial power. The untimely death of Justice Antonin Scalia in 2016 crystalized for many voters the danger of allowing Hillary Clinton to fill that seat. With Neil Gorsuch and Kavanaugh in place, Trump has kept his promise to remake the high court with young, conservative thinkers.

Much of the heartland anxiety that vaulted Trump into the Oval Office emanates directly from the abusive economic warfare waged by China for decades against the United States. At long last, those workers find a champion in Donald Trump, who slapped serious tariffs upon Beijing and finally forced the regime to negotiate fairly. America now embraces its strong bargaining position and demands reciprocity in trade and an end to rampant industrial theft and piracy.

Incomes in general soared in 2018, with average hourly earnings finally eclipsing 3 percent growth for the first time since before the Great Recession. The news is even better for blue-collar workers, who now realize wage growth above that of white-collar workers for the first time in nearly a decade.

Trump proved that America welcomes equitable global commerce by cementing a badly needed modernization of NAFTA. The USMCA provides a template for other such trade pacts and effectively isolates China’s increasingly untenable posture.

Gone are the days of coddling the mullahs who have terrorized America and our allies for decades. Instead of counting the billions of dollars of cash sent via secret nighttime flights by the Obama administration, the Tehran regime now faces a U.S. leadership determined to thwart its tyranny and prevent its nuclearization.

Trump proved once again how differently he governs compared to Washington norms. Past presidents promised for decades to make this move and U.S. law has required it since 1995, but only President Trump made good on his pledge, honored our ally, and recognized the obvious reality that Jerusalem is the eternal capital of Israel.

Unlike his predecessor, who haughtily dismissed and ignored the ISIS threat as terrorists’ “JV team,” President Trump smartly dispatched limited U.S. troops to help our partners erase the territorial caliphate that had inflicted unspeakable human rights abuses. Just as importantly, Trump also announced the withdrawal of U.S. forces from Syria, placing the primary burden for ongoing stability upon regional powers Israel, Saudi Arabia and the UAE. This president will not repeat the disastrous nation-building mistakes of Presidents Bush and Obama.

If Trump is actually racist, as biased mainstream media “journalists” often claim, he’s remarkably bad at it, because people of color have thrived under the pro-growth policies of the Trump Boom. Black joblessness in 2018 reached the lowest levels ever recorded. For Hispanics, in history there have been a total of 14 months with a jobless rate under 5 percent — and 13 of those months have unfolded under the leadership of President Trump. Small business dynamism is particularly crucial for minority advancement, and small business surveys report optimism among entrepreneurs at record highs in 2018.

In the face of continual demagoguery from liberal politicians and their allies in the legacy media, President Trump took a tough and principled stance against would-be trespassers. Lawless caravans assault our sovereignty and abuse our generous asylum statutes. Such provocations validate the need for a border wall along with reforms to immigration laws.

In 2018, the U.S. surpassed Russia and Saudi Arabia to become the world’s largest producer of crude oil. Through aggressive regulatory relief and pro-energy moves like green-lighting the Keystone XL pipeline, President Trump paved the way for an independent energy future.

Trump triumphed in 2016 primarily because he spoke to the angst of the average American worker who felt – correctly – forgotten and exploited by a crony globalist system that benefited only the connected few. In 2017, the real economy accelerated, as opposed to just asset prices. Worker productivity ramped up to 3 percent in the third quarter, far above the scant 1.2 percent average of the Obama years. Truck orders surged this fall and manufacturing jobs jumped higher, as November recorded the highest gains in 15 years, according to the payroll firm ADP. Reflecting this growth, small business confidence soared as National Federation of Independent Business CEO Juanita Duggan declared, “We haven’t seen this kind of optimism in 34 years.”

Just months into the Trump presidency, their so-called caliphate has been crushed by a coalition organized and supported by the U.S. military. What a joy to see some of the world’s oldest Christian communities in the Mideast again worship freely at Christmas.

Illegal crossings have plunged as much as 60 percent vs. pre-Trump levels. Clear-eyed rhetoric and an invigorated ICE show immediate results as we reclaim control from human and drug smugglers. ICE Director Thomas Homan recently said that “the president has done more for border security and public safety than any of the six presidents I’ve worked for.”

Perhaps the longest legacy of Trump will be in the judiciary. In 2017, he fulfilled a campaign promise by getting conservative judges seated, including Neil Gorsuch on the Supreme Court and a record pace of 12 Circuit Court confirmations.

Trump did what hasn’t been done in Washington since the top movie was “Top Gun”: He signed comprehensive tax reform. I believe that immediate business expensing will become the most potent of these improvements as companies large and small will finally invest aggressively in capital expenditures – new software, plants, equipment.

The administrative state empowered the bureaucratic swamp at the expense of American entrepreneurs. By one key measure of regulatory growth — the page count of the Federal Register, which lists all new rules — Trump reduced regulation by almost 50 percent in 2017.

Trump ended the government war on groups like the Little Sisters of the Poor, and ordered exemptions for religious groups that cannot, by conscience, pay for practices they reject such as abortion-inducing medications.

Trump’s put the world on notice that America will no longer be exploited at the bargaining table with pacts that may benefit U.S. corporate chieftains but not American workers. Exiting TPP and demanding a re-negotiation of NAFTA represent important achievements for economic nationalism.

Trump signed a 2018 defense budget that features — pending congressional rollback of the 2011 budget sequester — large increases overall, including for troop salaries and missile defense. The president also finally demanded that our wealthy NATO allies pay their fair share for defense of the West.

Contrary to the unceasing mainstream media narrative, Trump pursued tough policies against Vladimir Putin and Russia. He armed the Ukraine, denounced Russian aggression in his historic Warsaw speech, and slapped serious new sanctions on Moscow. So much for being Putin’s “puppet.”