MOST SIGNIFICANTLY, he has brought the existential threat posed by the Chinese Communist Party into the sunlight. No more nice words. . . .
Trump’s tax cuts, along with . . .
. . . massive deregulation . . . led to 3.5 percent unemployment [before the coronavirus shutdown] devastated the world. . . .
Trump took a military operating in President Barack Obama’s last years at about $600 billion and moved that budget in his third year to $738 billion, with more [to come].
The Navy necessary to meet China on the high seas, all 355 ships of it, is being planned and built.
Trump tore up the so-called Iran nuclear deal and blessed Israel’s necessary annexation of the Golan Heights. His peace plan is the closest to reality of any since Oslo.
Unca D: Mr. Hewitt's essay was written before the Trump administration brokered a landmark diplomatic deal between Israel and the U.A.E.
Trump took the United States out of the unbalanced, absurd, doomed-to-fail Paris Climate Agreement and instead focused on and delivered American energy independence. . . .
Trump ordered Iran’s master terrorist, Gen. Qasem Soleimani, killed, accomplished the complete destruction of the Islamic State caliphate and successfully hunted down its terrorist chieftain, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. . . .
The Syrian butcher, Bashar al-Assad, has twice used chemical weapons and twice had cruise missiles remind him that the red line is back and is real.
Russian mercenaries attacked U.S. troops in Syria and were mowed down. Not an American was killed. Those are “Trump rules of engagement.”
Even Cuba is back in its box, joined there by Venezuelan dictator Nicholás Maduro.
At home, Trump pushed through the long-overdue justice reform legislation and the reorganization of Veterans Affairs, and, this year, the Great American Outdoors Act that fully funds the Land and Water Conservation Fund.
House Democrats passed a piffling bill when covid-19 arrived, while Trump, McConnell and Senate Republicans advanced the innovative and massive Paycheck Program Program that kept the U.S. economy from collapsing even as it contracted . . . .
Trump got his United States–Mexico–Canada Agreement, replacing the North American Free Trade Agreement. . . .
Trump doesn’t want to deport the “dreamers” and won’t, but his deals with Mexico, El Salvador and Guatemala have helped stem the flow of illegal entries into the United States . . . .
While establishing himself as the most accessible-to-the-media president in modern times, Trump has also stripped off the veneer of objectivity from the “fake news.” . . .
Trump’s brawling, slugging, tempestuous approach to everything in every hour has worn down many, but his road is marked by these accomplishment. Former vice president Joe Biden’s near-50-year run in government is marked by . . . well, you fill that in. . . .
There’s an aesthetic critique of Trump that convinced elites that he must be beaten, that he is cruel and beneath the office. But Americans want their jobs and security back. The like the police. And, yes, most of the time they mostly admire Trump’s style and, almost always, his results.
(Hugh Hewitt, “The case for Trump will come down to his record. It’s a strong one,” washingtonpost.com, August 3, 2020 (abridged, lightly edited, emphasis added)
Comments