If you watch the news on a daily basis -- enhanced by the recent death of John McCain and the Kavanaugh hearings -- you would think the country was near Armageddon. With the release of the anonymous column in the New York Times, a picture is painted of an administration in disarray and a country in peril. From what anyone can see the reality is very much the opposite.
Trump has made many missteps for which he is responsible, but some were forced upon him. During the campaign, he was abandoned by many establishment Republicans who refused to embrace him once he won the nomination. If he had to engage people like Stuart Stevens and Matt Rhoades from the failed Romney campaign, that would have been disastrous. The problem was he was left with virtually no one who came up the ranks through the normal process. He brought the likes of the seedy Paul Manafort and his cohort Rick Gates. Though their crimes had nothing to do with Trump, they left him open to being branded by their stench.
The same followed when he entered the White House. Trump did not have the long roots in the political arena to draw on to fill all the administrative spots and the rumors flew about all the people who wanted to stay away. Trump was left to employ people like Steve Bannon, Anthony Scaramucci and Omarosa Manigault Newman who should have never been near a White House. Reince Preibus could not control this circus; Trump brought in John Kelly.
It took Kelly and Trump awhile to realign the operation, but now they seem to be humming with a great cast. Some came on early, others were added later, but the list is impressive. Some of these people are as good as it gets:
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Dr. Scott Gottlieb – Food and Drug Administration
Ajit Pai – Federal Communications Commission
Larry Kudlow – Director, National Economic Council
John Bolton - National Security Adviser
General Jim “Mad Dog” Mattis – Secretary of Defense
Mike Pompeo – Secretary of State
Kirstjen Neilsen – Secretary of Homeland Security
Mick Mulvaney – Director of the Office of Management Budget and Acting Director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
Alex Azar – Secretary of Health and Human Services
Alex Acosta – Secretary of Labor
Nikki Haley – U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations
This is just a partial list of the stellar people who are in place now and making the government work for us. There are no more questionables.
Trump may have a different management style and he may throw out many ideas that are unconventional, but that is why he was elected – to shake the establishment to its core. He has done that and that is why they hate him so. It is also why many Americans love him. Our country had ossified without anyone questioning the status quo on a direct line to government controlling every aspect of our lives.
If you ever heard of zero-based budgeting that is when no department starts with what they had the prior year as a base for the next year – everything must be justified. Trump believes in zero-based governing. Just because we did it in the past does not mean we should continue in the same manner.
When Trump brought up renegotiating NAFTA again you would have thought the sky was falling. My response was simple – the agreement is 25 years old, it makes sense to reevaluate and see where it has worked and where it has not and update the agreement. To the Trump haters he was racist for demanding change. The Trump team came to agreement with Mexico first and told the “white” Canadians to come along. So much for being racist.
Trump reminds me much of Michael Milken in the 1980s. Milken was redefining how companies were financed and who would run them. The business establishment feared him and they came after him using the full force of the American government as their weapon. Yes, he plead guilty to plea-bargained, questionable charges, but it was to save the suffering of his family that was being harassed in 2 A.M. raids.
What he was guilty of was challenging the inflexible and entitled monied interests
Trump is fighting three forces:
- The Press
- The Left
- Self-Righteous Establishment Republicans
He rattles their cages. They don’t like his style and/or his politics. Whenever I sit in a public place and someone speaks to me about the mayhem Trump has caused, I ask them to look out the window. Where is the pandemonium? Where is the suffering? The only havoc is intentionally created by the people who want to bring Trump down. The suffering I see is the homeless created by failed housing and municipal policies of Democrat-run city governments.
Yet, serious leaders talk of obstruction, unindicted co-conspiring and impeachment. Senators trip over each other trying to out-hate Trump while making fools of themselves.
There have been no crimes. There is no obstruction. There is no collusion. The only reality is of a farcical investigation that detracts from the administration focusing their resources on helping the American people.
Trump may not be a conservative, but has operated as a conservative. Maybe the most successful conservative president we have ever had for the short period he has been in office.
Look at results: Consumer confidence is soaring, business confidence is soaring, manufacturing confidence is soaring, middle-class income is at an all-time high, for the first three quarters of 2018 business stats are above 800,000 per quarter – a figure never reached before, there are more job openings than job seekers, the number of people on food stamps is down, the number of people on social security disability is down. This is a huge change from the Obama years. When people express confidence in their economic lives like this it translates to every aspect of their lives. That is despite a drumbeat of negativism from the MSM.
Some look at the silly things Trump does or says, and others just shrug it off as immaterial nonsense. He is not racist. He is not anti-Semitic. He is not evil in any way. He is just an unconventional politician doing a damn good job on getting things done and changing the rot in Washington.
As I have said before, you whip up a state of hysteria and then say there is hysteria in the country; people in the end know who is responsible.
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