At this Thanksgiving Season someone needs to step forward and say thanks to President Donald J. Trump. He has given this country a period of peace and prosperity the likes of which we haven’t seen since the 1950s. And there is nothing for which to be more thankful than peace and prosperity.
Consider, in the closing months of his first term in office, so far, up until now, Donald Trump is arguably the first president in 40 years to avoid getting us into a new hot war. Media pundits don’t associate Donald Trump with peace but there you have it.
It’s human nature to adjust. We don’t seem to really appreciate something until we lose it. Comedian Bill Maher openly pines for a recession so his tribe can win the next election. But let’s hope we keep both of these precious gifts, peace and prosperity, a little longer.
Donald Trump has had a spectacular ride. Even if the media has refused to tell the story. As a candidate he had postured to be “the greatest jobs president God ever created.” The world’s economists universally scorned him and derided his economic predictions. They were denounced as mathematical impossibilities. Just before the election, the Washington Post declared that if he won, he would “destroy the world economy.” The day after his election, Paul Krugman of the New York Times predicted “a global recession, with no end in sight.” Larry Summers, a former secretary of treasury and top economic adviser to both Clinton and Obama, dismissed Trump’s budget as “ludicrous.” Summers, who had also once been the president of Harvard University, said it would work if you believed in “tooth fairies.”
“No, pigs do not fly,” said Robert Brusca, senior economist at FAO Economics. “Donald Trump is dreaming.”
But by the end of the year Donald Trump’s dreams of a prosperous America had become this nation’s new reality. His economy had effortlessly defied gravity. By the second quarter of 2018 the gross domestic product had topped 4.1 percent. Wages were up. Unemployment was down. CNN had promised “A Trump win would sink stocks.” Instead, the New York Stock Exchange broke record highs more than a hundred times.
Donald J. Trump is the sixth American president I have interviewed, and he may be the most impactful. Other presidents, such as Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, and Ronald Reagan desperately sought energy independence. Donald Trump found it.
Other presidents saw young, nonviolent drug offenders as threats to society and changed laws to put them behind bars. Donald Trump set them free and gave them a second chance.
In 1964, President Lyndon Baines Johnson had declared “all-out war on poverty and unemployment in these United States.” Johnson gave them food stamps and subsidized housing. Donald Trump gave them jobs. Six million Americans would be able to get off food stamps.
Under Trump many senior citizens saw a greater return in their retirement accounts than the 16 years of the two previous presidents, Bush and Obama.
Other presidents avoided tax reform. Even Ronald Reagan took five years to get it done. Donald Trump did it his first year in office.
Other presidents stumbled over federal Court nominations. Donald Trump put two on the Supreme Court and would appoint four times as many federal appeals judges as Barack Obama.
Many presidential candidates, including George H. W. Bush, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama, promised to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. Their promises vaporized when they won office. Donald Trump got it done.
One of the great testaments to President Trump’s accomplishments will be how many of his acts will be reaffirmed by his successors. Will a future president, Democratic or Republican, refund the $100 billion he raised from NATO nations? Will they go back to the 17,000-page NAFTA or enact his new plan which is preferred by all three countries, Mexico, America and Canada?
Will a new president now cave into China?
Will America stop talking to Kim Jong Un?
Will America go back to abandoning its citizens held hostage abroad? Or employ the Trump Doctrine that has put the economic squeeze on recalcitrant foreign governments and helped bring home 22 hostages that would have formerly been left languishing in prisons by Bush and Obama?
For the past two years I have been writing the book INSIDE TRUMP’S WHITE HOUSE. It has allowed me to interview the president and his family and get the real story of his presidency
One of my most important sources was Jared Kushner, the president’s son in law.
“There will come a day,” Jared told me, “when people will miss him greatly. He goes for the big thing and he gets it done. Nobody can keep up with the spirit in which he leads.”
On this Thanksgiving let me be one of many to say, “Thanks Mr. President.”