Remember the “new normal”? Our economic czars had simply decided anemic economic growth was the best Americans could expect and that 3 percent annualized GDP growth was out of the realm of possibility. Big government incompetence combined with Wall Street buccaneerism had almost melted down the economy in 2008. Recent presidents had doubled the debt—twice.
...How could Al Gore save us from our carbon emissions without his private jet? How could Nancy Pelosi craft drastic climate change legislation without flying to a Kona resort over the holidays?
How could Eric Holder stop prejudice without a jet junket to the Belmont Stakes with his kids? How could our Malibu elite nobly sermonize about their loyal gardeners and dutiful maids without walled estates?
How could Silicon Valley wizards pontificate about the evils of charter schools and the need for teacher unions, without private academies for their own? And how exactly could the heads of our intelligence agencies and justice department officials track down the crimes of Donald Trump without committing greater ones themselves?
Much of the Trump agenda, although nominally embraced by the Republican Party after the July 2016 convention, was largely crafted in antithesis to the bipartisan status quo that either could not or would not end illegal immigration, secure the border, call China out on warping world trade, seek greater reciprocity with allies, curtail optional military interventions, massively deregulate, expand fossil fuel production, and return the federal judiciary to a constitutional and constructionist framework.
...it is hard to calibrate whether any president has faced, from the moment of his election, the level of venom shown Trump by both political parties, and by the elite media, and the centers of progressivism on Wall Street, in Hollywood, Silicon Valley, Washington, and New York.
A country that once banned for life a clown from a state fair for wearing in puerile fashion a Barack Obama mask now ritually talks of impeaching, committing to an institution, overthrowing, or beating, burning, decapitating, blowing up, and shooting the elected president.
Certainly, we have never seen anything like the constant anti-Trump media hatred, the efforts since the election to remove Trump, in slow-motion coup style, by seeking to warp the Electoral College, to invoke the 25th Amendment and the Emoluments Clause, to unleash special counsel Robert Mueller with an unlimited budget, a toadyish media, a team of partisan lawyers and investigators, and prior help from the top echelons at the Obama Department of Justice, the FBI, the National Security Council, and the CIA.
The record of the Department of Veterans Affairs, Environmental Protection Agency, General Services Administration, IRS, CIA, and FBI between January 2009 and January 2017 does not qualify as “scandal free.”
...It’s unlikely Trump will be convicted of any crimes as outlined by the Mueller collusion investigation. It is more likely he will prove to be the most investigated, probed, and audited president in history. And even more likely, top officials at the Justice Department, CIA, and FBI will be facing eventual legal exposure for unethical and illegal efforts to damage the Trump candidacy, transition, and presidency.
For all the perceived chaos and disorder in the Trump Administration, it certainly has so far achieved a stronger economic record than did his predecessors, whether adjudicated by GDP growth, unemployment, energy production, or deregulation.
Even a shaky stock market is still much higher than it was when Trump took office. Likewise, abroad, for all Trump’s supposed unpopularity, privately most Americans and many so-called experts agree that the Iran Deal was fatally flawed, the Paris Accord was a charade, the “Palestinian” problem was ossified, a radically new policy toward China was overdue, the Pentagon needed to be recalibrated, and old American partnerships were in dire need of recalibration from NATO to NAFTA.
Victor then takes us on an exhaustive tour of our elite and concludes,
Doing mostly the opposite of what elite conventional wisdom advocated since January 2017 has made the nation stronger, not weaker.Read more here.
Strangest of all, the elite’s furious venom directed at Trump, couched in ethical pretense, has had the odd effect to remind the American people how unethical and incompetent these people were, are, and likely will continue to be.
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