Im still having a hard time comprehending what I just read. Its the last thing you’d expect someone as left leaning as Mr. Morgan to say. Pretty sure hell just froze over.
Donald Trump, according to his many critics, is the single most divisive, stupid, bigoted and unpopular president in American history.
To say Trump is ‘polarizing’ is to massively understate the sheer enormity of hatred that exists toward the billionaire tycoon who won the White House just over a year ago.
On social media, every minute of every day, I see hysterical liberals screaming themselves digitally hoarse with rage at his very existence.
I have friends, and indeed family members, who can’t utter his name without physically shuddering.
To them, Trump epitomizes the very worst kind of leader and the very worst kind of American.
To many Donald Trump is the most divisive, stupid and bigoted president in history. Some refuse to even utter his name. But there’s one thing even his most vociferous enemies cannot continue to deny, and it’s this: Donald Trump delivers on his promises
Yet, there’s one thing even his most vociferous enemies – and that is a historically high volume of human beings – cannot continue to deny, and it’s this: Donald Trump delivers on his promises.
Of course, in the main, they’re not promises his opponents actually wanted him to keep, but that is beside the point.
When you win an election, you also win the right to carry out the pledges you made as a candidate. That is the inherent bedrock of democracy.
And judging Trump entirely from that perspective, he is beginning to really, REALLY deliver.
In the past week alone, there were three perfect examples.
First, Candidate Trump repeatedly vowed to ‘wipe the hell out of ISIS’.
Now, within a year, the Islamist terror group that gained so much ground and support during Barack Obama’s tenure – he dismissed them as a “J.V. team” – has been routed from Syria and Iraq.
To put this into proper context, at one stage ISIS held land equivalent to West Virginia and was aggressively expanding its geographical ‘caliphate’.
Now they’ve been driven out of both countries with astonishing speed.
Experts say this success is down to Trump authorizing his military commanders, led by secretary of defense Gen. James Mattis, to do what they needed to do without getting bogged down by slow-moving, agenda-driven politicians in Washington.
Brig. Gen. Robert Sofge, the top US Marine in Iraq, said he and his men ‘enjoyed not having to deal with too many distractions’ and ‘there was no question about what the mission in Iraq’ now was.
Yahya Rasool, a spokesman for Iraq’s Ministry of Defense, agreed: ‘I was not optimistic when Trump first came to office,’ he said, ‘but after a while I started to see a new approach. I saw how the coalition forces were all moving faster to help the Iraq side more than before. There seemed to be a lot of support, under Obama we did not get this.’
Then-president Obama dismissed ISIS as the ‘JV team’ and, according to Iraq’s Ministry of Defense, he didn’t offer them the support Trump has given. Now ISIS has been driven out of Iraq and Syria in the past year with astonishing speed
Nobody is complacent about the ongoing threat of ISIS and its supporters continuing to commit terrorist acts on civilian soil as they are driven from the battlefield.
But the importance of kicking them out of Iraq and Syria cannot be overstated.
Second, the President has enjoyed similar success on the domestic economic front.
At every campaign rally, Candidate Trump promised to preside over economic growth, gets jobs going again, and stock markets roaring.
He’s doing all that.
Unemployment is at a 17-year low, hiring is strong – last Friday’s jobs report showed 228,000 new jobs in November – GDP expanded 3.3% in the third quarter, and the stock market keeps breaking new records.
All this after America’s supposedly leading economist Paul Krugman tweeted on election night: ‘It really does now look like President Donald J. Trump, and markets are plunging. If the question is when markets will recover a first-pass is never.’
Financial experts put this success down to Trump unburdening America of many of the over-draconian and panicky regulatory barriers put in place after the 2008/9 crash.
As a result there is a new spring in the step of the US economy, a tangible surge in confidence after years in the post-crash doldrums.
Riding the wave of all this optimism, Trump has just got his much-vaunted $1.4 trillion tax overhaul approved in the Senate.
If it succeeds how he says it will – and it’s a very big ‘if’ – then he will head into the 2020 election with a massive, possibly unbeatable head of steam. Very few US presidents in history have ever lost if they’ve run again on the back of a surging economy.
Trump is thus achieving an almost unique feat of being personally disliked in almost unprecedented levels – his approval ratings have plummeted to 32% in some polls – but being increasingly lauded for his handling of the economy, a new Gallup survey showing him with a 45% approval rating for this key issue.
Third, Candidate Trump promised to confirm Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and to move the US Embassy there from Tel Aviv.
Last week, he announced both things.
I personally think it’s a dangerous and unnecessary move, but you can’t say he didn’t vow to do it if he got elected because he did, repeatedly.
Candidate Trump promised to confirm Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and to move the US Embassy there. Last week, he announced both. I personally think it’s a dangerous and unnecessary move, but you can’t say he didn’t vow to do it. Here, a sign in Jerusalem
These three momentous things follow a long line of promises Trump has kept.
He has moved to renegotiate NAFTA, pull out of the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal, walk out of the Paris climate accord, target the Iran nuclear deal and start work on his ‘big, beautiful’ wall along the Southern border (just the threat of it has led to a 38% fall in illegal immigrants coming over that border since he was elected).
The Supreme Court even recently approved his revised and very controversial travel ban on residents of seven predominantly Muslim countries.
Again, regardless of what you think of it, this was something Trump said he’d do and he has done it.
By contrast, Obama – an eloquent, intelligent and thoughtful man liked and admired by almost the entire world – abjectly failed on many of his biggest promises including pledges to close Guantanamo Bay, get new gun control laws, create a path to citizenship for undocumented illegals, reform Washington, and end the war in Afghanistan.
Donald Trump is an imperfect president in many ways and I say that as someone who has known him as a friend for ten years and likes him.
He’s an inflammatory tweeter, picking fights with anyone and everyone from Kim Jong Un to Gold Star widows. We’ve never seen a president behave this way and it terrifies people,
He flies fast and loose with the truth, though in that regard he is not a rare specimen in the world of Washington, or indeed global politics.
And he does truly dumb, offensive and totally unnecessary things like retweet unverified anti-Muslim videos by the racist Britain First organisation, then obstinately refuse to undo the retweets when he is told exactly who they…