Let’s face it. Donald Trump is a divisive figure in American politics. So many people hate him for a number of reasons. Doubtless some of those reasons are self inflicted. Let’s take his performance yesterday with Pelosi and Shumer. He eviscerated them on live TV and they knew it. But then he said that sections of the wall have been and are being built. Not entirely accurate. Some sections are being repaired and other sections are being built using appropriations from previous budgets, but the wall he promised? No. I talked about this concept of whataboutism on my podcast last week, where I contend that it can be a viable technique to point out the hypocrisy of one side of an argument. One of the biggest complaints I hear is that he is a liar. “if you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor”. Sound familiar? The average American’s health care costs will go down by 2500.00 per year…maybe he just misspoke there and really meant to say premiums will go up by that amount, which is what actually happened. Clinton was impeached for lying under oath about an affair with an intern.
Trump is being accused of a campaign finance crime because he used his own money to pay off a couple of women with whom he had affairs to keep quiet. I said in my podcast that while unseemly, paying such a ransom it isn’t a crime. But, if that is a crime, What about Clinton? While occupying the oval office, he paid Paula Jones almost 1 million with taxpayer money. What about Congress? They actually have a fund set aside for paying off people accusing members of congress of sexual assault; also using taxpayer money. If trump using his own money to pay to keep an embarrassing story quiet, surely using taxpayer funds to cover up accusations of criminal activity is also a crime, no? Guess what is actually a crime though. If you said “lying under oath”, you would be correct. But wait, didn’t they tell us during the Lewinsky episode that the character of the man doesn’t matter as long as he’s handling the business of running the country?
When did the rules change? Who made that decision and was there a memo? Was there any sort of announcement letting us know about this rule change? We have record low unemployment across the board, fewer people on food stamps and the GDP has grown at twice the rate it did under Obama. There are problems like out of control spending but overall, people are much better off now than they ever were under the previous administration. Things are going so well, that Obama is attempting to take credit for it even though the economy started booming after he Trump reversed Obama disastrous policies.
Back in 2013, Obama’s budget stated that a permanent economic slowdown would be the new normal. During the summer before the election, Obama said that Trump would need a
magic wand to make his promises a reality. Turns out, they all were wrong and all he needed was a basic understanding of economics. Seems like he has the business of running the country part under control.
Those of us who voted for Trump knew what we were getting when we voted for him. He’s a reality show businessman who likes to hear himself talk, loves to tweet and doesn’t always let facts or the truth get in the way of a good story. At the end of the day, tweets and off the cuff soundbites in front of a press gaggle are not policy. Trump’s policies thus far have worked, as evidenced by the booming economy we are now experiencing. We didn’t vote for him to be any kind of moral authority. We didn’t vote for him as someone we would emulate in our day to day lives. We had no illusions about him being a devout Christian conservative or living his life the way Mike Pence or Huckabee do. No. We voted for him because we believed that he was our best shot at digging ourselves out of the hole that Obama dug for us, both domestically and on the world stage. How he is going about it isn’t always pretty or presidential, but he is getting it done.
