In defense of Donald Trump

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President Trump has been in office for just over a year

The following was the script for an experimental podcast 'Traditional Americans', for which this was the lone episode: "In defense of Donald Trump".

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Hello America and welcome to the Traditional Americans podcast. I’m your host, Matthew Veasey.

After using our pilot episode last time out to introduce you good folks to myself, the podcast direction, and its social media and internet resources, this will be our first real topic-driven discussion.

So what topic would be most appropriate, most important to you, the listeners? Well, with everything that has been in the news lately, the fact remains that one man dominates the news cycle, probably more than any previous individual.

Today we’re going to talk about the Presidency of Donald Trump over the undeniably controversial, but also undeniably successful first 14 months of his first term in the highest office in the land.

There are so many directions from which we can begin a discussion of the Trump presidency to this point: his social media usage. The large and frequent turnover among his key advisors. His battles with the Democrats and with their liberal media mouthpiece. And of course, the accomplishments of his administration.

Let’s start with the positive - those accomplishments. Now, of course, most of these are only truly positive accomplishments if you’re a supporter of the president and his policies. That would mean that you need to be a conservative, because frankly, this president has accomplished more for Traditional American conservatives than any of recent decades. And that includes our beloved President Ronald Reagan.

The list of Trump administration accomplishments is indeed impressive for those of us in the conservative camp:

On jobs and the economy, we’ve seen passage of the first tax reform bill in more than three decades. This measure will mean $5.5 billion in real tax cuts to American workers and businesses.

Bloomberg has reported that the unemployment rate is expected to fall below the 4% mark by this summer. The DOW ended last week at the 24,984.45 mark. That’s up from the 18,589 on the day that he was elected back in early November of 2016.

All of these economic victories mean real jobs, real money in the paychecks and pockets, and real increases in the pension plans and 401K’s of real working Americans. No wonder Barron’s just reported that the University of Michigan Consumer Sentiment survey rose to the 102 mark, its highest level in 14 years.

Another big piece of the Trump economy success story has been the elimination of numerous stifling Obama-era regulations. The president has operated from the beginning on the position that any new regulation would have to be accompanied by the elimination of at least two. In 2017, the president actually cut 16 for every new regulation, saving an additional $8.1 billion per the Washington Examiner.

Withdrawal from the Paris Climate Agreement, which was grossly unfair towards the United States, put an end to even more looming stifling economic regulations. Withdrawal from the Trans-Pacific Partnership helped forward the cause of fair trade for American businesses, as will renegotiation of American involvement with NAFTA and the president’s recent threatened tariff increases.

President Trump has freed up agencies to further loosen the regulatory environment, which includes the Department of the Interior making 77 million acres available for gas and oil drilling in the Gulf of Mexico.

The president nominated and saw successfully seated to the U.S. Supreme Court an originalist justice in Neal Gorsuch, a move that should benefit Traditional Americans for decades to come. 

Also, President Trump has successfully placed 14 judges to the district courts, and another 14 to the courts of appeals. He currently has another 55 nominees to those two courts awaiting Senate action.

In the area of Homeland Security, the president has ended Obama’s practice of “catch and release” of illegal immigrants. He has started towards an end to DACA and chain migration. 

The president has added roughly 100 new immigration judges, and empowered ICE and local communities to boost the arrest of criminal gang members and other illegals. He has enacted a travel ban from nations that have refused to clamp down on terrorism.

He visited the southern border just this past week to examine proposed samples for the border wall. Though numerous conservative commentators, Ann Coulter chief among them, has criticized the president for not pushing ahead with actual construction, the fact remains that this is a major project which cannot be taken lightly. Trump knows construction projects. He’ll get this done, and done right.

Under President Trump, the Justice Department is making $98 million available for police departments to add an additional 802 new officers. He declared a public health emergency on opioids, with DHS announcing a new five-point strategy to combat this crisis and the administration providing $500 million towards the fight.

The president empowered military commanders, reducing the need for the White House to sign off on every mission and urging them to fight to win. These actions helped lead to ISIS losing control of almost all of its territorial control.

In just his first 14 months in office, the president has traveled to Poland and Germany for the G-20. He has traveled to the Middle East and Europe, and did what decades of American politicians talked of doing but were too afraid to act upon, recognizing Jerusalem as the capitol of Israel, our greatest ally in the Middle East. His nearly two-week trip through Asia resulted in historic deals negotiated during multiple summit meetings.

President Trump has worked to support life as well, expanding the Mexico City Policy to block foreign aid used for abortions. He has worked to block Obamacare money from going towards abortions, and to overturn Obama regulations which had blocked states from defunding abortion providers.

These are many, but they remain only a few of the triumphs of the early Trump administration.

Now let’s move to the controversial, starting with President Trump’s use of social media to push forward his agenda and communicate his political and personal opinions.

Social media is a relatively new phenomenon for American politicians to deal with. Facebook launched in February of 2004, Twitter was first created 12 years ago this month, and Instagram came into existence in October of 2010.

Each of those resources took a few years for massive numbers of people and businesses to begin using them. So while they existed during the latter part of the ‘W’ Bush administration and all through the Obama years, their usage was limited at first, and then has continued to grow, where politicians and political organizations and parties are concerned.

Donald Trump was the first major American presidential candidate to full embrace and utilize social media as a vital tool in his campaign for the presidency. After actually winning the office, some thought that Mr. Trump would ratchet back his activities on social media. Instead, especially where Twitter is concerned, the president has doubled down.

Trump was the first candidate to intentionally go over the heads of the former mainstream media outlets and take his message directly to the people. It worked. Folks responded. He sees no need to change now, and frankly, I can’t blame him.

No, Donald Trump is not the statesman that other presidents have been. No, Donald Trump does not have much of a filter. No, Donald Trump is not a traditional politician. And you know what? All of those things are fine by me. 

In fact, it is for all of those reasons that many of the 65 million who voted for him cast their ballots for the career businessman. Much of America had frankly grown tired of politicians speaking out of the sides of their mouths, or flat out lying to our faces. We saw Trump, warts and all, as a man who said what he meant and meant what he said. If he said he was going to get something done, then we believed that he was going to get it done. And you know what? He has done just that.

Democrats are never, ever going to let up on Trump. Why? Not because he might have had an affair with a porn star years before he was ever in office. Not because he fired some member of his administration, or someone from the previous Obama administration.

Democrats and their liberal media mouthpieces, especially at places like CNN, MSNBC, NPR, the New York Times, and the Washington Post, are going to continue attacking Trump all throughout his presidency for one reason only. He gets things done.

And the things that he gets done are, in the vast majority of instances, exactly those things that conservatives want done. 

No, he won’t simply cow-tow to the right. Anyone who is actually on the right, such as myself, knows full well that President Trump has numerous critics among the GOP establishment in congress and the senate. 

Some of those critics are towards his overall style and demeanor, some are towards specific individual programs or policies.

But as the litany of achievements which I ran down at the start of this broadcast outlined, this President has accomplished more for conservatives in 14 months than both Bush presidencies combined.

Staff turnover within the President’s inner sanctum is indeed an area ripe for criticism. The Brookings Institution recently released the figures: Trump’s first year turnover rate was 34%. That is twice as high as Ronald Reagan’s, who was the next highest among the last half-dozen administrations. His second year rate is an astronomical 43%, and we’re just in Mid-March. Bill Clinton’s 38% was the previous high.

However, what we need to remember is that this is a man who has never put together a political operation of this type before. He came in with a mandate from his electorate to “drain the swamp”, and it was inevitable that some who came along would not be able to hold up as he has, and would drown in that swamp.

My bet is that as the president really settles in further, he will figure out how to find the right people. Those who can not only push forward his message and agenda, but can also hold up under the D.C. spotlight.

I didn’t start out as a Donald Trump supporter. When 2016 opened and the GOP nomination process was still unfolding, I supported Texas senator Ted Cruz. I still think that Cruz can be a fine candidate in the future. My thoughts on Trump were that his populist message would resound until folks actually had to start voting. Then he would eventually get sorted out by that electorate. Instead, his message continued to ring true to many, including myself.

When the Pennsylvania Republican primary came around, I pulled the lever next to Trump’s name, something that I would never have believed just a few months earlier. 

When the November election came around, my wife and I happily went to the polls and cast our votes for Donald Trump to be the next President of the United States. We went to lunch afterward, not really sure that our candidate had a chance to win, but we both felt happy, that we had done the right thing.

That night, I was at work as the election results came in, and early on things didn’t seem too positive. However, there was still legitimate reason to hope. As the night wore on, those reasons to hope grew into possibilities. The possibilities turned into a genuine battle. The tide began to turn in that battle, and as I got home from work it was time to settle in for a long overnight election watch.

Very late at night (early morning actually), it was my home state of Pennsylvania that finally put Donald Trump over the top. By that time, it was a foregone conclusion. Everyone knew he was going to win PA, except that the networks were unwilling to make the call, possibly out of disbelief and shock.

The Democrats thought that they had this one in the bag. Hillary Clinton had celebrities in her corner, after all. The media, at least the media that they watched and read and listened to, told them that she would win, probably comfortably. When she lost, they were bitter and angry, and they remain that way today.

Donald Trump is an imperfect man. Frankly, there are no perfect men. I don’t need my President to be perfect. I don’t need him to be some articulate phony. I don’t want a person in that office who looks and sounds good, who makes folks feel good with flowery words, and then hurts my country with their actions and policies.

A Hillary Clinton presidency would have been a nightmare for America. A Bernie Sanders socialist presidency would have been even worse. The presidency of Donald Trump has been, thus far at least, a blessing from God to our nation.

My hope remains that the president will grow in office. That he will tone down his social media posting, that he will move away from his name-calling rhetoric. That he will become just a little bit more of a traditional statesman in style.

But if he does none of those things, in the end I will be fine with him as long as he continues to name conservative judges to the courts, continues to work to protect our security and business interests, and continues to put America first.

Later this coming week, our next episode of the Traditional Americans podcast is going to delve into the unmitigated mess that has become the FBI probe of the Clinton and Trump campaigns during the 2016 election. I’ll have the announcement on the availability of that podcast at our social media feeds later this week, so keep an eye out for that.

As always, you can find us on social media @TraditionalAmericans on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. You can write to us at TraditionalAmericans@verizon.net with any commentary or ideas. And if you think that you can bring something to the conversation, let me know there, and you may be invited on as a guest to a future podcast.

I hope that you’ve enjoyed this episode of the Traditional Americans podcast. Make it a regular part of your intrawebs listening experience, and please share us with your family and friends, and on social media. 

That’s all for now. Until next time, God bless you and yours, and God bless the United States of America!

NOTE: the "Traditional Americans" podcast enjoyed only two episodes, a brief introductory episode and this on President Trump.