REAGAN, TRUMP, AND THE UPSIDE OF AGE

A young Donald Trump meets President Ronald Reagan

By Michael Cook      

Much has been made of the fact that Donald Trump vanquished 16 challengers on his way to winning the 2016 Republican nomination. But scarcely anyone bothered to note at the time that Trump, aged 70, was the oldest among the many contenders.

There are plausible explanations for this inattention to Trump’s age. As a campaigner, Trump worked tirelessly, and scheduled more interviews and rallies than any of his younger rivals. Indeed, the man seemed never to sleep.

Then, too, the working press may have considered it somehow indelicate to focus on Trump’s age, given that the leading candidates for the Democrat Party’s nomination were just as old, or older.

Finally, it’s quite likely that the issue of age and the presidency had been settled several decades earlier, with the election, at age 69, of Ronald Reagan.

Perhaps it’s true: seventy is the new fifty. In any event, Ronald Reagan and Donald Trump are the two oldest men ever to have won the presidency.

Reagan and Trump share another circumstantial similarity: each came to power as an outsider, and followed in the wake of a failed presidency. The hapless Jimmy Carter, who preceded Reagan, preached a doctrine of resignation in the face of crippling stagflation. Trump’s predecessor, Barack Obama, exhorted the nation to accept and embrace a “new normal” consisting of low workforce participation and perpetually anemic GDP growth.

Neither Carter nor Obama believed sufficiently, if at all, in the idea of American Exceptionalism. Theirs were failures of both leadership and imagination.

Ronald Reagan, the Hollywood actor, always appreciated the power of imagination. He urged his fellow citizens to think of America in the way John Winthrop described it: as “a shining city on a hill.” Countering the despair and futility of the Carter years, Reagan assured Americans that the nation’s best days lay ahead.

Donald Trump, the builder, announced his firm determination to restore American greatness. And it is fitting that a builder should succeed the president who proclaimed – in one of his few memorable utterances – that “you didn’t build that.”

President Reagan’s advanced age, much remarked upon at the time, actually proved a great benefit to the nation, owing both to his personal experiences and to the things he learned (and did not learn) as a young man.

Reagan was born in 1911, in a small apartment situated above the local bank, on the main street of Tampico, a tiny town on the Illinois prairie. Reagan’s father Jack was a salesman, and the family moved often, always renting their homes, and always living in modest circumstances.

But easily the most prosperous period of Ronald Reagan’s youth took place in Dixon, Illinois, where the family landed in 1920. Jack Reagan had become a partner in a retail venture, the Fashion Boot Shop.

In his autobiography, Ronald Reagan recalls that it was in Dixon that “I learned to admire risk takers and entrepreneurs, be they farmers or small merchants, who went to work and took risks for themselves and their children, pushing the boundaries of their lives to make them better.”

If things seemed to be looking up for the Reagan family in Dixon, so too was the nation beginning to prosper under the administration of President Calvin Coolidge. Reagan entered Dixon High School in 1924, just as Coolidge was winning election to a second term.

President Calvin Coolidge

The Coolidge years proved to be one of the most dynamic periods of innovation and economic growth in American history. Coolidge and his treasury secretary, Andrew Mellon, implemented dramatic cuts to marginal income tax rates, and the resulting economic boom produced a near 50% increase in federal tax receipts (which Coolidge and Mellon used to pay down federal debt). During the Coolidge years, inflation averaged 1.5%, and unemployment averaged 3.0%. And Calvin Coolidge, a believer in limited government, actually reduced the size of the federal workforce.

The youthful Ronald Reagan must have been paying attention. Richard Reeves, in his President Reagan: The Triumph of Imagination, notes that Reagan would, as an adult, read Coolidge’s autobiography twice. And, following his inauguration in 1981, Reagan chose to display Coolidge’s portrait in the Cabinet meeting room. Members of the press seemed puzzled by this gesture; of course, few (if any) of them were old enough to have lived through the Coolidge presidency.

Following his graduation from Dixon High School, Ronald Reagan headed off to college. His college search was limited to one school, Eureka College, located a few hours south of Dixon, and operated by the Disciples of Christ, the denomination to which Reagan and his mother Nelle belonged.

In his autobiography, Reagan explains that “Eureka… is a Greek work that means I have found it, and it described perfectly the sense of discovery I felt the day I arrived there in the fall of 1928.”

As an economics major at Eureka College, one thing that Dutch Reagan would not discover was the work of John Maynard Keynes. Keynes’ General Theory did not appear until 1936, by which time Reagan was a college graduate working in Iowa as a radio broadcaster. (Radio, by the way, was among the most important technological innovations to emerge during the Coolidge years.)

Reagan studied classical economics at Eureka College, and his understanding of how markets operate would have been informed by Adam Smith’s “invisible hand” metaphor, rather than by Lord Keynes’ prescription that government should, whenever necessary, intervene in the economy to stimulate demand and thereby eliminate periodic recessions from the business cycle. As a student, Reagan missed out on the Keynesian revolution in economic thinking, and this is significant. As FDR proved in the 1930s, and as Obama would demonstrate 80 years later, Keynesian policies tend to prolong rather than eliminate recessionary conditions.

Ronald Reagan continued to study economics throughout his lifetime. The columnist Robert Novak interviewed Reagan at the White House in 1981 for the purpose of gaining insights into Reagan’s influences. The new president cited, among others, the nineteenth century political economist Frederic Bastiat, as well as members of the Austrian School, F.A. Hayek and Ludwig von Mises. Novak returned to his office following the interview and, after looking up Bastiat, remarked to his partner Rowland Evans that Reagan was actually more widely-read and better educated than they were.
 
During Reagan’s so-called “wilderness years” of the late 1970s, the free market economists of the Chicago School began their remarkable Nobel Prize winning streak. Milton Friedman, the most prominent among them, worked effectively to discredit Keynesian fiscal policy, and later assessed Keynes’ influence as “wholly bad.” It was an influence Ronald Reagan managed to avoid.

Reagan was doubtless aware of the ascendency of the Chicago School and, in fact, subsequently appointed George Schultz, a former dean of the University of Chicago Graduate School of Business, as his secretary of state.

Having witnessed the prosperity of the 1920s, and having studied economics in college prior to the advent of Keynesian theory, Ronald Reagan assumed the office of president particularly well-equipped to govern, in the 1980s, in such a way as to re-create the tremendous and sustained economic growth last experienced during the administration of Calvin Coolidge.

In 1946 Ronald Reagan was 35 years old and a major box office attraction in Hollywood. Across the country in New York City, Donald Trump was born into comfortable circumstances. His father Fred developed housing in the borough of Queens, where Donald grew up.

After attending a military boarding school, Trump enrolled in college – first at Fordham and then at Penn – to study business. He graduated from Penn’s Wharton School of Finance in 1968.

Whatever brand of economics Trump may have studied in college, it is probable that most of his training took place within the classroom of his father’s business, against the backdrop of New York City’s rough and tumble real estate market. But this much is certain: as a young man starting out in the business world, Donald Trump witnessed at first hand the calamitous circumstances of the New York City financial crisis of the mid-1970s.

Soon thereafter, in the wake of the Watergate scandal, the nation turned to Jimmy Carter, who promised to restore honesty and integrity to the presidency. Unfortunately, Carter appeared ill-equipped to deal with an ever-worsening economy – one that was characterized by runaway inflation, extremely high borrowing rates, stagnant growth, and severe energy shortages. In response to these miserable conditions, Carter admonished Americans to turn down their thermostats in winter, put on sweaters, and get used to lower living standards.

Meanwhile, Republicans in Congress began to attach tax reduction amendments to every new piece of legislation. All of these amendments (known as Kemp-Roth) were effectively killed until, in October of 1978, a bill that included one such amendment finally passed both houses of Congress. As Brian Domitrovic recounts in his history of the supply-side movement, Econoclasts, President Carter cancelled a weekend trip to Camp David in order to veto the legislation – thus precluding, in Domitrovic’s view, any chance of an economic recovery and any chance of Carter’s re-election in 1980.

Donald Trump celebrated his 30th birthday just a few months prior to Carter’s election in 1976. As someone whose business, real estate development, is especially sensitive to interest rates and the cost of capital, the mid- to late-1970s could not have been, for Trump, a period that inspired much confidence in government. It is therefore likely that Trump would have taken special note, in January of 1981, of a particular passage in Ronald Reagan’s inaugural address: “In the present crisis, government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem.”

By 1986, Ronald Reagan had fully-implemented his supply-side program of tax cuts and regulatory relief, and Donald Trump, now aged 40, was both observing and participating in the tremendous economic expansion that Reaganomics engendered. But the view from his office window in Trump Tower troubled him. For six long years, New York City’s municipal government had been engaged in a seemingly futile effort to rebuild Central Park’s Wollman skating rink. With no end in sight, Trump issued a challenge to Mayor Ed Koch: Let me take over this project. I’ll complete it in six months. Or you can wait another six years.

After a bit of wrangling, Trump assumed responsibility for completing the project. He brought it in under budget. And it took him only five months.

Donald Trump’s public comments over the next 30 years would often point to what he characterized as the declining status of the United States within the world community, and to the ineptitude of the government officials who were responsible for America’s falling fortunes. When Trump at last decided to put himself forward as a candidate for president, it is clear that he took as his model the nation’s last great president, Ronald Reagan.

Recall that when Reagan challenged the incumbent president in 1980, his appeal to voters was simple and straightforward: “Let’s make America great again.” In 2016, Trump adopted Reagan’s appeal, but re-phrased it as an injunction: “Make America Great Again.” And it worked. Trump managed to re-assemble enough of the old Reagan Coalition to prevail over Hillary Clinton.

Thus far into his presidency, Donald Trump’s demeanor and tone recall the original outsider in American presidential politics, Andrew Jackson. It is obvious that Trump admires the fiery (and frequently tempestuous) Jackson, and a portrait of Old Hickory now hangs prominently in the Oval Office.

But consider for a moment what Donald Trump is actually doing as president – in terms of tax and regulatory policies, in terms of foreign affairs, and in terms of judicial appointments. All of this can be fairly and accurately characterized as Reaganesque.

In the cases of Ronald Reagan and Donald Trump, our two oldest presidents, age has played a fortuitous and crucial role. This is not to suggest that age alone sufficiently determines a politician’s preparedness to lead successfully. Hillary Clinton, for example, is just as old as Donald Trump, but she appears utterly unappreciative of the achievements of the Reagan presidency. (Indeed, in 2008 she berated her primary opponent, Barack Obama, for acknowledging the obvious fact that Reagan had been a “transformative” president.) And to the extent that one can divine her political principles, Hillary Clinton’s thinking appears to have been shaped primarily by Saul Alinsky, the subject of her college thesis (and more recently, perhaps, by Willie Sutton).

Occasionally, a bold leader will emerge from outside the established political order. Such a leader will help us to recall the better moments in our history, and to honor the statesmen who so ably presided over them. As Americans, we are fortunate that Ronald Reagan came along when he did, and that he was able to remind us of the achievements of President Calvin Coolidge. Today, we are similarly fortunate to have as president a man who remembers and seeks to emulate – programmatically if not stylistically – the great statesman Ronald Reagan.


Michael Cook is a friend of this blog and lives in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and Aiken, South Carolina.

President Trump's 2018 State of the Union Address

President Trump at The Heritage Foundation’s Annual President’s Club Meeting

Father Rutler: The "Christ of Nations"

Fr. George Rutler

In the nineteenth century, the poet Adam Mickiewicz dramatized the theme of his suffering Poland as the “Christ of Nations” and, in an image used by many others, Poland was crucified in the twentieth century between the two thieves of Soviet Russia and Nazi Germany. It was not the West’s proudest moment when President Roosevelt complained to Stalin at the Yalta Conference that “Poland has been a source of trouble for over five hundred years.” Pope John Paul II lamented Yalta in the encyclical Centesimus Annus. That will resonate in the annals of papal teaching more than recent magisterial concerns about the responsible use of air conditioning and the like.

On July 6 in Warsaw, the President spoke of a culture with which a generation of “millennials” have been unfamiliar: “Americans, Poles, and the nations of Europe value individual freedom and sovereignty. We must work together to confront forces, whether they come from inside or out, from the South or the East, that threaten over time to undermine these values and to erase the bonds of culture, faith and tradition that make us who we are.”

Comfortable journalists, for whom the “Christ of Nations” is an enigma, resented “a tiny speech, a perfunctory racist speech,” “xenophobic” and “a catalogue of effrontery,” and a comparison was made with Mussolini. Solzhenitsyn once was pilloried for similar themes, and Reagan was advised by his Chief of Staff and National Security advisor not to tell Mr. Gorbachev to take down the Berlin Wall.

The Warsaw speech mentioned three priests: Copernicus, John Paul II and Michael Kozal. The latter was the bishop of Wloclawek who was martyred by the Nazis in Dachau along with 220 of his priests in 1943.

Among the irritations in the Warsaw speech were these words: “We put faith and family, not government and bureaucracy, at the center of our lives.” As that was being said, the parents of a gravely ill child, Charlie Gard, in London were tussling with government officials who did not want to release their infant to them.

A Polish philosopher, Zbigniew Stawrowski has written: “The fundamental cleavage is not the West v. Islam or the West v. the rest, but within the West itself: between those who recognize the values of Judaeo-Christian, Graeco-Roman culture and those who use terms like "democracy," "values," "rights" but pervert the latter. So it means democracy of the elites, values of secularism, rights to kill Charlie Gard, marriage that has nothing to do with sex, sex that … is a “private” matter to be funded by the confiscatory state and your duty to support this incoherence…”

The Polish king Jan III Sobieski rescued Christian civilization at the gates of Vienna in 1683. That was one of the “troubles” that Poland has caused in the past five hundred years. We survive because of such behavior.

Father Rutler’s book, He Spoke to Us – Discerning God's Will in People and Events, is now available in paperback through Ignatius Press.

Father Rutler’s book, The Stories of Hymns – The History Behind 100 of Christianity’s Greatest Hymns, is available through Sophia Institute Press (Paperback or eBook) and Amazon (Paperback or Kindle).

Melanie Phillips: Trump in Poland

In his magnificent speech in Poland, President Trump asked whether the west “still has the will to survive”.

If he’d listened to BBC Radio’s Today programme this morning (approx 0840), he might have lost his own.

The issue that seemed to have startled the BBC was the suggestion that there were now threats to western bonds of culture, faith and tradition. (The fact that some of us have been writing about this for years has of course totally passed the BBC by). Two guests were invited to discuss this question: Margaret MacMillan, professor of international history at Oxford university where she is also Warden of St Anthony’s college, and Lord Dannatt, former Chief of the General Staff.

The interviewer’s loaded question about Trump’s speech, “Is he in any sense right?” invited them to agree that no, there could be no sense in which he was. Both duly agreed. Three against Trump, then. But if anything illustrated precisely what he was talking about, this conversation could scarcely have been bettered.

Opined Professor MacMillan: “There are bonds that hold us together and there are often bonds of history, but the idea there is something called ‘the west’ seems to me very dubious indeed. There are many wests, there are many different ways of looking at who we are, and I’m worried by the whole tenor of his speech. The talk of the ‘will’, the family, traditional values, what does that all mean?”

Lord Dannatt was equally perplexed. “What threat does he have in mind? From Russia? Islamic State? From climate change? Well he ruled that one out by pulling out of the Paris agreement. Or is it the nuclear threat from North Korea?”

Helpfully, the interviewer observed that what Trump had meant was a waning of cultural self confidence; he further ventured to suggest, with appropriate BBC diffidence, that “the project that we’ve all been involved in for centuries is a decent one”.

Professor MacMillan agreed there was a “decent side to what the west has done”. But just in case anyone might have thought she believed it to be better than other societies, she added there were many sides that weren’t decent at all “when you think of some of the things we’ve unleashed on the world” (presumably as opposed to the unlimited decencies that countries which don’t subscribe to respect for human life, freedom and democracy have bequeathed to humanity).

She conceded that the west had built a “liberal intentional order since the first and second world wars”. She agreed that respect for the rule of law and democratic institutions were very important and that these should be defended. “But if you talk about defending the power of the west and the dominance of the west that’s very different and I’m not sure that does make the world more stable… What worries me is that part of the enemy is seen as those who live among us… Islam, or Islamic fundamentalism, is [as presented by Trump] in some way a threat, and that means not just from outside but inside and that to me is really troubling”,

This professor of history, who teaches the young and thus transmits the culture down through the generations, didn’t even seem to know what that culture was. She implied that the will to survive was something out of Nietzsche or fascist ideology rather than the impulse to defend a society and a civilisation. She seemed to find incomprehensible the very idea that certain values defined western civilisation at all, or that it had a coherent identity.

She found something frightening or sinister about traditional values or the emphasis on the family: the very things that keep any society together. The one good thing she conceded was associated with the west – the “liberal international order” – had developed only after the two world wars. So much for the 18th century western Enlightenment, the development of political liberty and the rise of science.

The idea of the west having power filled her with horror; but without power the west can’t defend itself. And she thought the idea the west was threatened from within as well as from without was “troubling”. In other words, she doesn’t believe home-grown radicalised Islamists pose a threat to western countries. Now that really is troubling.

As for Lord Dannatt complaining Trump wasn’t specific about the threats he had in mind – well, talk about missing the point! Russia, Isis and North Korea are all threats to the west. The question was whether the west actually wanted to defeat any or all of these and more.

And Lord Dannatt’s reference to climate change was unintentionally revealing – about himself. Climate change supposedly threatens the survival of the planet. No-one suggests it poses a threat to the west alone! So it was irrelevant to the issue under discussion. Its inclusion implies that Lord Dannatt knows one thing: that Trump is wrong about EVERYTHING. So he just threw in climate change for good measure to show how wrong about everything Trump is.

So what exactly did Trump say to produce such finger-wagging disdain? Well, he produced an astonishing, passionate and moving declaration of belief in the west, its values of freedom and sovereignty and his determination to defend them.

He summoned up Poland’s resistance against two terrible tyrannies, Nazism and the Soviet Union, to make a broader point about western civilisation. Most strikingly, he identified Christianity as the core of that civilisation, that it was Christianity that was crucial in Poland’s stand against Soviet oppression – and that, in an echo of Pope Benedict’s warning years ago, the west has to reaffirm its Christian values in order to survive.

“And when the day came on June 2nd, 1979, and one million Poles gathered around Victory Square for their very first mass with their Polish Pope, that day, every communist in Warsaw must have known that their oppressive system would soon come crashing down.  They must have known it at the exact moment during Pope John Paul II’s sermon when a million Polish men, women, and children suddenly raised their voices in a single prayer.  A million Polish people did not ask for wealth.  They did not ask for privilege.  Instead, one million Poles sang three simple words:  ‘We Want God.’

“In those words, the Polish people recalled the promise of a better future.  They found new courage to face down their oppressors, and they found the words to declare that Poland would be Poland once again.

“As I stand here today before this incredible crowd, this faithful nation, we can still hear those voices that echo through history.  Their message is as true today as ever.  The people of Poland, the people of America, and the people of Europe still cry out “We want God.”

“Together, with Pope John Paul II, the Poles reasserted their identity as a nation devoted to God.  And with that powerful declaration of who you are, you came to understand what to do and how to live.  You stood in solidarity against oppression, against a lawless secret police, against a cruel and wicked system that impoverished your cities and your souls.  And you won.”

“Our adversaries, however, are doomed because we will never forget who we are.  And if we don’t forget who are, we just can’t be beaten.  Americans will never forget.  The nations of Europe will never forget.  We are the fastest and the greatest community.  There is nothing like our community of nations.  The world has never known anything like our community of nations.”

“We write symphonies.  We pursue innovation.  We celebrate our ancient heroes, embrace our timeless traditions and customs, and always seek to explore and discover brand-new frontiers.

“We reward brilliance.  We strive for excellence, and cherish inspiring works of art that honor God.  We treasure the rule of law and protect the right to free speech and free expression.

“We empower women as pillars of our society and of our success.  We put faith and family, not government and bureaucracy, at the center of our lives.  And we debate everything.  We challenge everything.  We seek to know everything so that we can better know ourselves.

“And above all, we value the dignity of every human life, protect the rights of every person, and share the hope of every soul to live in freedom.  That is who we are.  Those are the priceless ties that bind us together as nations, as allies, and as a civilization.

“What we have, what we inherited from our — and you know this better than anybody, and you see it today with this incredible group of people — what we’ve inherited from our ancestors has never existed to this extent before.  And if we fail to preserve it, it will never, ever exist again.  So we cannot fail.”

But the danger is that we might do just that.

“We have to remember that our defense is not just a commitment of money, it is a commitment of will.  Because as the Polish experience reminds us, the defense of the West ultimately rests not only on means but also on the will of its people to prevail and be successful and get what you have to have.  The fundamental question of our time is whether the West has the will to survive.  Do we have the confidence in our values to defend them at any cost?  Do we have enough respect for our citizens to protect our borders?  Do we have the desire and the courage to preserve our civilization in the face of those who would subvert and destroy it?

“We can have the largest economies and the most lethal weapons anywhere on Earth, but if we do not have strong families and strong values, then we will be weak and we will not survive”.

The millions who voted for Trump did so because of the promise he made them that he would defend America and the western values of life and liberty that it embodies. They understand very well that America and the west are not just being threatened from outside but are being undermined from within by the kind of people who are engaged in a fight to the death to destroy him – and by the kind of people who took part in that discussion on Today.

President Trump's Awesome Address to the People of Poland

Damn it, GOP: Do Something!

From American Thinker

By Shari Goodman

 

Day in and day out, Americans are witnessing the political assassination of President Trump along with continuous verbal and, at times, physical attacks upon conservatives, yet we encounter no visible defense or offense from the GOP. Nada! And we are beginning to wonder why.

President Trump steamrolled his victory train through statehouses across the country, turning once-Democratic states like Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and West Virginia from traditional blue to red. Republicans captured 35 state governorships along with the House and Senate. One would think the GOP leadership would be ecstatic and exhibit gratitude to the man who is responsible for such a victory, but instead, the GOP establishment is sitting back with near passivity, much as they did during Obama's administration.

Granted, President Trump was an outsider who had never held office before. Unlike Mitch McConnell, Paul Ryan, John McCain, and Lindsey Graham, he was not part of the elite Washington Establishment. He came out of nowhere to grab the leadership position normally extended to those who wait in line, play the political game, and abide by the rules established by the political mavericks before them. President Trump did none of that. He saw a vacuum, and he was determined to fill it, and fill it he did.

Instantaneously, the Democratic left declared war upon him, with the Never Trump conservatives not far behind. His primary win was a political earthquake not only for the Democratic left, but for the GOP establishment headed by folks such as Mitt Romney, who were waiting in the wings to re-establish their command of the GOP leadership. However, once Reince Priebus and the GOP reluctantly declared their support for candidate Trump, those of us who had supported him from the start were hopeful for a new beginning of mutual respect. How naive we were!

Since President Trump's election, our president has been under daily siege from within and without. Not a day goes by without an attack by the mainstream media and the press. The attacks range from unfounded accusations of Russian collusion, which have been debunked, to obstruction of justice, since there is no evidence of collusion. The whole scenario is a concocted schizophrenic scheme by the entire left to paralyze the Trump administration's agenda with a mission to impeach and remove President Trump from office.

This seditious plot is organized by Barack Hussein Obama from his compound in D.C. and financed by billionaire George Soros, who favors a one-world government. Obama has boasted of his 30,000-strong OFA (Organizing For Action), with 250 offices throughout the country to resist and persist. In effect, they are organized to resist the will of the people who legally elected President Trump. When President Trump delivered an executive order to ban immigration from seven hotbeds of Islamic terrorism, Obama delivered his orders to resist and obstruct to his henchmen in those 250 urban areas. Likewise, his propaganda arm, the mainstream media and the press, along with Soros Brownshirts (antifa), sprang into action with violent protests while activist Obama-appointed judges nullified the order. Whether it be immigration or health care, the scenario is always the same.

It is illegal to plot the overthrow of our republic, and it boggles the mind why this plot is permitted to continue with impunity. Instead of an investigation into the likes of Obama, Soros, and Hillary Clinton, for numerous criminal activities (using an unsecured server; deletion of thousands of classified emails; pay to play; money-laundering; the sale of 20% of our uranium to Russia; and actual Russian collusion by her campaign manager, John Podesta), special counsel (Robert Mueller) with close personal ties to James Comey, who has admitted leaking classified material, has been assigned to investigate President Trump.

In 2011, John Podesta, while an adviser to Hillary Clinton in the State Department, came onboard a small energy company, Joule, based in Massachusetts. Two months later, a Russian entity by the name of Rusnano put a billion rubles ($35 million) into Podesta's company. It's important to note that Rusnano is not a private company. It is totally funded by the Kremlin. Podesta owned 75,000 shares in Joule, but nowhere did he disclose that during his time spent in the Obama administration. In light of this information, why is the GOP silent? Why are they not calling for an investigation into possible Russian collusion with the Clinton campaign?

Where is the justice? Where is the outrage, and more importantly, where is the GOP? Instead of defending President Trump on national television or in the press, they are deafeningly silent. Not only are they not defending our president, but they are not seeking investigations where evidence of real criminality has taken place. The GOP must not only refute, reject, and defeat the left's contentions of Russia-Trump collusion and obstruction of justice, but also go on the offense and attack Clinton and her cronies for actual and real criminal activity. We hold all three branches of government, but by their silence and timidity, they have yielded power to the Democratic left, who behave as if they were in power.

The GOP may erroneously believe we the people will not notice their lack of action. Perhaps they are banking on putting one of their own into the Oval Office should President Trump be removed, with a return to business as usual. Such an assumption would be a huge mistake. Nearly 63 million of us voted for President Trump, and should he be removed from office, we will view his removal as a personal breach against us. We will not forget their silence, nor will we forgive. It will signal a time to begin a new party – perhaps a Constitutional Party composed of those who have the conviction and courage to stand for the Constitution instead of their own interests.

Americans need to know that the GOP has the president's back. Now, damn it! Do something!

 

World’s Top Psychiatrist Says Trump Most BRILLIANT President Ever

No, Donald J. Trump is not crazy.  He’s “crazy like a fox” according to world renowned psychiatrist Keith Ablow.  Donald Trump may do things differently than anyone has ever done things, but it’s not just “off the cuff” as it may look. Trump has a genius mind, and everything he does is by design. Many times the CLM (Crooked Liberal Media) may think they are getting the best of President Trump, but in reality, they are doing exactly what he anticipated. How else do you think a presidential candidate could spend 1/2 as much as his opponent and win?

 “WE’VE GOT A GENIUS IN THE OVAL OFFICE, AND IF WE THINK HE’S GOING TO SUBSCRIBE ENTIRELY TO PROTOCOL AND BE FLAWLESS AND POLISHED, THINK AGAIN!” 

The liberal media is doing everything they can to bring our new president down.  It’s our job to get the TRUTH out on social media.

President Donald Trump Celebrating An America Reborn in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania

President Trump's Address at Andrew Jackson's Hermitage

Thank you, Lord, for the great restoration underway in our country.  Thank you for President Donald Trump.

 

Pat Buchanan: The Beltway Conspiracy to Break Trump

At Mar-a-Lago this weekend President Donald Trump was filled "with fury" says The Washington Post, "mad — steaming, raging, mad."

Early Saturday the fuming president exploded with this tweet: "Terrible! Just found out that Obama had my 'wires tapped' in Trump Tower just before the victory. Nothing found. This is McCarthyism!"

The president has reason to be enraged. For what is afoot is a loose but broad conspiracy to break and bring him down, abort his populist agenda, and overturn the results of the 2016 election.

President Donald J. Trump's Inaugural Address

Chief Justice Roberts, President Carter, President Clinton, President Bush, President Obama, fellow Americans, and people of the world: thank you.

WE, the citizens of America, are now joined in a great national effort to rebuild our country and to restore its promise for all of our people.

Together, we will determine the course of America and the world for years to come.

We will face challenges. We will confront hardships. But we will get the job done.

Every four years, we gather on these steps to carry out the orderly and peaceful transfer of power, and we are grateful to President Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama for their gracious aid throughout this transition. They have been magnificent.

Today’s ceremony, however, has very special meaning. Because today we are not merely transferring power from one Administration to another, or from one party to another – but we are transferring power from Washington, D.C. and giving it back to you, the American People.

For too long, a small group in our nation’s Capital has reaped the rewards of government while the people have borne the cost.

Washington flourished – but the people did not share in its wealth.

Politicians prospered – but the jobs left, and the factories closed.

The establishment protected itself, but not the citizens of our country.

Their victories have not been your victories; their triumphs have not been your triumphs; and while they celebrated in our nation’s Capital, there was little to celebrate for struggling families all across our land.

That all changes – starting right here, and right now, because this moment is your moment: it belongs to you.

It belongs to everyone gathered here today and everyone watching all across America.

This is your day. This is your celebration.

And this, the United States of America, is your country.

What truly matters is not which party controls our government, but whether our government is controlled by the people.

January 20th 2017, will be remembered as the day the people became the rulers of this nation again.
The forgotten men and women of our country will be forgotten no longer.

Everyone is listening to you now.

You came by the tens of millions to become part of a historic movement the likes of which the world has never seen before.

At the center of this movement is a crucial conviction: that a nation exists to serve its citizens.
Americans want great schools for their children, safe neighborhoods for their families, and good jobs for themselves.

These are the just and reasonable demands of a righteous public.

But for too many of our citizens, a different reality exists: Mothers and children trapped in poverty in our inner cities; rusted-out factories scattered like tombstones across the landscape of our nation; an education system, flush with cash, but which leaves our young and beautiful students deprived of knowledge; and the crime and gangs and drugs that have stolen too many lives and robbed our country of so much unrealized potential.

This American carnage stops right here and stops right now.

We are one nation – and their pain is our pain. Their dreams are our dreams; and their success will be our success. We share one heart, one home, and one glorious destiny.

The oath of office I take today is an oath of allegiance to all Americans.

For many decades, we’ve enriched foreign industry at the expense of American industry;
Subsidized the armies of other countries while allowing for the very sad depletion of our military;
We've defended other nation’s borders while refusing to defend our own;  And spent trillions of dollars overseas while America's infrastructure has fallen into disrepair and decay.
We’ve made other countries rich while the wealth, strength, and confidence of our country has disappeared over the horizon.

One by one, the factories shuttered and left our shores, with not even a thought about the millions upon millions of American workers left behind.

The wealth of our middle class has been ripped from their homes and then redistributed across the entire world.

But that is the past. And now we are looking only to the future.

We assembled here today are issuing a new decree to be heard in every city, in every foreign capital, and in every hall of power.

From this day forward, a new vision will govern our land.

From this moment on, it’s going to be America First.

Every decision on trade, on taxes, on immigration, on foreign affairs, will be made to benefit American workers and American families.

We must protect our borders from the ravages of other countries making our products, stealing our companies, and destroying our jobs. Protection will lead to great prosperity and strength.

I will fight for you with every breath in my body – and I will never, ever let you down.

America will start winning again, winning like never before.

We will bring back our jobs. We will bring back our borders. We will bring back our wealth. And we will bring back our dreams.

We will build new roads, and highways, and bridges, and airports, and tunnels, and railways all across our wonderful nation.

We will get our people off of welfare and back to work – rebuilding our country with American hands and American labor.

We will follow two simple rules: Buy American and Hire American.

We will seek friendship and goodwill with the nations of the world – but we do so with the understanding that it is the right of all nations to put their own interests first.

We do not seek to impose our way of life on anyone, but rather to let it shine as an example for everyone to follow.

We will reinforce old alliances and form new ones – and unite the civilized world against Radical Islamic Terrorism, which we will eradicate completely from the face of the Earth.

At the bedrock of our politics will be a total allegiance to the United States of America, and through our loyalty to our country, we will rediscover our loyalty to each other.

When you open your heart to patriotism, there is no room for prejudice.

The Bible tells us, “how good and pleasant it is when God’s people live together in unity.”

We must speak our minds openly, debate our disagreements honestly, but always pursue solidarity.
When America is united, America is totally unstoppable.

There should be no fear – we are protected, and we will always be protected.

We will be protected by the great men and women of our military and law enforcement and, most importantly, we are protected by God.

Finally, we must think big and dream even bigger.

In America, we understand that a nation is only living as long as it is striving.

We will no longer accept politicians who are all talk and no action – constantly complaining but never doing anything about it.

The time for empty talk is over.

Now arrives the hour of action.

Do not let anyone tell you it cannot be done. No challenge can match the heart and fight and spirit of America.

We will not fail. Our country will thrive and prosper again.

We stand at the birth of a new millennium, ready to unlock the mysteries of space, to free the Earth from the miseries of disease, and to harness the energies, industries and technologies of tomorrow.

A new national pride will stir our souls, lift our sights, and heal our divisions.

It is time to remember that old wisdom our soldiers will never forget: that whether we are black or brown or white, we all bleed the same red blood of patriots, we all enjoy the same glorious freedoms, and we all salute the same great American Flag.

And whether a child is born in the urban sprawl of Detroit or the windswept plains of Nebraska, they look up at the same night sky, they fill their heart with the same dreams, and they are infused with the breath of life by the same almighty Creator.

So to all Americans, in every city near and far, small and large, from mountain to mountain, and from ocean to ocean, hear these words:

You will never be ignored again.

Your voice, your hopes, and your dreams, will define our American destiny. And your courage and goodness and love will forever guide us along the way.

Together, We Will Make America Strong Again.

We Will Make America Wealthy Again.

We Will Make America Proud Again.

We Will Make America Safe Again.

And, Yes, Together, We Will Make America Great Again. Thank you, God Bless You, And God Bless America.

Newt Gingrich Explains The Donald Trump Phenomenon

A brilliant analysis of one of the most remarkable candidacies and accomplishments in American political history.

Tricky Nikki's Appointment as UN Ambassador

President-Elect Trump with South Carolina Lt. Governor Henry McMaster - A team to make America and South Carolina great again!

For my friends outside of South Carolina who may not understand the appointment of Nikki Haley as United States UN Ambassador -- a woman to whom the President-Elect owes NOTHING -- this is more a maneuver to reward South Carolina Lt. Governor Henry McMaster, a popular leader to whom the President-Elect owes a great deal.

Nikki Haley is a powerless and disliked Governor who has attempted to achieve national recognition by betraying the people of her own state and conservative principles. She is an opportunist and has no future in South Carolina whatsoever, and her success to date has depended on the same factor which helps elect Lindsey Graham to the United States Senate. Democrat voters have known that they are unlikely to obtain anything closer to one of their own and have therefore cast their votes for the RINO candidate.

Lt. Governor Henry McMaster, on the other hand, is a popular figure who will be a well-respected, popular Governor. He was also the most prominent elected official in South Carolina to support the President-Elect in South Carolina's "first in the South" Republican primary. Trump's win here was the first in what became an unbroken and unprecedented string of victories throughout Dixie.

Haley's role at the UN will be that of a TV news anchorwoman; she will read statements prepared by others in the White House and State Department and take the slings and arrows of a world community hostile to the United States. She will have no policy role and will be a place-filler until someone qualified can take the job, unless the Trump administration can extract the US from that enormous waste of money. Many of us will be grateful for an ingenious way to get Haley out of the state.

Now South Carolina will have a superb, new Governor who reflects conservative South Carolina values and will be an important ally to the Trump Administration in making America great again.

Pat Buchanan: A Trump Doctrine — ‘America First’

By Patrick J. Buchanan

However Donald Trump came upon the foreign policy views he espoused, they were as crucial to his election as his views on trade and the border.

Yet those views are hemlock to the GOP foreign policy elite and the liberal Democratic interventionists of the Acela Corridor.

Trump promised an “America First” foreign policy rooted in the national interest, not in nostalgia. The neocons insist that every Cold War and post-Cold War commitment be maintained, in perpetuity.

Pat Buchanan: Trump & the Press — A Death Struggle

By Patrick J. Buchanan

Alerting the press that he would deal with the birther issue at the opening of his new hotel, the Donald, after treating them to an hour of tributes to himself from Medal of Honor recipients, delivered.

“Hillary Clinton and her campaign of 2008 started the birther controversy. I finished it. … President Barack Obama was born in the United States. Period.”

The press went orbital.

“Trump Gives Up a Lie But Refuses to Repent” howled the headline over the lead story in The New York Times.

Its editorial called Donald Trump a “reckless, cynical bully” spreading political poison in an “absurdist presidential campaign,” adding that Trump is the “ultimate mountebank” using a “Big Lie” that “made him the darling of the wing nuts and racists” and “nativist hallucinators.”

You get the drift.

Pat Buchanan: Trump & the Hillarycons

By Patrick J. Buchanan

In 1964, Phyllis Schlafly of Alton, Illinois, mother of six, wrote and published a slim volume entitled “A Choice Not an Echo.”

Backing the candidacy of Sen. Barry Goldwater, the book was a polemic against the stranglehold the eastern liberal establishment had held on the Republican nomination for decades.

Schlafly went on to lead the campaign to derail the Equal Rights Amendment, which, with 35 states having ratified, was just three states short of being added to our Constitution.

Pro-ERA forces never added another state. Phyllis, who, at 20 was testing weapons at a munitions plant in World War II, shot it dead.

Donald Trump's Immigration Policy Plan to Make America Great and Safe Again

Donald Trump - Putting America First

Pat Buchanan: Trump’s Road Still Open

By Patrick J. Buchanan

At stake in 2016 is the White House, the Supreme Court, the Senate and, possibly, control of the House of Representatives.

Hence, Republicans have a decision to make.

Will they set aside political and personal feuds and come together to win in November, after which they can fight over the future of the party, and the country?

Or will they split apart, settling scores now, lose it all, and, then, after November, begin a battle to allocate blame for a historic defeat that will leave wounds that will never heal.