HONESTLY, WHAT IS SO BAD ABOUT TRUMP?

I am going to request that anybody who read this maintain their objectivity and employ critical thinking.  Please, leave out the emotion, the talking points and the drive-by attacks and ponder what I have to say.  If you can’t, then don’t bother reading – anything for that matter, because if you can’t be objective and honest, you are a lost cause.  Also, with each point that I make, I tend to be general.  Sure, there are exceptions to probably all of the propositions I set forth, but overall, my propositions are accurate.  Having written that, here I go.

I watched about half of the Democrat’s convention.  It was painful to endure, not because I am against liberal policy, but rather because I detest bad arguments that are vested in emotion and lack substantive facts.  Here are the issues and my take on Trump’s performance:

1.       Taxes. Trump likes lower taxes for the lower and middle class.  The rich are not a fat enough target to take from to solve the deficit and debt problem.  To solve it, you have to hit the middle class because, as John Dillinger said, “that’s where the money is.”  Now, how, as a middle class joe, (not Biden), how can you be against lower taxes.  I did not hear the Democrats once mention middle class tax cuts at the convention.  I did hear proposals, like the New Green Deal, that would mandate middle class tax increases, though.

2.      Border Control.   Trump wants secure borders.  How can that be fundamentally wrong?  Illegal immigrants or to be politically correct, undocumented residents, cost a lot of money.  There is health care, education and prison expenses.  Sure, they do pay taxes, but not enough to counter the costs.  It has long been a goal of the presidency, including Obama at one point, to secure the borders but offer a path to citizenship.  Trump will do this, but what he won’t do is fall into the trap Ronald Regan fell into.  He won’t offer the path to citizenship unless the borders are secure.  What is so wrong with that?  Do you really want our national identity, our Americanism, our boundaries to be blurred until it is not even recognizable?  Also, no matter what is alleged, Trump is not going employ mass deportation.  There are too many undocumented folks who play a critical role in our society.  They are a part of it and it would be like cutting off an arm because it has a wart on it if there was mass deportation.  Trump knows this and he will act accordingly, not like the scare tactic allegations of the left.  He offered DACA if the democrats would fund the wall.  They declined.  Poor folks tend to accept the tripe of the left to their detriment and vote democrat.  The left wants more voters in their camp for one reason, power.  Trump wants more voters in his camp for one reason, too, principles. 

3.      Health Care.  Obama-care is a disaster.  We still have millions of uninsured.  The cost of health insurance has increased approximately two-hundred percent since Obama-care passed.  I can attest to this personally.  Pre-Obama-care, my premium was eight-hundred dollars a month with a five-thousand dollar deductible. Now, it is twenty-eight hundred dollars a month.  If you multiply twelve months times nine years times two-thousand dollars, the difference between now and then, King Obama cost my family over two hundred thousand dollars.  We need to allow more free enterprise into our healthcare system.  We need to allow Nurse Practitioners and Physician Assistants to open more clinics and provide the care they already provide without needing to operate under the license of a physician.  Hell, Nurses and P.A. ‘s already do a bunch of the leg work, advising the fast-walk doctor who genuflects over your body for a hefty fee to confirm what the nurse already knows.    If routine medical procedures, physicals, check-ups and general diagnostics are provided by a competitive industry, prices will fall.  Check out eye-care, dentistry and chiropractic care. It’s expensive, but compared to a visit to the emergency room, it’s pocket change.  I recently went to a proscribed physical therapy session.  I was there for one half hour.  It cost four hundred bucks.  I could have watched a Youtube video and received equal instruction – or I could have gone to a nurse or a P.A. and paid a hundred bucks and got the same or better treatment.  The democrats want socialized single-payer health care.  Do your research.  Single-payer systems are deplorable, everywhere they exist.  They ration care, suppress innovation, and stymie research and development.  And it takes forever to get an appointment.  Trump would kill the notion of a single-payer system while at the same time providing a safety net for those who can’t afford health care and protect folks with pre-existing conditions, which he’s already done.  What is so wrong with that?  Oh, and one more thing.  The folks that will force you into a single-payer system will exclude themselves from it, because they know it is inferior and of course, they are more equal than you and I.

4.       Foreign Relations.  Trump has brought manufacturing home.  He has, prior to the Covid-Debacle, pushed through policies that lead to real wage increases in the middle and lower class.  There were fantastically low unemployment rates in the minority communities.  Home ownership was up.  Income was up.  Optimism was up.  The market was up.  What was wrong with that?  Can anybody, with a straight face, suggest that an alternative such as Biden will do better?  No way. 

Trump has also withdrawn from anti-American treaties.  He got us out of the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty.  He should have, Russia was routinely violating it.  We were abiding by it, to the detriment of our national security.  That was a good thing.  Trump got us out of the Paris Agreement.  It was a massive climate pack that delegated control of our nation outside of our borders.  It was near silent on the world’s biggest polluters.  It was a hurt America treaty.  Getting out was a good thing.  Trump got us out of the Trans-Pacific Partnership.  The deal would have cost an immense amount of U.S. jobs.  Trump renegotiated the South Korean Trade Deal.  By doing so, he reduced the U.S. trade deficit with South Korea.  Trump ended NAFTA and replaced it with the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA).  It was a little heralded exceptionally beneficial agreement for the United States.  It leveled the playing field between the three nations.  Trump got us out of the Singapore Agreement.  As a result, North Korea pledged to end its nuclear program.  Admittedly, North Korea may have lied, but it was a move in the right direction.  Trump got us out of the Group of Seven Agreement.  He wanted Russia in it so they could be at the table. They were ejected due to Crimea and Trump quit the deal.  Russia supplies fuel to Europe and although it is close to a single commodity economy, oil, it is a substantial and significant economic force within the European Nations.  It was a good move. Trump pulled out of the UN Human Rights Council.  He should have.  Terrorist tyrannical nations were seated on the council.  It was a dark joke of an excuse for a body of folks who claimed to care about human rights.  Trump pulled out of the UN Educational Scientific Cultural Organization.    The Organization was anti-Israel.  Trump pulled out of the Iran Nuclear Deal because it allowed Iran to obtain nuclear weapons, it had a sunset clause.  I hope nobody wants a nation that routinely chants death to America to have nukes.  Trump made NATO members pay their fair share.  Everybody should like the sound of that one.  Trump has been tough with the World Trade Organization which would be better titled the World Against American Success Organization.  All of these were exceptionally bold pro-American moves.  You have to like that.      

Trump has done exceptionally well in foreign affairs.  Sure, some folks don’t like us as much, but is that the measure?  It is not.  And of course, they don’t like us as much.  We stopped enabling them with our money and we called their deception and hypocrisy out.

5.       Race Relations.  Trump advanced prison reform and funded predominantly African American post academic institutions immensely more than his predecessor.  He is routinely called a racist, but I do not recall him ever even identifying a person by their race, creed or color.  He did not divide the country, he fought against the direction it was going and because of it, he got labeled as a divider.  It is akin to a bunch of lemmings running for the cliff and a group of them turns and heads in a different direction.  The ones still running for the cliff, start accusing the lemmings who are not cliff-bound as being dividers.  It has always perplexed me that those who care to be for equality in race, creed and color, immediately identify folks by race, creed and color, as if it’s the first ingredient in a character’s recipe.  It is not.  Hell, Black Lives Matter claims to be against racism, but in its very title it identifies folks by race.  So does Jesse Jackson’s Rainbow Coalition, the NAACP, and the Black Caucus.  By definition, they are all fundamentally racist.  Its the old, I’m not racist, some of my best friends are . . . . Trump is not a racist.  There is no evidence to suggest that he is a racist.  Now Biden . . . well, as to Biden, ponder this:  What if Trump had said the things Biden has said?  See my point. 

6.       Education.  Vouchers, School choice, Charter Schools, all of which provide minorities better opportunities to be educated.  Trump is for all of them.  Certainly, folks who believe a woman can choose to abort a life must agree that this same mother can have a semblance of a choice of schools for her children.  I hope folks aren’t saying that a person can have free reign to end a pregnancy but not to educate because when it comes to education, the government will make those choices for you?

7.       Environment.  Free Enterprise and prosperity lead to clean environments, not crushing regulation, wealth redistribution and carbon taxes.  Don’t believe me?  Go visit a communist nation and check out their environment.  Go smell the rivers in China, Russia or even Europe.  We have a relatively clean environment in the United States.  It will only get cleaner if we get richer as a nation.  When nations get poor, the first things that go by the wayside are our environmental concerns.  No New Green Deal that destroys prosperity is going to save the environment, because prosperity is the fundamental ingredient that provides us with the money to save it.  Without prosperity, we get dirtier and more polluted. 

8.      Energy.  Under Trump, we are a net energy exporter.  I haven’t seen the environmental devastation on the nightly news as of yet.  I don’t think we will see it either.  Sure there will be spills and mishaps, but we’ll deal with them.  We always do.  I do believe they are catching salmon and halibut where the Captain Hazelwood spilled the Exxon Valdez’s guts.  Wind and Solar energy are not economically viable enough to satisfy our energy needs, yet.  Wind energy is unsightly and it kills birds, a lot of them.  Solar, well can you say Solyndra? 

9.      Defense.  Trump has rebuilt our national defense.  China, who has a written plan to destroy us, is arming up and making moves in the South China Sea.  We need a strong military.  Regan was right when he said “peace through strength.”  We’ve got it right now.  Peace is good, right?

10.  War.  Trump has pulled troops out and is pulling more out.  He is not a war-monger president despite the predictions.  He’s also not a military expansionist.  He is not fond of the ridiculous amount of U.S. troops stationed all over the world.  He’s threatened to pull out of NATO.  He is winding down Afghanistan.  He was and is against the Irac war.  He pulled troops out of Syria.  I would think Code Pink would be worshipping him. 

11.  Social Programs.  The number of folks on welfare and food stamps decreased under Trump.  That’s good, right?  Despite the TV ads, I’ve yet to see somebody starving in America because there isn’t anybody starving.  If there were, they’d have been a key-note speaker at the Democratic Convention.  Also, check it out, the poor are still receiving benefits.  They haven’t been cut.  Sure, when times were good before he Covid-debacle, the overall spending was lower because fewer people were on welfare.  But, per person, all was the same for better for those on the dole.  Trump has not abandoned the poor.  He’s helped them be less poor.

12.   The Establishment.  Trump is an outsider.  If you haven’t figured out that there is an elite class of rulers in our nation, immune from the rules and regulations we are subject to, you aren’t paying enough attention.  Don’t we, especially the left, despise the establishment?  I thought that was one thing we had in common.  But, apparently not.  Apparently, a large percentage of our nation is fine and dandy with allowing the reigning class to continue reigning, sating our frustrations with quips, blame shifting, sound bites and false promises, false premises, too, instead of opportunities and freedom.  Yes, Trump is a bull in a China closet.  The China closet is the residence of the folks that are intent on destroying our nation – as long as they get to sit on top of the ash pile.  They’ve said as much.  Socialism, massive redistribution, diminished freedom, anti First and Second Amendment, all of it contrary to our founding principles.  Do we really want that?  Do we want the folks who get or got along with Paul Ryan, Mitt Romney, John McCain, the Bush family, the Clinton’s, Harry Reid, the list is long because it’s an obese establishment, a genuine confederacy of dunces, to be running our lives?  I don’t.  I like a bull in a China closet, especially when the folks who own the China closet won’t let us in and lie that they will. 

13.   Economy.  There is no need to babble about the economy.  Trump knows exactly what to do to have a good economy. Let it be free.  Although, I do suspect he is going to hit Google, Facebook and Amazon with anti-trust suits, especially Amazon.  That’s a move for the ma and pa retailers who are being crushed by Amazon.  It’s a move for the little guy.  One would think that the Democrat Peoples party would be all over that one.  But, they are not.  Jeff Bezos is a friend of the Royalty.  They won’t touch him. So are most all of the other billionaires for that matter.  The reality is that Trump and the Republicans are not the party of the rich.

14.  Income Inequality.  Want to see real income inequality, go to China, Russia and North Korea.  Middle class and blue collar wages have increased disproportionately to the upper class while Trump has been at work.  Increased wages are good thing, right?

15.  Law and Order.  Blue states and blue cities are in chaos.  Billions of dollars in damage have resulted.  Lives have been lost.  Since Black Lives Matter got going, the spike in the murder rate, the number of African Americans who have been murdered (not by cops) is greater than all of those lynched in the History of the United States.  Good work BLM.  Trump offered the cities help.  They declined.  Not once was the looting and rioting mentioned at the Democrat Convention, not once.  But, contrary to the desire of the majority of African Americans, the Democrats want to defund the police.  Not once during the Obama-Biden administration did they give significant attention to the crisis of crime in urban America.  Trump is obviously walking a razor’s edge in dealing with the social unrest, BLM and Antifa.  One wrong move (or right move) and the press will attack like a pack of sharks.  Still, he’s offering help.  But, if elected, he will take action.  He will secure the cities and bring back civility and peace.      

So, I probably haven’t covered all policy issues, but in a nutshell, Trump is good on Taxes, Health Care, Border Control, Foreign Relations, Race Relations, Energy, Environment, Education, Defense, anti-war, Social Programs, the Economy, Income Inequality and law and Order, and to beat, he is an enemy of the Establishment.  What in the world is not to like about that?  Nothing, unless you already don’t like two things:  The United States of America and yourself.  Come on, admit it, if you’re an anti-Trumper, you’re privately unhappy with your current personal state of affairs, maybe publicly.  I’ve got to believe the folks who are rioting, looting and destroying are less than thrilled about their lives. 

            So, to quote Joe Biden again, “Come on, man.”  This is a no-brainer.  Park your egos, your academic credentials, your jealousy, your contempt for others’ success, your dependency and your blame games and be an American.  Be honest with yourself, admit that although Trump might rub you the wrong way, he’s done a rather exceptional job and he’s worth keeping around for another four years.  The America that gave the opposition the right to be the opposition is at risk, so it’s important we keep it.   So, smile and join the fun.  Being a conservative libertarian, personally responsible, that rugged individualism stuff, it’s all great.  To use a bad word, it’s a riot.  Anyway, you’re always welcome and we don’t require masks.  But, if you want to wear one, we respect your right to do so.  Hell, we’d fight for that right of yours.

            That’s my Reetzality for the day.

            Brett Reetz