● Trump ended catch and release at the border, which has raised morale within immigration. He’s authorized the hiring of 5,000 more border patrol agents. He stripped money from sanctuary cities. He reinstated local and state immigration enforcement partnerships. He ordered construction of the wall and found a way to pay for it. Even his critics are liking the idea of a 2-3% tariff on Mexican goods (Trump's first offer was 20%, which brought counter-offers of 2-3%).
● He began undoing Obamacare. He stopped spending money to advertise it. He ordered agencies not to enforce the individual mandate. He’s said the replacement needs to aim for true universal access, and he is planning to cut drug costs... things the Democrats talked about but never had the nerve to do.
● He authorized the Keystone Pipeline and the Dakota Access pipeline. What’s more, he ordered Commerce to maximize the use of US steel for the project... major jobs. This and the trade stuff has brought kudos from the Teamsters and other unions as they see it helping American workers. Imagine that.
● Companies keep declaring that they will bring factories here. The latest is Telsa, who swears it wasn’t because of Trump, but they will open a factory here instead of Germany. A Japanese company will also start manufacturing television screens here, the only plant of its kind in the US (a $7 billion investment). Every day brings new stories of factories and jobs.
● His immigration order includes adding vetting for immigrants from terrorist countries and it reduces the number of asylum seekers to be accepted from 110,000 to 50,000. (Obama actually raised the number from 83k to 100k as a stunt).
● His ban on the use of US funds to promote abortion overseas will save us $600 million according to the left. Damn that’s a lot!
● He has frozen hiring at the federal level outside Homeland Security and the military.
● He’s ordered the Pentagon to come up with a more aggressive strategy to defeat ISIS. He forswore torture too, despite claims he wouldn't. Gen. Matthis is drawing rave reviews already.
● He imposed a five-year across-the-board ban on lobbying by every political appointee to the Executive Branch and a lifetime ban on lobbying for foreign powers. Again, the Democrats claimed they would do this and never did. Now they are whining that it will cost the government "talent."
● He cancelled John Kerry’s bizarre last-minute $200 million gift to the Palestinians.
● He seems to have rebuilt the special relationship with Britain overnight and has suggested some sort of trade deal with them.
● He’s apparently flattered the Indian government and is working with them as a counter-weight to China in the region. Very smart.
● On the downside, he did kill the Trans-Pacific Partnership. Bad for consumers. The unions did like it though. That said, I suspect this is one of his political splits, where he manages to say one thing and ultimately do another. We'll see.
● He's made a couple communication mistakes, but nothing real. Mainly these are leftist smears that the public doesn't seem to be falling for. The "Muslim ban" (effecting 7 of 52 Muslim countries and lasting all of 30 days) is one of these. The left is screaming bloody murder, but a new poll by leftist poll shop Quinnipiac has found that voters support Trump either 48-42 or 53-41 depending on which aspect is being measured. So the opposition really is the hard-core left plus John McCain. Sorry Hollywood.
Thoughts?
33 comments:
As always, I doubt the mistakes. Getting the press, the Democrats, and the professional protesters to lose their minds always seems to benefit Trump in the end. I only wonder how far he can push this pattern until the left becomes truly, dangerously violent to the point of needing National Guard?
So I find this interesting. Word struck of the shooter at the mosque in Canada. Banners at the news sites. The articles mentioned Trump's "Muslim ban". Several political leaders were quoted saying they would not tolerate hate and exclusion and they would not let things like this keep them from welcoming Muslims yada yada yada. Yahoo flooded its front page with this story, all next to Trump articles.
That was an hour ago.
Now there are several witness reports that the killer yelled "Allah Akbar."
Screeeeeeeech.
The banners vanish. Not a single mention of the event on the front page of Yahoo. The quotes in the articles shift to calling this a "cowardly attack" but otherwise suddenly aren't mentioning Trump.
You can almost imagine the haters at Yahoo (and other places) being all giddy that they got something to use against Trump and when their dream fell apart, they yanked the whole story... can't you?
It will be interesting to see where this goes.
I can't quite put my finger on it, but there's something different about you today tryanmax. Did you get a haircut? ;-)
On Trump, I do think you are right that he is using that as a strategy and it has been effective. I'm not sure I credit him with brilliance though or if it's just been him taking advantage of his mistakes.
For example, if he had guessed that the left would freak out of him not using the word "Jews" in the Holocaust thing, I suspect he would have tossed it in there to avoid that issue.
Yahoo still has no mention of the shooting -- when have they ever ignored a shooting? What they have instead is an article about a Muslim woman whose "calm response to verbal harassment goes viral". Really?
I have no idea how you think he's had a good week. This weekend was a mess that could very easily have been avoided.
Will the Canadian government still oppose and not go along with the pipeline though? I believe the PM were against connecting it in Canada.
Ben, actually Trudeau has never opposed the pipeline. He rightly stated last year that it would fund the development of alternate energy sources in Canada. He was also willing to take the tar sands oil and gas and selling it to the Chinese.
Andrew, there is a reason there has been a freeze on reporting who perpetrated the Quebec mosque shooting...obvious fake news report from "AP News Braek"that the media ran with claiming with much glee that it was two known US white supremacists. Lots of retractions posted...
Bev, There were articles last night that were positively disgusting. They basically read like:
"Someone shot and killed five innocent, blameless holy, charitable, loving men at a mosque. White supremacists are well organized in the area, being encouraged by Trump's ban on Muslims. The Canadian PM said they would not give in to attempts to destroy diversity and they would welcome the Muslim's Trump attempted to deport. Two suspects are in custody, their names might even be Billy Bob Hitler and onaldDa UmpTra."
The latest derangement this morning is the raid in Yemen. First, they went out of their way yesterday to tell us how Trump got an American soldier killed by ordering somethingsomething BODY COUNT ONE DEAD AMERICAN SOLDIER. This morning, it's become "8 year old girl killed in RAID ORDERED BY DONALD TRUMP!!"
These are the same people who never mentioned a single casualty or collateral death under Obama.
Ben, Trudeau apparently already signed orders approving it in November. But then, he is a leftist and could now decide to hate it.
I have been having a terrible time logging back into this site..I missed all ya'll....
Oh, I don't know Kit, how about this:
1. Pushed through half his campaign promises, including very controversial stuff, some of which wasn't even noticed.
2. Got most of his cabinet in place or ready for easy approval.
3. Had apparently fantastic talks with all our key allies. Has India, Britain and Japan talking about "special relationship." Even had good talk with Mexican President.
4. GOP falling in line behind him except the usual suspects.
5. Got Elizabeth Warren to support some of his stuff, positive talk with Schumer about his judicial appointments, kudos from Teamsters.
6. Team seems leak and dissent free.
7. Opponents prove to be raving morons throwing heinous tantrum, who are covering his mistakes with a wall of #fakeoutrage white noise that is sure to turn people off.
That's a pretty good start. And you're wrong if you think any of the left's whining protests were avoidable.
Critch, I'm sorry. I wonder why? I have that problem with my phone for some reason. Unfortunately, that's all out of my hands.
Glad you made it today! :)
Andrew, given the brevity of Trump's Holocaust Remembrance statement compared to other Presidents', I can imagine him cavalierly jotting "victims, survivors, heroes" without much thought to specifics or the response.
I can't help but think that dropping the immigration EO on a Friday was strategy, though.
To the lawyers: how likely is it that a judge will overturn the immigration EO before 90/120 days are up?
Computer science is not science; if it were, things would be repeatable..however, computers are magic, and are not governable by the laws of physics...
Did ya'll know that Jerry Brown and Joe Biden tried to block the Vietnamese refugees in 1975? How soon the forget...
Critch, I did not know that. Interesting.
tryanmax, Keep in mind, the Holocaust thing was written by staff. Trump just signed it. And the way its written sounds like it was written to avoid controversy. But then, the left will always find controversy.
The EO being a Friday drop would make sense. Although, with the left not having jobs, a Friday drop becomes kind of meaningless in their world.
P.S. Tryanmax, What I'm not sure about is how much of this is planned and how much is just his natural mannerism. He strikes me as a guy who thinks in terms of: (1) issue proclamation in generalize terms, (2) wait ten minutes and brag how great it is. (3) Assess for mistakes and correct mistakes. (4) Move on.
This makes him very different than the political class who obsess over step one, view step three as an admission of guilt, and don't know what four means.
Hence, I think some of the "confusion" (for lack of a better word) is premised on Trump simply being a different kind of person than we've usually had. He's very similar to H. Ross Perot.
Andrew, true on both counts! On the Holocaust thing, I have an equally hard time imagining Trump asking "does this thing mention Jews?" as I do him saying "make sure to leave out Jews." I don't get the sense that he's honed in to those things unless confronted by them, and then he quickly forgets again.
Andrew, again, true on the third count! It's very hard to parse the mistakes from the intentional because Trump very deftly responds to either. If something doesn't work, try something else; if it does work, keep doing it. He always acts confident and the flow is seamless, so you can never tell where the error ends and the correction begins, or if there ever was an error. When you're A-B testing, is it really a mistake if one of them doesn't work?
tryanmax, I read the Holocaust thing to three different people (one of whom is Jewish) and I said, "Does anything strike you as wrong about that?" Not one of them even noticed. They thought it sounded very typical.
And when I told them it doesn't use the word "Jews," they were all confused why I thought it needed to. Then I told them about the fakeoutrage and they rolled their eyes.
As an aside, did you see the latest fakeoutrage is that Ivanka posted a snapchat image of herself in a party dress "AS IMMIGRANTS ARE DYING BECAUSE OF TRUMP!!" Our airports must be rough places.
tryanmax, That's exactly how I see it and why I think the political class is so freaked out. It's the opposite of their world. Their goal is to appear to have the perfect plan. His goal is to solve the problem.
Hence, they move slowly and test every step before implementing, and they never admit a mistake. His world involves finding the most likely solution, implementing it, and adjust as you go for the unexpected. He sees credit coming from the fix, they see credit coming from the procedures.
I think this is why the political establishment (mainly the antiTrumps) is seeing him wrong right now. They think the public sees his mistakes and assumed he's a disaster. But that's not what I see with the public. The public is judging him on his ability to fix things.
I also think this is why the left is so freaked out. This is the first GOP candidate who actually is trying to change things, and that could lead to a whole new shape of things.
Andrew - Add me as a fourth "different person" who are Jews. (Hey, why are referring to Jews as "different"???) I had the exact reaction. The way the MSM/Perpetually-Outraged were reacting, I thought Trump must have praised Hitler on fine effort, and sent then sent money to Hamas or something!
Oh, and btw, I haven't heard one Jew say anything for or against Trump's statement...well, except the ADL and they get upset about just about anything except anything that Obama did...like secret, midnight payments to Iran and Hamas.
Oh, this ought to be fun. Iran is now crowing about how they are building a newer/faster nuclear reactor and just tested their a medium-range ballistic missile that exploded after 630 miles in defiance of the UN. Cool, yeh?
Oh, wait, it's not nuclear, so it's not Obama's fault...
tryanmax, Sorry, I spaced on your question.
It is likely that a trial court would block it immediately to prevent a constitutional harm, if they thought those attacking the EO had a reasonable chance of winning. They could block all or part of it.
That can be appealed and would be expedited most likely. So in about 7-10 days you would likely have a decision either leaving the block in place or lifting it. Either way will then take more than 90 days to get a decision changing that outcome... unless the trial judge is a real activist and wants to go the other way from the appeal court. Then you could probably see a second decision in 10 days or so, which could again be appealed.
Bev, Iran was solved. They're good people now. That director is from there. How bad can they be?
I don't doubt that average Jews don't see this as anything because it's not. It's clear that there is no agenda by Trump here. This is just someone trying to invent an issue.
I find it humorous that, in order not to appear anti-Semetic, one must never mention Jews unless it is at the precise appropriate time.
Rushed, confused implementation of the visa thing didn't hurt Trump because the only people burned (slightly) were foreign Muslims. If that marks his style of policymaking (its in keeping with his campaign style), I predict he is going to have serious problems down the line when someone the public is more sympathetic to gets burned.
Was Trump's campaign style "rushed and confused" tho'?
Tryanmax,
That is true, which is why Trump was lucky his audience was a public fed up with eight years of Obama and his opponent was the dour, scandal-prone Hillary Clinton.
Anthony, I don't disagree, but let me make two quick points...
1. Half of human history is the result of having the right enemy rather than being right yourself. Trump has been fortunate in that his enemies have been real losers.
2. Trump was lucky his audience was a public fed up with eight years of Obama and his opponent was the dour, scandal-prone Hillary Clinton.
But another way to say this is that Trump was smart to tap into this when no one else saw the extent of it. Don't underestimate that Trump started with the fringe, but won over people who are not fringe and even managed to reach out to people (disaffected union guys) who really had dropped out.
Andrew,
I agree completely.
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