Grading Trump's First 100 Days in Office - Richard Holt

Energy

Grading Trump's First 100 Days in Office - Richard Holt

via Richard Holt and natpolitics.com

I was inspired by a liberal who once reminded us that “…the only thing to fear is fear itself.” And it was this liberal who, on July 24, 1933, told the nation that they had not heard from him because of a “…hundred days which had been devoted to the starting of the wheels of the New Deal.”(1) Since this address, by President Franklin Roosevelt, we have taken a pause on the mark of a president’s first 100 days to reflect on the job they’ve done preparing and implementing their campaign promises.

For FDR, it was the New Deal, big government socialism that may have (or may not have) saved the nation from financial strangulation and eventual revolution.(2) Truman dropped the bomb on Japan. Reagan delivered Iranian hostages on his first day (perhaps the first hour) of his presidency while Clinton blundered the first real attempt at universal healthcare. The determination of Presidents to come out of their inauguration swinging has had its ups and downs. But President Trump has a different role to fill than other presidents have.

As a man elected with zero government employment, he stands in the shadows of 241 years of American history and sits in the office of 42 presidents. * He commands a military whose oldest unit dates back to 1636, which today contains 1.4 million active duty troops. Just to get the nomination, he defeated over a dozen seasoned, well-polished, professional politicians who commanded hundreds of millions of dollars in donations with his lonely 6 million. To win the general election, he made promises like other conservatives, defend the border, get rid of burdensome regulations, cut taxes, etc.

The difference? He actually meant it.

Real politicians know better than to give details for their plans or to mean what they say. Speaking in generalities gives them the flexibility to avoid those pesky “read my lips, no more taxes” kind of moments. It helps defray the kind of situation from 2004, for example, where you hear John Kerry famously say something along the lines of “I voted for it before I voted against it”… What the hell? Trump, however, had no such filter. Which is why he’s still determined to build a wall, eliminate Obamacare, and work on tax reform.

In the face of a hostile press run on the machinations of liberal corporate interests, Trump has managed to stand, rather alone amongst the politicians, but with the American people at his back. Watching his rise to power couldn’t have been written better, nor more vulgar, by Quentin Tarantino. He even got endorsed by people like Alex Jones… and went on his show! I nearly fell out of my seat when I saw Trump on prisonplanet.com.

Now that he’s president, his first 100 days is coming up. What has he accomplished? He hasn’t gotten Mexico to pay for the wall yet… Healthcare went down in flames. He’s being persecuted by dems and the media to find some kind of relationship between Mr. Trump and Russia, and he has had a number of classified leaks coming from a building he (unfortunately) didn’t clean out before unpacking his boxes in the oval office. In the face of what appears to be a series of blunders, perhaps, our aims have all been off in trying to judge Trumps presidency in the lenses of those passed.

Unlike the politicians we’re used to who live and die on the external validation created by the approval or disapproval of the 24-hour media cycle, Trump plays a longer game. 100 days? More like 1,000. Judging Trump’s 100 days is like judging a snail’s hundred seconds — which is why he has had some successes despite the blunders incessantly replayed by the media. The president’s Health Care failure is the primary one which sticks out. If there wasn’t support, the bill shouldn’t have come to the floor- but it did. And surprise surprise, it made Trump look bad. I think, and I could be wrong, that Trump could have waited for a vote but the Republicans in congress were spurred on by pressure from the media and campaign promises to do something- so why not try, fail, and then blame Jim Jordan?

Despite Trump’s initial failure, it’s the longer game that defines the Trump administration. This is because he’s a man of a different cloth. While the news media was obsessed with Russia and Obamacare fail, he got a pro-constitution supreme court justice through the Senate after what was looking to be a much longer fight. Along with this success comes his keeping of his campaign promises on trade.

He’s withdrawn from the Trans-Pacific Partnership which the Hillary style globalists (as I discussed in my post here https://absoluterights.com/freely-elected-president-globally-minded-domestically-focused/) supported, in favor of bilateral agreements. He issued support for the Keystone Pipeline (where pro-environmental protestors left garbage that will take over a dozen sanitation companies weeks to clean up). He followed up on his campaign pledge to build a wall with Mexico by authorizing the wall to be built. Continuing on the immigration front, he will follow through with a promise to end federal funds for sanctuary cities. The President even attempted to temporarily restrict immigration from nations of concern.

image via Gage Skidmore

Trump has made more of an effort to keep us safe than any president in recent memory. He tried to implement new security measures, but the courts, overstepping their jurisdiction, imposed a temporary restraining order on key provisions of Trump’s executive order, thus nullifying the order. He should have ignored them, but that’s just my opinion.

Next, he rescinded Obama’s order for public schools to accommodate transgender student bathroom choices. An issue better left to local communities and states. Trump also reinstated a ban on supporting NGO’s that perform abortions. He furthermore ordered that federal agencies had to eliminate two regulations for everyone they wanted to impose.

And we cannot forget that over the weekend, Trump ordered airstrikes on Syria after their unfortunate use of chemical weapons on their own population. (I’ll have updates on Syria and the terrorist bombings in Egypt next week.) This flys in the face of Russia and Iran, supporters of the Assad regime. Russia must be especially angry since they won Trump the election (sarcasm), and now he’s attacking their allies!

Overall, Trump is playing the long game. Small successes lead to big ones, as we saw with Neil Gorsuch being confirmed for the supreme court this week. There’s no doubt that the Middle East turmoil will continue to be front-page news for the next few days as will the evolving situation over North Korea. Our populist president has a lot of work to do but he’s a smooth operator. He’s not going to be easily shaken by the media or pressured by anyone to work at a pace other than one of his own design. I have no doubt that over the coming weeks, we’ll continue to see the calm and stable hand of a man charting his own course… the only exception to this will be those random, bothersome, tweets.

*although Trump is the 45th president, Grover Cleveland was the 22 & 24, leaving 44 men who have served, Washington didn’t get to use the White House, thereby 42 presidents.