Trump did it

The Left has furiously managed the decline of our nation, domestically and globally, for the better part of 15 years. The consequences are coming to the fore. In order to distract from the carnage now so visible in the wake of three Obama terms in power, Trump and the Make America Great Again majority must be falsely and persistently accused. 

By Steve Woodward

Everything is Donald Trump’s fault. Everything deemed unpleasant, unexpected, uncomfortable and unbearable. Everything.

It’s a demonstrable falsehood, of course. But it is perpetuated by a surging, media-fueled blame culture. It is the Left’s last best hope. 

The Left has furiously managed the decline of our nation, domestically and globally, for the better part of 15 years. The consequences are coming to the fore. In order to distract from the carnage now so visible in the wake of three Obama terms in power, Trump and the Make America Great Again majority must be falsely and persistently accused. 

Covid-19. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. January 6. October 7. These are among the large-scale events for which President Trump is to blame. (He was not even in office in some cases).

But there are more. Americans are cancelling summer travel because of Trump’s tariffs, reports The Wall Street Journal (the intent of which are purposely distorted by coordinated media talking points). A high death toll after recent Kentucky tornados? That’s on Trump, squeals The Washington Post. Even pop culture is in decline, concludes The Atlantic magazine. It interviewed art critic Dean Kissick, who scolds that we’re living in “the long 2017”, which an Atlantic writer describes as “a period in which anxieties related to Donald Trump and Brexit (Brexit?) have smothered culture with moralism, navel gazing, and conformity.” (Why is it that “critics” always try to get away with making statements devoid of substance or meaning? Morals are evil?)

Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is Trump’s “modern day Gestapo,” says Minnesota Marxist and Gov. Tim Walz, thus Trump and Trump alone must be blamed if even one potentially lethal illegal alien is temporarily jailed with a hoard of really lethal guys after their deportation to El Salvador. The “Maryland man”, Kilmar Abrego Garcia, became collateral damage in America’s long overdue war on mass illegal immigration, a war fought on two fronts — at the U.S.-Mexico border and through active arrests and deportations. Collateral damage is the price of war.

In the Left’s war on American sovereignty under the Obama/Biden regime of 2021-24, we witnessed repeated collateral damage — raped and murdered innocent citizens such as Laken Riley, Rachel Morin and Kaitlyn Weaver. Weaver was killed in July 2024, the victim of a high-speed auto collision. The driver of the speeding car was an illegal immigrant minor, 15, who just last week was sentenced to probation (emphasis added) and community service by a Trump hating Colorado judge.  

No one on the Left, not presidents, not governors, not judges, is to blame in the aftermath of these one-off tragedies. The blame culture is real enough, and the media corrupt and pervasive enough, that any assignment of blame directed at Trump/MAGA can be justified, even legitimized. 

They’ll probably get around to pinning Joe Biden’s prostate cancer diagnosis on Trump’s mean “Sleepy Joe” comments. 

As obviously absurd as that would be, look more closely at the “doomed summer travel narrative”.

A couple told the Journal they are cancelling a bucket-list trip to France owed to Trump’s tariff re-balancing strategy. (The Left calls it a trade war, which is accurate if the context is that war is what other countries have waged against the United States for decades). 

“We’ve been talking about Paris as long as we’ve been together, which is 54 years,” said Don Pratt, 75.

The Journal reports, “The couple sketched out a two-week itinerary that included England and Scotland, where his ancestors lived centuries ago. ‘Then the tariffs sort of got everybody around the world mad at us’,” Pratt said. “He worried about a chilly greeting if he showed up hoping to meet long-lost relatives. So instead, they recently booked a trip to take their adult son and his family to Walt Disney World … ”

This is a truly sorry side effect of Trump Derangement Syndrome. These mentally warped seniors traded reunions with relatives, memories of fabulous landmarks, and world-class cheese and wine for woke Disney drag queens and long lines of poorly dressed Americans swilling 32-ounce sodas. Are they devoid of any hint of national pride that once was presumed to be wired into the DNA of American citizens? Apparently, yes. They’re fine with high tariffs imposed by the French on products inbound from the U.S. and never contemplate why, for example, you’ll rarely see a Chevrolet Suburban navigating Parisian thoroughfare, or an award-winning Napa Cabernet Sauvignon on a Lyon wine list. The trip to visit the relatives would have been worth it just to explain how fair trade actually works.

Meanwhile, it’s tornado and hurricane season, and while many Americans delight at tracking and “modeling” potentially deadly systems and where they might be headed, media fear mongers are salivating, anxious to fire up the climate change narrative machine. Naturally, Trump’s fingerprints will be everywhere in the aftermath of high winds and surging water. (In stark contrast, the Left’s media slaves never raised similar concerns about Biden or North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper when thousands of the state’s citizens were abandoned after Hurricane Helene last September, and the devastation continues to roll off the back of Josh Stein, North Carolina’s latest Democrat governor.)

Severe tornadoes hammered parts of Kentucky on May 16, 2025. The Washington Post breathlessly reported that “Jackson, Kentucky, is four meteorologists short of what agency officials have deemed ideal staffing” and blamed that on sweeping, (overdue) audits of federal agency staffing and payrolls. Kentucky’s Lexington Herald Leader ran with an ominous headline — “Did staffing cuts at weather service affect Kentucky’s tornado response?” — but its reporter couldn’t find anyone on the scene who answered in the affirmative. 

“As planned in advance, neighboring offices provided staffing support to the office in Jackson,” a spokesperson said. Read that closely. Resources, in this case human resources, were coordinated as needed under extreme circumstances. Is that not what taxpayers should expect from federally funded agencies and their field offices?

During his recent unhinged rants while “performing” in the United Kingdom, cranky, old Bruce Springsteen took blaming Trump to new depths, in once case decrying “residents” being taken “off American streets” and sent to “foreign detention centers”.  These of course are dangerous illegals being returned to their countries of origin. In other words, definitely not “born in the USA”.  

Springsteen finally calmed down and attempted poignancy, quoting writer James Baldwin, who observed, “In this world, there isn’t as much humanity as one would like, but there’s enough.”

Is there enough? Where is the humanity in a nation overrun by illegal immigrants, mostly gang trained males, killing our citizens? Where is the humanity in gutting American manufacturing jobs in favor of cheap foreign labor? (Springsteen’s contemporary Billy Joel lyricized about “closing all the factories down [in Allentown]”, remember?) And where is the humanity in covering up Biden’s prostate cancer diagnosis until even compliant media no longer could sustain the lie that he was mentally competent as a sitting President?

Liberty first

By Steve Woodward
As we say so long to 2019, just off the top of my head …

  • Wage increases within the workforce rising at their fastest rate in more than a decade, faster than for supervisors (bosses).
  • Record or near-record setting gains for the Nasdaq (35%) and S&P 500 (28%).
  • Dramatic declines in illegal US-Mexico border crossings. The mayor of Yuma, Ariz., recently lifted a state of emergency declared last April because “the release of migrant families into the Yuma area has ceased.”

    Labor surge
    Wages rose 4.5% year-over-year in November among bottom 25% of earners.
  • Record low unemployment among black and Hispanic populations.
  • Lowest unemployment overall since 1969.
  • Energy independence from foreign sources.
  • Trade deal set with Canada and Mexico.
  • Pending trade deal with China that will end decades of trade abuse by the Chinese.
  • Record federal judicial confirmations of Trump nominees (48 in three years).
I’m beginning to think it might be safe, finally, to retrieve the gold, cash and firearms I buried in anticipation of Y2K!
Conservative bulldog Sean Hannity repeatedly urges, “Let not your hearts be troubled.” Many of us are not there yet. Democrats present much about which to be perpetually troubled. (The drums of impeachment will awaken us from our New Year’s hangovers soon enough). But, consider more positive awakenings such as two I discovered with pleasant shock in The Wall Street Journal‘s December 28 letters to the editor.
They are letters written by residents of California and Illinois, no less, where the radical lefts reigns. They are direct smackdowns of columnist Peggy Noonan, a Never Trumper and out-of-touch Upper East Side New Yorker. Noonan is all for impeaching President Donald Trump if for no other reason than he is an objectionable character.
From Evanston, Ill.: “Ms. Noonan writes that many ‘serious’ witnesses of ‘obvious stature’ in the House impeachment hearings said the president abused his power. I don’t see it that way. Those bureaucrats said they disagreed with Mr. Trump’s foreign policy, which they think they (emphasis added), rather than the president, get to determine. Ms. Noonan should not mistake their arrogance for seriousness.”
From Mill Valley, Calif.: “We want the craziness of the left highlighted plainly. We want the corruption of elected politicians, permanent bureaucracy, intelligence services, judiciary and media exposed and cornered. We are tired of the politically correct speech codes and the protected classes for whom there can be no consequences. We prefer liberty.”
That is as powerful a mantra as I can think of to sustain us in the battles ahead in 2020. Republicans prefer liberty.

Send in the clowns

… Where are the clowns. Send in the clowns. Don’t bother, they’re here.” – Stephen Sondheim, 1973

By Steve Woodward

It is increasingly difficult, if not impossible, to avoid opinion columnists who are so wrong on so many topics. Their renderings ramble on and on, littered with unsubstantiated statistics and unsourced assertions. I’m encountering these diatribes despite never, ever reading op-ed pages in The New York Times or The Washington Post.

Who needs those formerly credible publications when one can find the same extremes of anti-Republican, anti-Trump, pro-left vitriol in The Pilot? The April 28 edition showcased Robert Levy observing that illegal immigrants pouring across the southern border are the reason for the nation’s robust economy; William Shaw praising North Carolina teachers, who are not union members, for planning a union-style, May 1 March on Raleigh that will force school closures; and Don Tortorice lamenting Donald Trump’s strategy to rein in China’s intellectual property theft by imposing tariffs on its U.S. exports to trigger, for once, negotiations.

Levy’s tirade veered way off the rails in several passages, but this is the laugh-out-loud portion that is pure fantasy: “(Illegal immigrants in the workplace keep) employment numbers artificially high and unemployment, especially for blacks and Hispanics, artificially low.” Using this premise, we are supposed to believe that Democrats, who deliberately do nothing to stop illegal immigration, are nonetheless willing to let Trump get all of the credit for historically low unemployment and wage growth. Who does Levy think he is the kidding? Democrats would rather their voters (citizens, ex-cons and aliens) receive an entitlement than a job, every time.

Shaw cheers teachers who will abandon their responsibilities to swarm downtown Raleigh on May 1 during a demonstration coordinated by the National Education Association’s state affiliate (the NEA doggedly maintains presence in states without teachers’ unions). Teacher pay in North Carolina has risen steadily five consecutive years but “while progress is being made, teachers should not expect greater largesse from the General Assembly if they silence their voices.” What about the voices of parents who wonder why teacher pay always must go up regardless of student performance in the classroom? What about kids who can’t read in middle school?

In an April 29 column for RealClearEducation.com, Terry Stoops of the The John Locke Foundation observes that despite endless calls for higher teacher pay “results from state achievement tests administered last year show that only 56 percent of elementary and middle school students were proficient in math, and just 57 percent were proficient in reading.”

Why do teachers refuse to demonstrate to students that pay rises on the tide of merit, not entitlement? The students should be the ones in the streets.

Tortorice’s column is written like a textbook lecture, perhaps to be expected of a former professor at the Law School of the College of William and Mary. It is full of eye-glazing statistics and purports that tariffs are never paid by the country on which they are imposed. But Tortorice misses the essential point of the Trump-era tariffs on China. This so-called trade war is moving the two countries toward a long-term trade agreement with a goal of eliminating tariffs in both directions over time. Talks, potentially the final round, are ongoing as we speak. The imbalanced global trade system has been entrenched for too long and would never be challenged without a period of economic pain.

The columnist insists American taxpayers are paying for tariffs imposed on Chinese goods, yet the U.S. economy is growing every quarter (per a 3.2% GDP uptick in Q1), consumer confidence moved higher in a recent survey and inflation fears are off the table. Americans with a long view would rather reach an agreement that deters China from stealing intellectual property and gradually reduces tariffs.

This trio of diversions from reality pale in comparison to the unhinged column by ex-Reagan speechwriter and decades long pundit Peggy Noonan in the April 27-28 weekend editions of The Wall Street Journal.

Despite the innumerable ways in which the Trump administration and Republicans in Congress have rewarded American citizens for their votes in 2016, Noonan is incensed that Trump has failed because he did not seek to pacify members of the Washington establishment (she calls them “the old ambassadors) who were willing to give him a chance. If, that is, he came around. Which Trump did not, thankfully.

“One by one,” she writes, “the ambassadors shut down and turned away. … They feared Madness of King George-ism. They’d come to think the president was, irredeemably, a screwball.”

The Swamp guards the status quo at any cost, but Trump is the one who is dangerous? The ambassadors, when they were younger, were equally skeptical of the fitness for the presidency of Noonan’s old boss, Ronald Reagan. Even when Americans cheered a booming 1980s economy long overdue, the ambassadors scowled and ordered another martini.

Now, here we are 30 years later. Noonan wrote beautiful words which once complimented the warm delivery of President Reagan. But her recent column was delivered like a manifesto written from a cabin in the woods after the meds ran out.

“There is an unarticulated wish out there to return to some past in which things were deeply imperfect and certainly divided but on some level tranquil, and not half mad,” wrote Noonan, who we assume uses “out there” and the Upper East Side of New York interchangeably, and chose not to name the deeply imperfect Barack Obama.

She reveals herself as just another horrified, well-heeled bystander peering over her bifocals, who longs for the return of a ruling elite in Washington and is incapable of understanding that this is just the opposite of what ordinary Americans between the coasts desire and will vote again to avoid in 2020 and beyond.

 

 

 

 

 

A soft coup d’etat ensues

By Steve Woodward

The walls are closing in on Donald Trump, pundits and politicians now agree. Michael Cohen has turned on him. What else does he know? There is no proof of Russian collusion, but campaign finance violations will do the job. Robert Mueller is taking no prisoners. James Comey brags that he “got away” with FBI agents grilling General Michael Flynn without counsel present, thrilled to ruin a patriot who joined Trump’s orbit. Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer wag their disapproving fingers at Trump with cameras rolling in the Oval Office because, well, he’s an unworthy President.

And, yet …

WASHINGTON (Reuters): The number of Americans filing applications for jobless benefits tumbled to near a 49-year low (in early December), which could ease concerns about a slowdown in the labor market and economy.

Democrats/Media: Trump and the Republicans must be stopped.

Infrastructure boomThe Wall Street Journal: State and local government investment in roads, bridges, buildings and other infrastructure hasn’t returned to its previous peak, but it is now showing signs—late in the expansion—of a real recovery. Bigger state and local tax collections, propelled in part by an acceleration in sales-tax receipts from consumer spending, is boosting capital projects and driving a municipal borrowing boom.

Democrats/Media: Trump and the Republicans must be stopped.

Breitbart: In October, imports used in computer manufacturing amounted to over $40 billion. That represents a savings of about $640 million over what they would have paid for those products a year earlier – more than half of the additional tariff payments. A big part of the tariffs are actually being paid by foreign manufacturers who now receive fewer dollars for their goods. People who think they have a better understanding of trade than the president like to mock Trump for saying that China and others pay tariffs but evidence suggests Trump has it right.

Democrats/Media: Trump and the Republicans must be stopped.

The Daily Caller: U.S. oil production hit 11.7 million barrels a day during the week ending Nov. 16. That’s unchanged from the previous week, but up significantly from the week ending Nov. 9. Oil companies are pulling more than 2 million barrels more out of the ground now than during the same time period in 2017, the U.S. Energy Information Administration reported. That’s a 21-percent increase in oil production in the past year.

Democrats/Media: Trump and the Republicans must be stopped.

Rush Limbaugh: “I feel duty-bound to warn you and to give you a heads-up about what we’re gonna face. Donald Trump’s gonna have perhaps the most embattled presidency in — well, certainly in our lifetimes, and I dare say maybe in modern American history. They’re not going to quit and they are a new kind of stupid. They are not logical. They make no sense whatsoever. But they are going to have the media on their side, and that’s the danger.”

Rush uttered these words Nov. 22, 2016. Sadly, he was deadly accurate. But there is solace to be found in knowing that Donald Trump never quits.

 

 

 

The Awakening

By Jim Lexo

I am a lifelong Republican, starting with helping my parents campaign for Dwight Eisenhower. I was very young. Throughout the years I embraced the Republican principles of balanced budgets, strong national defense, individual rights and the other common sense principles that make for a strong, viable Republic.

When Donald Trump came on the scene I thought there was no way this guy could win, and no way will he be capable of representing Republicans. One of the Republican Governors or Senators will surely win the nomination went the conventional wisdom. Having worked in the “traditional” wing of the party I was not tuned into the growing conservative bloc of voters who felt there was little difference between the parties. No matter who gets elected, they concluded, we keep drifting to the left.

Surf to Victory capSo Trump is elected and does and says things that initially appear to be outrageous. He tells our NATO allies they need to start carrying their weight on the cost of defending Europe. He starts what looks to be trade wars with China, Mexico, Canada and Europe (free trade Republicans go crazy).  He calls the leader of a rogue nation (North Korea) that has nuclear capabilities “Little Rocket Man”.  He kills the Iran nuclear “deal”. He tells the U.N. we are not going to give foreign aid to nations that do not support our goals. On and on. You get the idea. Finally, a President who says things we all think about but are too afraid to say out loud.

Despite the second guessing, negative reports and high drama, it turns out Trump has been right on all the issues.  We are getting better trade deals; rogue nations are falling in line; allies are not taking advantage of us like they used to; mortal enemies are afraid to make a move because they don’t know how Trump might respond, and so on.

My point is that Trump has awakened me to the fact that “business as usual” had us on the path to socialism and basic ruination. Would a Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio or Scott Walker been able to achieve all of the accomplishments Trump’s administration has in less than two years? I doubt it. Trump’s bold moves have resulted in positive outcomes that may very well allow America to remain the greatest nation for another century.

What it took was someone who knew what he wanted to accomplish and how to make it happen. This bold, new Republican era must be sustained by a red wave of voter turnout, both during early voting and at the polls, through November 6. Trump’s achievements can not be repeated too often as we work in our communities to get out the vote.