President Trump – Page 2

Facts trump distortions

By Steve Woodward

Local columnist William Shaw, a regular contributor to The Pilot’s op-ed page, devotes himself to degrading the President of the United States based on his hatred of Donald Trump. The Pilot is Shaw’s enabler despite his disregard for truth.

Shaw’s March 31 rendering (Hate Crimes Can Emerge Without A Moral Compass) includes a starkly misleading assertion: Trump’s father participated in a KKK march in 1927. Thus, the President inherited that DNA and is, today, a white supremacist.

As for Fred Trump, the President’s late father, being arrested while marching with “robed” KKKers in Queens, New York, in 1927 (19 years before Donald Trump was born), turn to Google to be properly enlightened. PolitiFact, a left wing “fact checking” site, rated claims that Fred Trump was arrested marching with the KKK as “mostly false”. Vice.com allows that “none of the articles” published at the time “prove that Fred Trump was a member of the Klan” and “it’s possible he was just a bystander.” Shaw’s column fails to mention this.

Shaw then claims, without source attribution, that “more than 70 percent of violent hate crimes against Jews, Blacks, Muslims, and Hispanics have been committed by right-wing extremist groups” across the past decade. It is likely Shaw sourced this data point from the discredited Anti-Defamation League. The ADL’s Center on Extremism issued a report earlier this year linking “every extremist killing” incident in 2018 (17 in all) to right-wing extremists.

Dan Feinreich, writing for The Times of Israel, dismissed the report’s conclusion that “far right extremism is a major threat”. Factually, extremist driven murder represents a small fraction of total U.S. murders.

“We do not even know how many ‘non-far right’ extremist murders took place because, according to the ADL,” Feinreich observes, “the data is difficult to obtain.” But, apparently, data on right-wing extremists is at their fingertips?

And, finally, The Pilot permitted yet another thread to be added to the false narrative that Charlottesville 2017 was the site of a Trump-fueled hate crime. The death of a pedestrian during a rally on a Charlottesville, Virginia, street in August 2017 was linked to one deranged individual, acting alone, who plowed his car into a crowd, injuring a dozen others. He recently pled guilty to hate crimes. Charlottesville law enforcement allowed tensions to escalate over two days, and failed to tame demonstrators until a life was lost. It was a tragedy but not solely an incident stoked by right-wing extremism. Not by a long shot.

Where true leaders go

By Connie Lovell

Peggy Noonan, in a year-end column for The Wall Street Journal, asks “Trump insiders” to speak candidly about how the administration conducts the people’s business. Two years are indeed enough time to evaluate the conduct of our government—including the duplicity in Congress and the vigilante style of the Justice Department and the IRS. Yet Ms. Noonan focuses her ire on President Donald Trump while overlooking these and other malefactors.

When the press stretches facts about events on Capitol Hill and in the bureaucracy, when the Justice Department decides to obfuscate facts and ignore subpoenas, when we learn that Congress has a secret slush fund to silence sexual-harassment accusers, these scandals often are made public by Trump insiders willing to speak honestly about what Americans have long suspected.

When Defense Secretary Jim Mattis resigned his post, we heard his message. The former general is in the fight to win, as is expected of a fine career officer. Yet others in the administration argue candidly that it is futile to fight a war for 18 years without rules of engagement sufficient to defeat our enemy. Experience tells us that peace does not come through empty promises and plane loads of cash.

There are indeed many books about the chaos in the Trump administration. But there also are many others authored by supporters of the president, willing to put their reputations on the line in defense of the president’s accomplishments and his right to govern.

Ms. Noonan suggests that honest Trump insiders are cowed by the president’s operatives, becoming “figures of “obloquy.” I am not a Trump insider but I am not afraid to speak up on the president’s behalf. I voted for him to expose the inner sanctum we call our government and shed light on the corruption we all know exists. He has persevered to the point of friction and beyond, and that is where true leaders go.

Originally published as a letter-to-the-editor in The Wall Street Journal, Jan. 4, 2019

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 cap So 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.

Trumping a socialist wave

By Norman Zanetti

The radical leanings of the likes of U.S. House candidate Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, and a host of others calling for Democratic Socialism, are a rapidly growing segment within the Democratic Party. They are stretching their party’s interests from health care for all, for free college tuition, ending capitalism, nationalizing major industries and their profits, all part and parcel to driving wealth redistribution within America.

Their attempts to create what amounts to a cradle-to-grave social structure along with other left wing ideological whims represents an invariant agenda, mocking the dynamism of decades of dedication to personal innovation and risk taking. These grew America’s wealth and stature, rewarding personal success, and supporting programs for its citizens by way of their tax contributions going forward. This made America a prosperous republic and the envy of the world.

The progressive preoccupation to woo voters to shifting all social costs to government entities versus the private sector only defers the inevitable — chaos, confusion, resentment, infighting, probability of hyperinflation, and a much higher tax rate for business and personal entities to support it. This is being assisted in part by a burgeoning social media that is now being scrutinized. There is no airbrushing this astonishingly expensive and strategically incoherent strategy.

Is there enough gullibility in the American voting public for this to resonate in political favor, to gain traction for a blue wave in this November’s mid-term elections? Don’t think so. The 63 million-plus who voted for President Donald Trump, as well as a growing independent base, will reject the cacophony of voices of those supporting socialism more broadly. The art of the possible is on full display. The ambitious agenda to Make America Great Again is succeeding, and all under the radar of a media network which has purposely refrained from acknowledging a booming economy and renewed consumer confidence. Group loathing by the entire progressive establishment will not point the November mid-term needle to a blue wave.

President Trump is unburdened with how the major media and progressives are challenging his agenda. He knows and we know they are afraid to admit to any and all positive enhancements his agenda has accomplished. It can’t be hidden from us despite splenetic attacks on his person.

The war on Trump rages on

By Norman Zanetti

Recently, sitting on my front porch, I watched a breeze blow the Stars and Stripes to a beautiful horizontal. A short time later, a thought occurred to me — a scary “what if.”

What if an incredibly malleable electorate were to succumb to a systematic gutting of confidence in Republican initiatives and their leaders, especially an elected president?

The media continues to camouflage the benefits of tax relief, sensible border control with proper vetting, sanctions on terroristic regimes, job gains, reduction in the number of Americans on food stamps, the lowest unemployment rates for minorities, and renewed confidence in our economy by every consumer index that reports it.

The scariest contingency to contemplate is that Americans are taking all these muddling allegations of nefarious behavior without questioning where they come from and why. Those leaning to the ideological left are betting on American complacency.

The truth forthcoming will destroy mountains of lies. Skeptics are surfacing and reaching out to listeners.

They are working overtime to expose the chicanery and mudslinging against an elected administration, an administration dealing with North Korea, Russian provocations and trade imbalances — all while delivering on programs that got candidate Trump elected.

Prosecutorial overreach by implication has worn thin, and Americans sense it. It is being questioned and reversed by skeptics.

The mandarins in Congress and heads of news organizations will soon have to accommodate these new revelations being unearthed or lose total creditably.

If that comes too late, I can see our proud flag bellowing in the wind with teardrops and drooping in fatigue.

Remain a sophisticated skeptic in your own right. Americans voted in the millions for Trump. Not a single vote was cast for media heads who despise him, or prosecutors hell-bent on destroying him.

Norman Zanetti is a contributor to ResolveNC.blog.