The ‘Stupidity’ of Donald Trump

He’s had far more success than Arnold Schwarzenegger or Jesse Ventura.

President Trump departing from the White House, Dec. 22. PHOTO: JONATHAN ERNST/REUTERS

By 

William McGurn

1472 COMMENTS

This time one year ago, the assumption dominating political coverage was that the only people more stupid than Donald Trump were the deplorables who elected him.

Since then, of course, President-elect Trump has become President Trump. Over his 11 months in office, he has put Neil Gorsuch on the Supreme Court and four times as many judges on the appellate courts as Barack Obama did his first year; recognized Jerusalem as the capital of Israel; withdrawn from the Paris climate accord; adopted a more resolute policy on Afghanistan than the one he’d campaigned on; rolled back the mandate forcing Catholic nuns, among others, to provide employees with contraception and abortifacients; signed legislation to open up drilling for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge; initiated a bold, deregulatory assault on the administrative state—and topped it all off with the first major overhaul of the tax code in more than 30 years.

And yet that Mr. Trump is a very stupid man remains the assumption dominating his press coverage.

Let this columnist confess: He did not see Mr. Trump’s achievements coming, at least at first. In the worst sense, populism means pandering to public appetites at the expense of sound policy. Too often populists who get themselves elected find either that they cannot implement what they promised, or that when they do, there are disastrous and unexpected consequences.

Add to this the sorry experience America had recently had with men, also outside conventional politics, who ran successfully for governorships: former pro wrestler and Navy SEAL Jesse Ventura in Minnesota and actor Arnold Schwarzenegger in California. Their respective administrations each began with high enthusiasm but ended in defeat and disillusionment. What would make anyone think Mr. Trump would do better?

Start with Mr. Ventura. His populism, like Mr. Trump’s, featured open ridicule of the press. At one point he issued press cards listing them as “official jackals.” Also like Mr. Trump, he was treated as simple-minded because he was not a professional pol. When David Letterman listed his top 10 campaign slogans for Mr. Ventura, No. 1 was “it’s the stupidity, stupid.”

In his first year Mr. Ventura’s approval rating soared to 73%, and while in office he did manage to push through tax rebates and a property-tax reform. By his last year, however, his vetoes were regularly overridden, spending had shot up, and the magic was gone. In the end, he decided against seeking a second term.

Next came Mr. Schwarzenegger, who in 2003 announced his run for governor on “The Tonight Show.” Mr. Schwarzenegger’s pitch was essentially Mr. Trump’s: The state’s politics had been so corrupted by the political class that Californians needed a strongman from the outside to shake it up.

The Governator did succeed in getting himself re-elected three years later, which is more than Mr. Ventura did. In the end, however, he was defeated by those he’d denounced as the “girlie men” of Sacramento, and his package of reforms went nowhere. The man who entered office promising to cut spending and revive the state’s economy ended up signing a huge tax increase, while debt nearly tripled under his watch.

Now we have President Trump. In one sense he is not unique: Almost all GOP presidents are stereotyped as not very bright. Ask Ike, or George W. Bush, or even Lincoln. Nor is it uncommon, in the headiness of a White House, for even the lowliest staffer to come to regard himself as the intellectual superior of the president he works for.

In Mr. Trump’s case, critics equate lowbrow tastes (e.g., well-done steaks covered in ketchup) as confirmation of a lack of brainpower. It can make for great sport. But starting out with the assumption that the president you are covering is a boob can prove debilitating to clear judgment.

Quick show of hands: How many of those in the press who continue to dismiss Mr. Trump as stupid publicly asserted he could never win the 2016 election—or would never get anyone decent to work for him in the unlikely miracle he did get elected?

The Trump presidency may still go poof for any number of reasons—if the promised economic growth doesn’t materialize, if the public concludes that his inability to ignore slights on Twitter is getting the best of his presidency, or if Democrats manage to leverage his low approval ratings and polarizing personality into a recapture of the House and Senate this coming November. And yes, it’s possible to regard Mr. Trump’s presidency as not worth the price.

But stupid? Perhaps the best advice for anti-Trumpers comes from one of their own, a Vermont Democrat named Jason Lorber. Way back in April, in an article for the Burlington Free Press, the retired state politician wrote that “while it may be good for a chuckle, calling or even thinking someone else stupid is virtually guaranteed to give them the last laugh.”

Is that not what Mr. Trump is now enjoying at the close of his first year?

Write to mcgurn@wsj.com.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-stupidity-of-donald-trump-1514233232?shareToken=stcf24d54ff04b430485c60cf7e7873650&reflink=article_email_share

The First Anti-American President

The First Anti-American President

 

BY MICHAEL LEDEEN 

Barack Obama will no doubt be chronicled, among other things, as the first anti-American president. No wonder; he’s the product of an educational system that has become increasingly radical and anti-American with each passing decade, and his mother was a stereotypical leftist anthropologist with a passion for the Third World.

The pattern is unmistakable. As Luis Fleischman notes, Obama wanted to make deals with our enemies, Iran being the most dramatic example. But just look at Latin America:

The Obama Administration tried to avoid confrontations with anyone it wanted to make a “historic deal” with. Most of these “historic deals” were intended to be made with enemies, as Obama desperately sought an agreement not only with Iran, but also with Cuba and reconciliation with Venezuela.

Thus, Obama failed to insist on the extradition of Venezuelan military and drug trafficker Hugo Carvajal from Aruba and the Syrian-born Venezuelan drug lord Walid Makled from Colombia. Carvajal was the chief of Venezuelan military intelligence and Makled is one of the most notorious drug traffickers in the Western Hemisphere. Makled himself disclosed his own cooperation with scores of the highest officials within Chavez’s government -- including Carvajal himself, with the chiefs of the Venezuelan army and navy, as well as with dozens of Venezuelan generals.

The Obama people did not want to know the details of Venezuela’s collusion with the drug Mafiosi. If you have followed the story of the obstruction of the DEA investigation of Hezbollah, you will recognize the pattern. Indeed, it is part of the story.

Trump's Iran Policy: A Good Start

It is also part of a bigger story: What is Trump going to do about Iran? The rhetoric on Iran is great. Inspirational, even. But as even “Mad Dog" Mattis says, there’s, well, more rhetoric, along with some sanctions:

U.S. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis says Washington will deal with Iran through a "diplomatically-led effort," a day after a top U.S. diplomat said Tehran was supplying weapons to the Huthi rebels in Yemen.

So we still don’t have an Iran policy worthy of the name, despite the welcome clarity the Trump people have brought to the subject. “Everywhere you find turmoil,” Mattis said following our UN Ambassador Nikki Haley’s expose of Iran’s role in Yemen, “you find Iran’s hand in it.”

But then the secretary of Defense went on to embrace consciousness-raising.

Consciousness has long been suitably raised. There is no confusion about the nature of the Iranian regime or its intent to develop nuclear attack weapons or its savage repression of seventy-plus million people who would undoubtedly enter the ranks of the West if they could. But if we do not directly challenge the regime, no one else is going to do it.

Donald Trump is certainly the opposite of an anti-American president, and he has no affection for our enemies. He has enabled the Ukrainians to fight, perhaps effectively, against the Russians. So why can’t he enable the Iranians to fight against the ayatollahs?

In the Ukrainian case we’re talking about military weapons; in the Iranian conflict the weapons are political. If the Iranians rose up against the regime when Obama entered the White House, you can be sure they are at least equally motivated to do it with Trump in office. There are many protests in Iran today, and the Khamenei/Rouhani regime has responded by executing half as many Iranians as in the past. We should relentlessly expose this mass murder, and we should publicize the ongoing protests.

The target audience for such exposes is the great mass of the population. Paradoxically, Iranians are better informed about events in Jerusalem and Washington than in Iranian Kurdistan, the southern oil regions, and cities like Mashad and Qom.

All Iranians need this information, which shows them that they are not alone. The technology for such a campaign exists. It is the same as it was when we deployed it against the Soviet Union with such powerful consequences: our broadcasting network, starting with the Voice of America. Today, Farsi-language VOA is often a vehicle for anti-American polemics, since personnel is virtually unchanged from the Obama years. We need a thorough housecleaning, but there are few signs that our national security team understands its urgency.

Faster, please.

https://pjmedia.com/michaelledeen/first-anti-american-president/

ASSOCIATED PRESS: GLOBAL COOLING REQUIRES MORE GOVERNMENT MONEY

BY JOHN HINDERAKER IN ENERGY POLICY, MEDIA BIAS

Much of the U.S. is in the deep freeze. Where I live, the temperature isn’t expected to get above -5 this weekend. So, what else is new? It’s Winter.

But the Associated Press is sounding the alarm: “Rising energy costs eyed amid brutal cold snap gripping US.” I know, it’s a trite observation, but: where is global warming when you need it?

Plunging temperatures across half the country on Thursday underscored a stark reality for low-income Americans who rely on heating aid: Their dollars aren’t going to go as far this winter because of rising energy costs.

That is the subject of the article: rising energy costs.

Even before the cold snap, the Department of Energy projected that heating costs were going to track upward this winter, and many people are keeping a wary eye on their fuel tanks to ensure they don’t run out.

The burden caused by higher prices and higher energy usage is felt by all Americans, especially those who struggle to stay warm.

It’s interesting that liberals are suddenly concerned about energy costs. Where were they when President Obama’s Secretary of Energy said that he wanted gasoline prices in the U.S. to equal those in Europe, $9 a gallon? Where were they when Russia and its allies in the U.S. environmental movement were trying to suppress fracking, the source of natural gas that most Americans use to heat their homes?

It isn’t hard to understand what is going on here. The AP sees an opportunity to bash President Trump, fairly or unfairly:

Despite the cold, there was some good news for recipients of federal aid from the Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Program. President Donald Trump released nearly $3 billion, or roughly 90 percent, of the funding in October after previously trying to eliminate the program.

And, of course, the solution–as always–is government largesse.

The AP says that in the short term, energy prices have risen:

This winter, energy costs were projected to grow by 12 percent for natural gas, 17 percent for home heating oil, 18 percent for propane and 8 percent for electricity, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.

But energy prices in general have been going down in recent years, not up, thanks to aggressive resource development that has universally been opposed by liberals like those at the AP. This chart shows natural gas prices since 1990:

Certainly nothing about current gas prices constitutes an emergency. Heating oil prices have spiked up a little this Winter, but remain well below their level for most of the Obama administration:

It is interesting to see the AP, usually a shill for the global warming lobby (i.e., the government), waxing hysterical over Winter:

On Thursday, cold weather records were set from Arkansas to Maine, and the cold air will linger through the weekend, reaching as far south as Texas and the Florida Panhandle through the weekend.

In New Hampshire, the cold set a record for the day of minus 34 (minus 37 Celsius) atop the Northeast’s highest peak, Mount Washington, where a video was posted showing a weather observer emptying a pitcher of boiling water into the air, where it immediately turns to snow.

In the Midwest, temperatures in Minneapolis aren’t expected to top zero (minus 18 Celsius) this weekend, and it likely will be in the teens (minus 11 Celsius to minus 7 Celsius) when the ball drops on New Year’s Eve in New York City.

It was so cold officials in New Jersey canceled a New Year’s Day polar bear plunge, in which swimmers dash into the Atlantic Ocean.

A winter storm warning was in effect for much of Montana, calling for significant snowfall followed by dangerously cold temperatures as 2017 comes to an end.

On the Left, it is acceptable to acknowledge cold weather as long as the point is to demand more government spending. All of this will be forgotten when Summer rolls around and the temperature rises again. Then, more government spending (and higher taxes, too) will be needed to ward off the scourge of global warming.

http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2017/12/associated-press-global-cooling-requires-more-government-money.php

Pew: Trump media three times more negative than for Obama, just 5 percent positive

by Paul Bedard | 

The media story reviewed the tone of coverage of Trump's first 60 days in office and found that just 5 percent was "positive." (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

The media’s coverage of President Trump has been overwhelmingly negative, more than three times more critical than the initial coverage of former President Barack Obama and twice that of former Presidents George W. Bush and Bill Clinton.

The Pew Research Center said that the early coverage of Trump was 62 percent negative. By comparison, Obama’s coverage was just 20 percent negative.

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“About six-in-ten stories on Trump’s early days in office had a negative assessment, about three times more than in early coverage for Obama and roughly twice that of Bush and Clinton. Coverage of Trump’s early time in office moved further away from a focus on the policy agenda and more toward character and leadership,” said Pew.

The report about the harsh media coverage was included in Pew’s year-ending report titled "17 Striking Findings From 2017."

The media story reviewed the tone of coverage of Trump’s first 60 days in office and found that just 5 percent was “positive.”

By comparison, Obama’s coverage was 42 percent positive.

Paul Bedard, the Washington Examiner's "Washington Secrets" columnist, can be contacted at pbedard@washingtonexaminer.com

http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/pew-trump-media-three-times-more-negative-than-for-obama-just-5-percent-positive/article/2644448

HOLIDAY SHOPPING DATA ILLUSTRATE SUCCESS OF TRUMP’S POLICIES AND DEMOCRATS’ DIFFICULT ROAD

BY JOHN HINDERAKER IN 2018 ELECTION, ECONOMY, TAXES

The Wall Street Journal reports on holiday shopping:

Fueled by high consumer confidence and a robust job market, U.S. retail sales in the holiday period rose at their best pace since 2011, according to MastercardSpendingPulse, which tracks both online and in-store spending.

Sales, excluding automobiles, rose 4.9% from Nov. 1 through Christmas Eve, compared with a 3.7% gain in the same period last year.
***
Unlike in past years, when spending was driven by high-income shoppers, this holiday a broader swath of the population opened their wallets, encouraged by rising wages and low unemployment, analysts and economists said.

“Fewer people are living paycheck to paycheck,” said Chris Christopher, executive director of economic research firm IHS Markit. “There is a lot more spending from the lower- and middle-income groups, while the upper-income groups are splurging.”

Emphasis added.

In next November’s elections, the Democrats won’t just be running against Republicans. They will be running against reality. Take the tax cut. I won’t rehash all of the crazy things Democrats have said about it; they have been compiled at many locations. But simply put, it is insane for Democrats to allege that a tax cut will raise most people’s taxes, or that cutting corporate income taxes to an internationally-normal level will destroy the economy.

The Democrats could have argued that the tax reform bill will add ruinously to the national debt, but having cheered on the $10 trillion that was added to the debt during the Obama years, that option wasn’t open to them. In any event, the tax reform’s pro-growth elements will likely make any impact on the debt minimal.

Lacking that argument, and lacking any coherent explanation of why people shouldn’t be happy about having their taxes cut and the companies they work for more profitable, the Democrats have been reduced to…Robert Strong.

For the Democrats, 2018 will be a race against time. They think they can take the House, and then impeach President Trump. They may be right. But keeping the hysteria dialed up to 12 while distracting voters from the facts–a growing economy, higher wages, lower taxes, a pro-America foreign policy, a return to the rule of law–won’t be easy. It is never easy to run against reality.

http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2017/12/holiday-shopping-data-illustrate-success-of-trumps-policies-and-democrats-difficult-road.php

A Tale of Two Years

A Tale of Two Years

 

BY ROGER KIMBALL 

(Photo by JL) (Sipa via AP Images)

It was the best of years, it was the worst of years.

To hear some folks tell it, 2017 marked a hideous cataclysm in the affairs of man.  “So long 2017, you won’t be missed,” wrote Robert Schlesinger in US News & World Report. “Little went well in 2017,” this sage confided in his threnody, “but maybe 2018 will be better.”

Mel Robbins, writing for CNN, sounded a similar note. “This year,” Robbins wrote, “I heard so many people ask, ‘Is this really happening?’” 2017 was “bizarre,” an “alternate reality.”

What happened in 2017 to mark it out as a year that will live in infamy? Dear Reader, I hope that you are sitting down. You will hardly believe the hideous truth. Quaff a bit of brandy. Have the smelling salts at hand. What was the unspeakable reality that sent almost the entire U.S. media, the academic establishment in toto, nearly all of Hollywood, and Democratic politicians from Washington state to Florida into hysterical mourning? Are you ready?  Steady on. Take a deep breath. OK, here it is.

Someone those repositories of virtue did not favor was elected president of the United States in a free, open, democratic election. Can you believe it? Their candidate lost. Even worse, the opposing candidate was elected without their permission, over their strenuous objections, unremitting ridicule, and against their hermetically sealed certitude that such a thing was impossible, impossibleKemo Sabe!

Now you know the worst. The 2016 presidential election worked as the Constitution said it was supposed to work, not the way Hollywood millionaires, Ivy-educated pundits, angry feminists, or partisan opponents wanted it to work.

There was other bad news in 2017.  On November 8, 2016, the Dow Jones industrial average closed at 18,332. “Little went well” this year, so it is no surprise that the market closed on Friday, December 23 at 24,754. In other words, the market rose 6,422 points, or 35 percent, in little over a year. I’m told that represents more than $6 trillion in shareholder value.  Horrible!

There were other terrible things in 2017. The United States, thanks in part to the exploitation of fracking technology, is now the world’s largest energy producer.  Oil prices, to the chagrin of the Middle Eastern petrostates, and to Russia, are less than half what they were just a few years ago. (That’s one way the cunning Donald Trump kowtows to Vladimir Putin, by supporting policies that enhance America’s energy production.)

“Little went well in 2017,” quoth the scion of Arthur “see-no-evil-among-the-Kennedys” Schlesinger, except that unemployment is at 4.1 percent, consumer confidence is at a 17-year high, and 1.7 million jobs have been added over the course of this annus horribilis.

“Little went well in 2017”—unless, that is, you think that GDP over 3 percent is a good thing or that cutting 16 business-strangling regulations for every one new federal regulation is something to write home about.

“Little went well in 2017,” especially when you consider that the American military, with a $100 billion increase in its budget, is modernizing and strengthening.  Meanwhile, illegal immigration is down more than 50 percent, even though Trump’s promised border wall has yet to be built.

Really to understand why Schlesinger fils could write that “little went well in 2017,” you have to understand that the tax-reform bill that Trump signed last week was “ the worst bill since the Fugitive Slave Act” of 1850. Nancy Pelosi was not so cautious or understated in her assessment. The bill, according to her, is “the worst bill in the history of the United States Congress,” “Armageddon,” “ the end of the world.” Former Obama functionary Larry Summers, noting that the bill repeals Obamacare’s provision that forces people to buy insurance or pay a fine, predicted that 10,000 people a year would die because of the bill. In fact, the bill, by cutting corporate taxes from 35 to 21 percent, will spur economic growth which will create jobs, which will increase America’s prosperity.  America’s middle class are the chief beneficiaries. The new plan doubles the standard deduction to $12,000—$24,000 for families—and also doubles the child tax credit from $1000 to $2000 per sprog. While the new act keeps seven individual tax categories—Trump wanted to reduce it to 4—it lowers the rate of all seven, maxing out now at 37 percent instead of 39.6 as before.  Look at your paycheck in February: you’ll see the difference.

“Little went well in 2017,” except that the United States now has an ardently pro-American president who puts the country’s interests, not the interests of the permanent bureaucracy and its media and academic echo chambers, first.

How does that work on the ground? Donald Trump, in fulfillment of a campaign promise, announces that the United States will move its embassy in Israel to Jerusalem. The United Nations goes into full snit mode. The Security Council votes against the plan, and the United States vetoes that resolution. Then the General Assembly votes to declare the plan “null and void” by a margin of 128 to 9 (with 35 abstentions).  The votes, like most things the UN does, is utterly meaningless, but Nikki Haley, our ambassador to the UN, warned that the United States would be taking note of who voted against us. The first fallout was just announced: the United States will be cutting its contribution to the UN by $285 million. “We will no longer let the generosity of the American people be taken advantage of or remain unchecked,” she said.  Good for her.  Surely that’s one little thing that went well in 2017.  I expect a lot more of the same in 2018, though I don’t expect senile politicians like Nancy Pelosi or wimpy commentators like Robert Schlesinger to notice.

https://pjmedia.com/rogerkimball/tale-two-years/