President Trump & the Populist Movement
What truly matters is not which party controls our government, but whether our government is controlled by the people. January 20, 2017, will be remembered as the day the people became the rulers of this nation again. The forgotten men and women of our country will be forgotten no longer.
—Donald Trump
The red-white-and-blue regalia hanging from the columns in front of the Capitol Rotunda provided a bright pop of color against the otherwise gray Washington sky. From my seat on the inaugural dais, I peered out over the West Front of the U.S. Capitol at the hundreds of thousands of Americans gathered on the National Mall. The people—the foot soldiers who powered the populist revolution—had come to witness the history they helped make. Like a time-lapse video of a puzzle being assembled at warp speed, the political events of the previous decades flashed through my mind and snapped into place to form the scene unfolding before me. On January 20, 2017, millions of Americans tuned in to watch the peaceful transfer of power—from the committed globalist Barack Obama to the defiant conservative-populist Donald Trump.
“Today we are not merely transferring power from one administration to another, or from one party to another—but we are transferring power from Washington, DC, and giving it back to you, the American People,” said President Donald J. Trump moments after being sworn in by Chief Justice John Roberts. He couldn’t resist taking another swipe at those who opposed him every step of the way. “The Establishment protected itself, but not the citizens of our country. Their victories have not been your victories; their triumphs have not been your triumphs. . . . That all changes—starting right here, and right now, because this moment is your moment: it belongs to you.”
Trump’s inaugural address may have lacked the grandiloquence and rhapsodic sweep of the greatest inaugural addresses, like Lincoln’s second or Reagan’s first. But it made one thing abundantly clear: Donald Trump had come to Washington to lay waste to the globalist legacies of the elites seated behind him on the platform:
For many decades, we’ve enriched foreign industry at the expense of American industry; Subsidized the armies of other countries while allowing for the very sad depletion of our military; We’ve defended other nations’ borders while refusing to defend our own; And spent trillions of dollars overseas while America’s infrastructure has fallen into disrepair and decay. We’ve made other countries rich while the wealth, strength, and confidence of our country has disappeared over the horizon. One by one, the factories shuttered and left our shores, with not even a thought about the millions upon millions of American workers left behind. The wealth of our middle class has been ripped from their homes and then redistributed across the entire world. But that is the past. And now we are looking only to the future.1
The speech was widely decried for being overly dark, pessimistic, and “dystopian” (big word for cable news!). MSNBC’s Chris Matthews called Trump’s address “Hitlerian.”2 And, right on cue, NeverTrumpers sneered from the sidelines. “I’ll be unembarrassedly old-fashioned here: It is profoundly depressing and vulgar to hear an American president proclaim: ‘America First,’ ” tweeted Bill Kristol.3 Then another, written in French: “Je ne regrette rien” (“I do not regret anything”).4 Few have been more pompous and wrong about Trump. What is truly vulgar is a government that no longer cares about the people paying its bills. That robs them of their God-given liberty, leeching power from them only to give it to the state.
But Trump’s inaugural wasn’t aimed at wooing his critics. It was about telling the citizens how he intended to govern—as a conservative-populist, as an economic nationalist.
“From this day forward, a new vision will govern our land. From this moment on, it’s going to be America First,” Trump said. “Every decision on trade, on taxes, on immigration, on foreign affairs, will be made to benefit American workers and American families.”
The contrast between the reactions of the Old Guard seated on the temporary stage and the crowds gathered on the National Mall was stark. From my vantage point, it was surreal watching these old political combatants sitting so close to witness the swearing in of a man they loathed. George W. Bush was so unnerved by Trump’s remarks, when the light rain began, he temporarily forgot how to put a poncho over his head. Michelle Obama scowled and eye-rolled her way through the entire speech. When the jumbotrons set up on the Capitol Lawn showed tight shots of her pained expressions, there were audible yowls and groans from the crowd. Hillary looked like she had eaten a bad clam. All in all, a great day.
The departure of the Obamas’ helicopter from the Capitol grounds after the ceremony brought me little comfort. I knew they weren’t really going away. They were going on vacation (Barack even managed a solo getaway to Bali—“me time” to work on his memoirs—for a month). Soon they’d be back to lead the resistance from the city they had occupied for eight years. Their headquarters: an eight-million-dollar mansion in the tony Kalorama neighborhood.
As I walked off the platform that day, questions turned in my mind: would the new administration and the Republicans in Congress deliver on Trump’s America First agenda? Will Donald Trump fulfill the promises he made that propelled him to power? Or will endless investigations, hostile Democrats, incompetent (and hostile) Republicans, and a rabid media together form an impenetrable barricade to progress? And then there are the internal barricades: will the damaging leaks, a lack of message discipline, and certain ill-advised tweets prove his populist agenda’s undoing?
The viewing stands had yet to be removed from the inaugural parade route when the White House found itself in a pointless debate over whether the crowd size of Trump’s inaugural was larger than Obama’s. (But who cares? Trump supporters voted and then went back to work.) What we remember most of former Press Secretary Sean Spicer’s first interaction with the press was not about the Trump agenda. Instead he focused on the media’s “deliberately false” reporting of inaugural attendance figures. (Earlier in the day, the president had referred to reporters as “among the most dishonest human beings on earth”—which I didn’t think went far enough.) But seriously, it was a rocky start.
Beginning on a more gracious note would have been the best way to reset the narrative. After such a long and rancorous campaign, we all needed it.
Still, it didn’t take long for Trump to put some populist points on the board. In his first week in office, the new president signed an executive order reinstating President Reagan’s “Mexico City” policy to stop taxpayer funding of abortion overseas; sent Vice President Mike Pence to appear at the March for Life, the highest-ranking government official ever to appear there; approved the Keystone XL pipeline after years of delay by the Obama administration; signed an executive order to start withholding funds from “sanctuary cities”; froze the madness known as Obama’s Syrian refugee program; and killed Obama’s signature trade deal, the disaster known as the Trans-Pacific Partnership. Not a bad first week on the job.
Republicans control the House, Senate, and White House for only the third time since 1928. Trump must move quickly to leverage the GOP’s unified government advantage while they still have it (midterm elections generally yield big gains for the party not in the White House). Indeed, the Trump administration’s first several months in office revealed important wins and warning signs for the populist movement in the years ahead.
Jobs, Jobs, Jobs
Even before being sworn in as president, Donald Trump sent a strong and important signal during his presidential transition that American job creation would be a top priority. On the day he announced his candidacy in 2015, Donald Trump promised: “I will be the greatest jobs president that God has ever created.” Among the president-elect’s first acts was helping save 1,000 Carrier air-conditioning jobs from going to Mexico. Trump then held a flurry of meetings with top business leaders who vowed to hire more American workers. SoftBank Group Corp. founder and CEO Masayoshi Son traveled to Trump Tower and announced plans to invest $50 billion in America and create up to 50,000 new U.S. telecom jobs.5 Exxon Mobil announced a $20 billion investment and over 45,000 new U.S. construction and manufacturing jobs. President Trump hailed it as “exactly the kind of investment, economic development and job creation that will help put Americans back to work” and a “true American success story.”6 After a meeting with Trump, Delta Air Lines CEO Ed Bastian said the company planned to hire 25,000 more workers over five years.7 And at a White House ceremony in late July, President Trump announced that Taiwan-based Foxconn Technology Group will invest over $10 billion to build a state-of-the-art LCD panel-manufacturing facility in Wisconsin that will create up to 13,000 jobs. Governor Scott Walker hailed it as “the single largest economic development project in the history of Wisconsin.”8
A new tone is being set. “What a difference a day makes,” said Juanita Duggan, president and CEO of the National Federation of Independent Business (NFIB). “Before Election Day small business owners’ optimism was flat, and after Election Day it soared.”9
By the end of July, the Consumer Confidence Index hit a 16-year high, with more people saying jobs were “plentiful” than at any time since 2001. After Trump signed several executive orders slashing federal red tape, the Dow Jones industrial average broke 22,000 in August for the first time ever.10 In total, Trump’s regulatory reforms have already saved taxpayers over $86 billion.11 Best of all, U.S. unemployment fell to 4.3 percent in May, the lowest level in 16 years.12
This is Trump at his populist best—using his business acumen to restore a jobs-friendly economic environment that welcomes, not punishes, American job creation. Voters elected Trump to apply his “Art of the Deal” talents to create and save American jobs. The president’s detractors will try to drag him off his winning jobs focus. Trump mustn’t let that happen.
Economic nationalism—pursuing fiscal policies that benefit American workers more than elites—remains our country’s greatest chance to beat back years of globalist gains. Not everyone agrees, however. George W. Bush speechwriter and NeverTrumper David Frum (a friend of mine) recently tweeted a quote from the Austrian economist and libertarian icon Ludwig von Mises that captures much of the Establishment’s angst over Trump’s America First economic agenda. “Economic nationalism,” von Mises wrote, “is incompatible with durable peace.”13 To that I would ask: What about allowing China to become the richest and most powerful country on earth? Is that compatible with peace?
Indeed, Trump’s critics would do well to examine the election data on working-class rural Americans—a group who overwhelmingly went for Trump’s message of economic nationalism. Rural voters accounted for nearly one out of five votes in 2016 and were a pivotal part of Trump’s successful Rust Belt strategy. NBC News exit polls revealed that Trump beat Clinton 57 to 38 percent among Michigan’s rural voters (Romney carried the same group but by only seven percentage points). Among Pennsylvania rural voters, Trump destroyed Clinton 71 percent to 26 percent (Romney only scored 59 percent). The same was true for rural voters in Wisconsin: Trump captured 63 percent to Hillary’s anemic 34 percent.14 The forgotten man and woman’s jobs matter, too—something Trump made crystal clear.
The president and his economic team should keep slashing the byzantine regulations and taxes that hold job creators back. Trump should also broaden his consultations beyond the Fortune 500 crowd to include CEOs of small- and medium-sized companies who are more immediately impacted by the slightest changes in the economy and harmful government actions. These are the major job creators and he could learn a lot from them.
Trade and Climate Change
President Trump wasted no time fulfilling his promise to kill the behemoth 5,544-page Trans-Pacific Partnership. On January 23, the president announced the United States would formally withdraw from TPP. He then rattled progressives by meeting with union leaders at the White House who cheered the decision and welcomed the administration’s jobs-friendly trade agenda. “We’re going to stop the ridiculous trade deals that have taken everybody out of our country and taken companies out of our country, and it’s going to be reversed,” Trump told them. Teamsters president James P. Hoffa said the president had just “taken the first step toward fixing 30 years of bad trade policies.” Other union leaders, like North America’s Building Trades Unions president Sean McGarvey, were equally elated. “We just had probably the most incredible meeting of our careers,” he said. “We will work with him and his administration to help him implement his plans on infrastructure, trade and energy policy, so we really do put America back to work.”15
President Trump deserves enormous credit for honoring his campaign promise to end TPP as part of his pledge to put U.S. workers first. And despite what you may have heard from the usual suspects in the media, Trump remains committed to renegotiating NAFTA to produce even more wins for American workers and businesses. As I mentioned, Trump has assembled a trade “dream team” with Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer, and my close friend Stephen Vaughn as general counsel. These are brilliant men with an unshakeable commitment to carry out the populist trade agenda Trump ran on.
As for Trump’s overtures to China on trade, there have been mixed signals. On the one hand, Trump successfully struck a major deal with China to allow American exports for beef and liquefied natural gas in exchange for the United States allowing Chinese cooked poultry and banking into America. Secretary Ross called the deal a “herculean accomplishment” and an important step to begin to “bring down” our $310 billion trade deficit with China.16 So far so good.
On the other hand, the deal included an agreement that the United States would send representatives to an international forum on Chinese president Xi Jinping’s major globalization project, the “One Belt, One Road” infrastructure plan to build high-speed trains and highways in other countries. (The acronym OBOR is inspired by the ancient Asian “Silk Road” trading routes.) OBOR “looms on a scope and scale with little precedent in modern history, promising more than $1 trillion in infrastructure and spanning more than 60 countries,” reported the Times.17 Business Insider dubbed it “a love song for globalization” and one that “flies in the face of the ‘Buy American, Hire American’ ideology Trump has touted. . . . Cue [Steve] Bannon grabbing his smelling salts.”18
Is sending a couple of U.S. representatives to a Chinese globalization meeting a mistake? Or is it merely one of Trump’s savvy negotiating tactics? We don’t know yet. But one thing we do know is that the president ranks North Korea as the major nuclear threat against the United States. His gambit is to use trade as an enticement to get China to help contain the North Korean threat. During President Xi Jinping’s visit to Mar-a-Lago, Trump told him, “a trade deal with the U.S. will be far better for them if they solve the North Korea problem.” Whether the Chinese got the message remains to be seen. After North Korea tested a ballistic missile in late July that it claimed could reach the United States, Trump tweeted that he was “disappointed in China” which could “easily solve this problem” but did “NOTHING for us with North Korea.” Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe agreed with Trump’s criticism and signaled increased assistance in containing North Korea.19 After China’s inaction, the Trump administration wisely moved forward with trade policies to crack down on Chinese intellectual property theft.20 Unlike the previous administration, this one is unafraid to use carrots and sticks to notch wins for America.
Trump killing TPP on his third day in office was a strong start. Renegotiating NAFTA with an America First strategy will be a major step toward righting the wrongs that have wrecked the livelihoods of hundreds of thousands of Americans. It took decades to build the globalization rules that Trump accurately describes as putting Americans at an unfair disadvantage. Those rules cannot be dismantled overnight—the new administration will have to move in a manner that will encourage businesses to locate here without scaring markets trained to fear “protectionism.” But the president and his team are clearly committed to making trade policy work for the average American.
To the horror and disgust of world leaders and global elites here at home, on June 1, 2017, the president kept his campaign promise and withdrew the United States from the Paris Agreement. His reasoning was pure economic populism. According to the president, compliance with the agreement would have cost America 2.7 million jobs by 2025. “The agreement is a massive redistribution of wealth to other countries. . . . As President, I have one obligation, and that obligation is to the American people. The Paris climate accord would undermine our economy, hamstring our workers, weaken our sovereignty, impose unacceptable legal risks, and put us at a permanent disadvantage.”
Opposition to the Paris accord unified the libertarians, the neoconservatives, and the populists. Only the globalists supported this new world welfare program. Predictably, Richard Branson, Elon Musk, Mitt Romney, and Pope Francis broadcast their disdain over Trump’s decision. The Greeniacs went wild predicting doomsday scenarios: lung maladies, flooding, superstorms, and mass starvation. Vacationing Barack Obama called the Trump pullout “the absence of American leadership.”
In fact, for the first time in decades, a president is showing real American leadership. In U.S. trade and foreign policy Trump is putting the American people above the New World Order. What a concept!
The Border Wall & Immigration
If Trump said it once he said it a hundred times: “We will build the wall. And Mexico will pay for that wall.” It remains one of his biggest campaign promises. It’s also one of the most visual; there either will be a physical barrier on the border or there won’t be. Democrats remain united in opposing the wall. Way too many Republicans on Capitol Hill are against it as well. During a private meeting of the most senior GOP senators, a source who was there in the room told me that Republican leaders laughed out loud at the idea that Trump’s border wall would ever be built.21 This is disheartening and frustrating. It’s also a reminder that the populist movement that delivered Trump into office must remain vigilant and keep the heat on the GOP Establishment.
In late April, Republicans once again ran from their own shadow over fears of a possible government shutdown and agreed to Democrat demands to pass a $1.07 trillion continuing budget resolution to fund the government through the rest of the fiscal year. While the measure contained $15 billion in increased military spending, it did not include a down payment for building the wall. Democrats could hardly believe their luck and celebrated their enormous victory. “The omnibus does not fund President Trump’s immoral and unwise border wall or create a cruel new deportation force,” Nancy Pelosi declared in a gleeful statement.22
Congressional Republicans’ entire approach to budget negotiations was antithetical to what Donald Trump is about and has stood for. You don’t give up your number one bargaining chip right off the bat by removing the threat of a government shutdown. Trump won on the message of a border wall and he won big. The GOP leadership should have defied recalcitrant lawmakers and shut the government down if necessary until they appropriated the funds to start building the wall. That might be the cost of doing the people’s will.
Republicans claim the bad continuing budget resolution will be rectified in the fall and that the next budget will pay for the wall. We’ll see. The idea that vulnerable lawmakers are going to grow a backbone before a midterm election is doubtful at best. Mark these words: If a wall—a physical wall—is not erected along our southern border, the president and his party will pay a severe political price. Like George Bush’s promise to “Read [his] lips: no new taxes,” the promise of a border wall was a searing pledge to the American people. To renege on it, or in any way get around it, will be considered a breach of faith in the minds of voters, and they will not forget at election time. Neither will the president’s opponents.
Democrats and NeverTrumpers know that defeating Trump’s border wall would deliver a crushing and demoralizing blow to his base. Conservatives should expect a dogfight. Citizens must be prepared to melt Capitol Hill phone lines and flood in-boxes like they did during the 2007 and 2013 amnesty wars against the Establishment. They must also be armed with the facts.
The notion that Congress can’t find $25 billion—the higher end estimated cost of building the wall—in our nearly $4 trillion annual budget is absurd.23 Democrats have never met a spending or building project they didn’t like. But now all of a sudden they’re fiscal hawks? Get real. And the Establishment Republicans who cowered in the corner for eight years while Obama nearly doubled the national debt to $19 trillion dollars now expect us to believe they’re courageous penny-pinchers? Spare us.
The entire cost of the wall won’t be paid in one lump sum; rather, it will be divided over several years. But just to put its total cost in perspective, consider this: under George W. Bush, the federal government spent $25 billion in a single year maintaining vacant and unused buildings. (Great news: by Obama’s second term, we only blew $8 billion a year on dormant properties!)24 If our government can spend $25 billion dusting empty buildings, surely it can find the funds to protect our people. And here’s the reality: the wall pays for itself in the long run. Each year California taxpayers spend $25 billion on illegal immigrants in the form of law enforcement, medical, educational, and public assistance costs.25 The wall will yield substantial savings to state budgets.
There are also creative ways to cover most of its costs. Shortly after Trump’s inauguration I said on radio and TV that the federal government should freeze and seize Mexican drug cartel funds to pay for the wall. Months later Senator Ted Cruz rolled out a nearly identical idea. His “El Chapo” bill would seize Mexican drug kingpin Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán’s $14 billion in estimated assets and use them for wall construction.26 I also said we could tax the $20 billion in remittances to Mexico.
Bottom line: the political fight over the wall is not about money, it is about denying Trump and his voters a major victory. That’s why Democrats and Trump’s GOP Establishment detractors are going to do everything in their power to stop it. It’s also why citizens must be ready for a major political battle. Republicans should welcome this fight. A 2017 analysis by Democrat pollster Stanley Greenberg determined that Democrats turned off working-class voters during the presidential election because “the Democrats have moved from seeking to manage and champion the nation’s growing immigrant diversity to seeming to champion immigrant rights over American citizens.” Moreover, 41 percent of Democrats believe immigrants “take jobs from U.S. citizens” and half believe granting legal status “would be a drain on government services.”27 Voters agree with conservative populists on illegal immigration. The key will be holding spineless Republicans accountable to enact the immigration policies the people want. In late July, the House approved $1.6 billion in border wall spending, and the administration plans to have prototypes built by winter.28 Even Speaker Paul Ryan may be coming around. In August, his office released a statement titled “The Wall: Let’s Get It Done” that included a video of Ryan touring the border and the words, “It’s time for the wall.”29
Another bright note: the Trump administration’s strong commitment to enforce the nation’s immigration laws has already begun producing impressive results. Illegal immigration has fallen 73 percent to its lowest levels in 17 years.30 More than 30,000 criminal aliens have been apprehended since Inauguration Day. (Contrast that with a year earlier, when Obama released almost 20,000 criminal aliens.) “When you are caught, you will be detained, adjudicated, and deported,” Attorney General Jeff Sessions said in a message aimed at would-be illegal aliens. “Do not come unlawfully. Wait your turn.”31 Border Patrol agents say the administration’s approach is working. “We’re at a trickle,” says Chris Cabrera of the National Border Patrol Council. “It hasn’t stopped but it’s slowed considerably that we’re at a point where we have empty cells now.”32 Oh, the horror!
The administration must also enact smart immigration policies. The first executive order barring entry to individuals from hot spots in the Middle East was stymied by the courts. It’s clearly constitutional for the president to set restrictions on entry into the United States. No foreigner has a constitutional right to come into our country. But you don’t get do-overs on executive orders. Remember, the first order was rewritten (exempting Iraqis and green card holders and dropping language giving preference to religious minorities). And it still didn’t pass muster. Federal appeals courts ruled that Trump’s intent remained discriminatory—based on his campaign statements favoring a “Muslim ban.” Talk about judicial overreach. This tied up the agenda for weeks while the media breathlessly reported on every immigrant turned away at a U.S. Customs checkpoint, including tearjerker-tales of Iranian grandmothers who couldn’t visit their American grandkids. In July, the Trump administration won a partial victory when the Supreme Court ruled to temporarily uphold most of the president’s restrictions on refugees. This bodes well for the Court’s determination on the constitutionality of the executive order itself. Regardless of how the Court rules when it hears arguments beginning in October, the administration must maintain a razor-sharp legal strategy that protects national security.
In the wake of the repeated terror attacks in the UK and throughout Europe, the president’s travel restriction executive order looks not only wise, but prescient. We resist these commonsense policies at our own peril. If you doubt me, just ask Theresa May.
Obamacare Fumble Recovery?
Health care has long been a third rail in American politics. In 1993, Hillary Clinton’s blatant attempt at single-payer health care went down in spectacular flames. Small businesses quickly pressured Congress at the time to quash “Hillarycare.” Various legislative attempts to address rising health care costs did nothing of the kind. Instead they increased “covered lives” but never addressed cost. Legislation like Medicare Part D made costs worse and effectively transferred the wealth of the American Middle Class to the insurance and pharmaceutical industries. Once just 4 percent of GDP, today Medicare and Medicaid consume nearly 20 percent. U.S. health care had become too big to fail. With the huge diversion of monies into this segment of the economy, America has experienced the same loss of competitiveness, wage stagnation, and fiscal insolvency seen in Europe.
For decades the costs of medical goods and services were never addressed. Inflation in health care far exceeded that of the overall economy. In 2009, the states couldn’t bear the budgetary stress any longer and the Affordable Care Act (aka Obamacare) was passed. The incentive to adopt Medicaid expansion was that for the first six years, the federal government would cover the costs. But the citizens would lose their personal choice in choosing doctors, insurance, and health care—or ever having the freedom to not be involved in Obamacare. The Republicans recognized that there was nothing “conservative” about Obamacare. It was the federal government mandating to insurance companies, pharmaceutical companies, device makers, and doctors what the costs would be, what they would be paid, and ultimately deciding who would be treated.
The middle-class taxpayers who have been footing the cost for these entitlements saw promises broken and out-of-pocket expenses rise. What good is guaranteed access to health care insurance if your premiums and deductibles quadruple and—of course—you can’t keep your doctor? And to top it off, you are forced to buy it?
The people’s righteous anger led them to turn out in record numbers and propel Trump to the presidency.
Regrettably, Trump outsourced health care to the Congressional Republicans like the developer he was. They had claimed that they would “Repeal and Replace” if only one of their own was president. He has discovered that the Congress will fight any change in the status quo. In the summer of 2016, the cronyism and rent-seeking that had become an integral part of Washington, DC stymied any legislative attempt by Trump.
Trump’s election was a direct populist attack by the silent majority on Washington corruption. On health care, Trump can still snatch victory from the jaws of seeming defeat for himself and the American people. He needs to pick three or four proposals that, if implemented, would immediately lower out-of-pocket costs to his middle-class base. Candidate Trump was well-aware that lowering drug prices to match other developed countries would be popular and result in a legitimate reduction in consumer costs. Americans pay four to 10 times more for prescription drugs than citizens of other developed countries. It’s true that drug prices must be high enough to pay for research and development, but there is no reason that only American consumers should bear the costs as they do now. We effectively subsidize the generous national health care systems of Canada and other western countries by allowing them to get away with paying much lower prices that don’t reflect the much greater R&D costs of drugs they use. The Pentagon demands and gets “most favored” nation status on their purchases—so should the American people. The time for “negotiating” prices has long past—it hasn’t worked anyway as the system is too corrupt.
Viscerally, Trump knows that the only humane and sensible alternative to the current system is to go back to a free market for health care goods and services—bypassing both the government and the insurance companies. He knows that doesn’t mean there could not also be insurance against unplanned or catastrophic health emergencies or negotiated packages of prepaid services, such as getting a discount for agreeing to a two-year phone contract. It also doesn’t mean that there can be no government subsidies or private charities to help those who cannot easily afford market-priced health care.
President Trump abandoned his convictions to the Republicans in Congress and look where that has gotten him. Ultimately only by restoring a true free market to U.S. health care can costs to American consumers and businesses drop. Only when Trump truly re-embraces this free-market ethos will the cost of health care to the federal government and the middle class drop. Freeing up that money for the rest of the economy is what it will take to make America truly great again.
Entitlements are hard things to pull back from people once they get used to them. Nevertheless, the (almost) free ride for some will crash and burn because Obamacare’s numbers never added up. Its exchanges are imploding as more insurance companies flee them, and the entire bureaucratic mess is going to crater. In any future effort to revisit Obamacare, the president must fully engage in the district of every vulnerable congressman and senator. The salesmanship lacking in the first few runs at health care must then be employed. An Oval Office address and campaign-style events highlighting the plight of those crushed by Obamacare will help the president control the narrative next time. Ceding health care reform to Congress was a monumental mistake. Democrats smartly turned defeating Obamacare repeal and defeating the “skinny” repeal bill into a rallying cry for the resistance. Every single Democrat voted against every serious Republican effort to repeal Obamacare. Unlike Republicans, Democrats stick together. There’s no way around it. Going forward, the president must put pressure on GOP lawmakers to put a bill on the president’s desk that he can sign. All of this will take negotiating and finesse. But hey, if the Artisan of the Deal can’t pull it off, who can?
It’s also important that the president bolsters his popularity during the process. Senate leadership has begun shrugging him off. After the president argued for changing Senate rules to a simple majority vote and urged the GOP to remain focused on health care, Mitch McConnell told Trump that senators don’t support a rules change and brushed aside his legislative request to focus on taxes instead. Even though Trump’s approval rating is nearly double that of Congress, Trump must continue building goodwill with the American public. Doing so will force lawmakers to enact his America First agenda—the one the people want.33
As we saw in late July during the Senate’s Obamacare repeal vote, six feckless Republican turncoats voted against a straight repeal in 2017 when it counted, despite having voted for a full repeal in 2015 when it had no chance of becoming law. Their names are: Senators Dean Heller (R-NV), Shelley Moore Capito (R-WV), John McCain (R-AZ), Lamar Alexander (R-TN), Lisa Murkowski (R-AK), and Rob Portman (R-OH).34 Then the so-called “skinny” Obamacare repeal failed when Senators John McCain (R-AZ), Susan Collins (R-ME), and Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) voted against it. This is a shameful and outrageous display from Establishment Republicans who, for years, used anti-Obamacare ire to fire up voters, but then refused to follow through when it mattered most.
Obamacare must end. It will take strong leadership to make it happen.
Middle East Entanglements & Fighting ISIS
On April 6, as President Trump and Chinese president Xi Jinping ate chocolate cake at Mar-a-Lago, 59 U.S. Tomahawk missiles struck Syria’s Shayrat Airbase. Their target: Syrian chemical weapons used to bomb the town of Khan Shaykun three days prior. Globalists cheered. Everyone was left wondering why had President Trump’s Syria policy seemingly changed overnight?
“I think a lot of Trump voters will be waking up this morning and scratching their heads,” said Nigel Farage. Pat Buchanan was even more forceful. “I think [President Trump] reacted emotionally, ineffectively, and also unconstitutionally,” said Buchanan. “You don’t change your entire foreign policy, or your Middle East policy, based on emotion.”35
Throughout the campaign Donald Trump pounded the populist message of avoiding Bush-style Middle East quagmires and meddling in other nations’ civil wars. “What we should do is focus on ISIS. We should not be focusing on Syria,” Trump said weeks before the election. “You’re going to end up in World War III over Syria. . . .”36 What happened?
The answer: President Trump was shown gruesome images of dead Syrian children. He said they were “horrible,” “awful,” and affected him emotionally. In particular, two scenes hit Trump the hardest: “young, listless children being splashed with water in a frantic attempt to cleanse them of the nerve agent; and an anguished father holding his twin babies, swathed in soft white fabric, poisoned to death,” reported The Washington Post.37
I have no doubt that the images the president viewed were morally reprehensible and emotionally gut-wrenching. And to state the obvious, Syrian president Bashar al-Assad is one of the world’s many morally abhorrent despots. Tragically, we live in a world where evil remains ever-present. But if haunting images of atrocities are going to direct America’s foreign policy, there will be no end to the wars and tribal conflicts we enter. Just days after the Syrian airstrikes someone sent me 15 images of the brutal carnage from the Palm Sunday attacks targeting Coptic Christians in Egypt. Why weren’t missiles fired there? Also, what about the gory scenes from Central African Republic, where children were locked in huts and burned to death with flamethrowers? No missiles sent there either. And hadn’t the president just hosted and toasted China—a nation that puts people in reeducation camps and cuts babies out of the wombs of women who have more than one child? The painful reality is that the planet is pocked with atrocities, yet we don’t send cruise missiles into all of them. Nor should we.
After the Syrian airstrikes I went on television and was asked for my reaction. I called Syria a “complete cauldron of disaster” (an understatement) and said that full-scale U.S. involvement would devolve into another Iraq. “I’m not sure getting rid of Bashar al-Assad was at the top of the list of those people in Pennsylvania that showed up at his rallies,” I said. “There’s a lot of selective moral indignation going on out there about atrocities. I hope the Trump team is true to what he campaigned on, which is pragmatic foreign policy that is a break from the Bush path. Because that has been an electoral, political, and humanitarian disaster for the Middle East.”
The Trump administration must not succumb to the same kind of fantastical thinking and nation-building that afflicted (and doomed) the Bush administration. We cannot be the world’s policeman. President Trump knows this.
Interventionists like to toss out the “isolationism” canard any time a populist warns against inserting ourselves militarily into global conflicts. No person I know who considers themselves a populist advocates a total retreat from foreign affairs; allowing the country to get conquered would weaken the people’s power and our national sovereignty. At the same time, citizens are ill-served when our government throws trillions of our hard-earned dollars away on foreign entanglements that kill thousands of our people. Ronald Reagan proved there’s a better way.
The Reagan Doctrine of “peace through strength” allowed America to win the Cold War without firing a single shot and with an awareness that military might is not enough. There are indications that the Trump team has been studying the lessons of the Reagan era.
President Trump’s first foreign trip in late May 2017 was significant in that he reasserted American interests on the world stage while using the Reagan model of engaging religion to do battle with the evil of our day. As Reagan turned to Pope John Paul II for assistance in the battle against atheistic communism, so Trump reached out to the three major religions on the planet to do battle with Islamic terrorism. Trump boldly addressed a meeting of 55 Muslim heads of state in Saudi Arabia and defined the challenge before them: “This is not a battle between different faiths, different sects or different civilizations,” Trump said. “This is a battle between good and evil.” Then the president urged the Sunni world to band together and do its part: “Drive them out. Drive out the terrorists,” he said. “Drive out the extremists. Drive them out of your places of worship. Drive them out of your communities. Drive them out of your holy land and drive them out of this Earth. . . . We can only overcome this evil if the forces of good are united and strong and if everyone in this room does their fair share and fulfills their part of the burden. Muslim majority countries must take the lead in stamping out radicalization.”
Without committing more U.S. lives to the region, Trump used the economic and cultural force of America to encourage leaders in the Middle East to restore order in their own countries. And he got the Saudis to agree to invest $110 billion in American military equipment before Air Force One left Riyadh. From there the president visited shrines holy to Jews and Christians in Israel, concluding with an audience with Pope Francis at the Vatican. Awakening the religious world to the major threat of our time—Islamic Jihad and its wicked ideology—while calling on them to engage it in their own way makes spiritual and foreign policy sense.
These creative efforts put American interests first and provide needed leadership on the world stage. And best of all, it does so without putting our fighting men and women in harm’s way.
Supreme Achievement
Perhaps no issue motivated voters more during the election than the control of the Supreme Court. After the sad passing of conservative icon Justice Antonin Scalia, the Court’s four-to-four split between liberal and conservative judges elevated the issue to an even higher level of importance. As someone who clerked for Supreme Court justice Clarence Thomas, I stressed the importance of judicial nominations throughout the campaign. NeverTrumpers’ decision to let their ill feelings toward Trump risk giving progressives control of the Supreme Court seemed illogical and foolish to me. Thankfully, most conservatives felt the same way and showed up on Election Day.
Donald Trump’s selection of Judge Neil Gorsuch for the Supreme Court proved conservatives made the right choice. Trump nominated a serious legal mind with a strong and impressive record. Best of all, Gorsuch’s judicial philosophy of “textualism”—following the Constitution as it is written—mirrors that of the late great Antonin Scalia.
Democrats’ decision to filibuster the Gorsuch nomination was further evidence they feared his appointment. After decades of judicial activism from the courts, progressives recoiled at the notion of a Supreme Court justice unwilling to usurp the people’s power by rewriting laws to align with their leftist views. Conservatives believe in judicial restraint because we believe that “We the People” are in charge, not unelected judges with political axes to grind. In the opening statement of his Senate confirmation, Judge Gorsuch cited Justice Scalia as an inspiration and said he shared a similar judicial outlook:
Justice Scalia was a mentor, too. He reminded us that words matter. That the judge’s job is to follow the words that are in the law, not replace them with those that aren’t. . . .
If judges were just secret legislatures declaring not what the law is but what they would like it to be, the very idea of a government by the people and for the people would be at risk. And those who came before the court would live in fear, never sure exactly what the law requires of them except for the judge’s will.
As Alexander Hamilton said, “Liberty can have nothing to fear from judges who apply the law. But liberty has everything to fear if judges try to legislate, too.”38
On April 7, Senate Republicans exercised the so-called “nuclear option” (“constitutional option” is more accurate) and confirmed Gorsuch as the 113th justice of the Supreme Court. Conservatives have been disappointed by Republican High Court picks before; only time will tell what kind of legacy Justice Gorsuch leaves behind. For now, conservatives can take solace in knowing that the president of the United States undertook a serious search to identify a judicial nominee of the highest quality and track record, one committed to following, not rewriting, the Constitution.
President Trump is likely to have at least one more future Supreme Court pick. He must, at all costs, resist the temptation to select a milquetoast candidate in the hopes of avoiding a messy Senate confirmation fight. In fact, if I were Trump, I would do the opposite. A battle over first judicial principles is exactly what we need. Judicial activism has been one of the major forces to rob the American people of their God-given rights to self-determination. Having an open debate about the role of the courts in American life is bound to be a winner with an electorate fed up with the imperial judiciary.
4 Key Lessons for Trump Moving Forward
Smart presidential administrations know their strengths and fix their weaknesses. The Trump administration’s first several months in office have produced important victories and revealed critical vulnerabilities. As a strong and early supporter of the “America First” agenda, I offer President Trump and his team four key lessons to keep their populist efforts on track.
MESSAGE DISCIPLINE
Advancing a robust conservative agenda requires strong message discipline. Shepherding populist policies through Congress also means forging strategic alliances, including with Democrats.
Every presidential talking point, speech, TV appearance, Facebook post, and tweet must drive the same core message. The White House communications team plays a vital supporting role, but presidents must deliver the message as planned. If the quarterback is constantly changing plays without telling his teammates, balls are dropped, fumbles occur, and momentum gets stopped. The same is true for presidents and their communications staff.
Contrary to the conventional wisdom spouted on cable television by strategists and consultants—most of whom predicted a Clinton victory in 2016—I do not lose sleep over President Trump’s tweets. They are his only instantaneous, direct line to the American people. Of course the content of the tweets matter. Bombshell tweets like warning James Comey there may be “tapes” of his conversations with the president or hurling critiques at “weak” Attorney General Jeff Sessions during a critical health care vote on the Hill squander precious political capital. Candidates are already jockeying for position in the 2018 midterm elections. Trump must use his GOP House and Senate advantage while he still has it.
The Comey firing offers an instructive case study. Presidents are free to fire an FBI director any time they please. But a decision of that magnitude requires precise communication planning. Sometimes you don’t have the luxury of time, but in this case the White House controlled the timing. Unfortunately, Trump’s communications staff were reportedly given one hour’s notice before Comey was removed.39 That meant they had exactly one hour to: coordinate a clear and cogent explanation for the decision; assemble a team of surrogates to hit the airwaves to defend the move; book those surrogates on all the right shows; prepare press statements and place them with key reporters; and amplify a unified message across social media and elsewhere.
Moreover, the brusque manner in which Comey was fired—no advance notice, a tersely worded letter—unnecessarily antagonized him and his supporters within the agency. According to reports, Comey only learned of his firing from the press while on the west coast. Worse, every digital screen in America was glued to the dramatic O. J. Simpson–style aerial footage of Comey immediately being sped down the highway to a waiting government jet. Why escalate an already controversial decision into a national spectacle?
Instead, the president could have met with Comey privately, thanked him for his service, explained that the election had created a growing chorus of bipartisan critics, and said that, for the good of the nation, it was time to turn the page and give the FBI a fresh start. It wouldn’t have been perfect, but it would have been less radioactive.
In Washington, you either control the message or the message controls you. One theme a day communicated clearly and consistently—that should be Trump’s messaging goal.
TRUST YOUR POPULIST INSTINCTS
Donald Trump has the best policy and political instincts of any politician I’ve ever seen. The “experts” said voters would yawn at a policy platform built around something as boring as trade. Trump knew otherwise. There’s nothing “boring” about losing your job and struggling to feed your family. The Gucci loafer–wearing consultants claimed a tough message on illegal immigration would be too extreme, too toxic, and would alienate voters. Trump understood the reverse was true. The real “extremists” were the elites who cared only about preserving the comfortable status quo, not everyday Americans who wanted laws enforced fairly and consistently.
Throughout the election, Trump refused to bow to the critics of his America First populist agenda. This was very brave and smart. Yet since entering the White House, he has at times seen staff conflicts stymie his bold efforts. While strong, sharp differences among Trump’s advisors are inevitable, populist conservative goals must be defended and advanced.
The base will view any undermining of the populists’ roles as a signal that the president has lost sight of the mandate he was elected to fulfill. Many reporters (including Joe Scarborough) have tried to drive a wedge between Trump and populist Steve Bannon by portraying the strategist as a Machiavellian figure who “controls” the president. That’s Saturday Night Live nonsense. Anyone who knows Trump knows he’s in charge. And anyone who knows Bannon knows he’s intensely loyal and talented. For example, Bannon possesses a unique understanding of how to perform what he calls the “deconstruction of the administrative state.” As Bannon explained at the 2017 CPAC:
If you look at these cabinet appointments, they were selected for a reason and that is the deconstruction. The way the progressive left runs, is if they can’t get it passed, they’re just going to put in some sort of regulation in an agency. That’s all going to be deconstructed and I think that that’s why this regulatory thing is so important. . . . The center core of what we believe, that we’re a nation with an economy. Not an economy just in some global marketplace with open borders, but we are a nation with a culture and a reason for being . . . I think one of the most pivotal moments in modern American history was [President Trump’s] immediate withdrawal from TPP. That got us out of a trade deal and let our sovereignty come back to ourselves, the people.
As has been reported, behind Bannon’s desk is a big whiteboard with all the president’s populist campaign promises. As Trump fulfills each one, Bannon places a checkmark beside it.40 In other words, Bannon cares about whether the Trump administration keeps its promises. Wouldn’t it be nice if everyone in Washington cared about doing what they promise?
There’s value in partnering with Democrats to pass Trump’s legislative agenda and he should reach out to them when possible. But the president must also remember that dozens of congressional Republicans opposed his nomination and continue to slow-walk his agenda. That means his base must remain rock solid in its support.
Trump raised eyebrows when he said he was “both” a globalist and a nationalist. I think he means that a stronger U.S. economy—benefiting from fairer rules on global trade—will be good for the world. And I think he’s right. But he’s got to stay on the nationalist course. If Trump’s conservative base senses a globalist shift, his core constituency will crack. The president must stick with what works and wins.
America First. Period.
STOP THE LEAKS
The number of high-level leaks coming out of the Trump White House in its first several months is astounding and alarming. I can’t think of any other administration that has been hit by so many leaks so early. Beyond the political havoc they inflict on the administration, the leaking of sensitive and classified material endangers our national security.
Even former Democrat congressman Dennis Kucinich agrees. “Look, I disagree with President Trump on a number of issues, but on this one, there can only be one president and somebody in the intelligence community is trying to upend this president in order to pursue a policy direction that puts us in conflict with Russia,” said Kucinich. “The question is why? And who? And we need to find out.”41
Trump’s “Deep State” problem is real. Allowing Obama holdovers like Sally Yates to serve as acting attorney general—even for a matter of days—was a mistake and an unforced error. Obama bureaucrats are not there to help—they are there to sabotage the administration.
Rooting out moles is difficult. One thing the administration must do is get a handle on all the Obama holdovers still burrowed in the system. One White House source estimated that over 60 percent of National Security Council employees “are not Trump administration appointees, but career officials who were appointed to the White House from other agencies under the Obama administration.” Worse, the NSC has “whole departments” that have only a single Trump appointee.42 Obviously not all Obama-appointed bureaucrats are willing to commit federal crimes to undermine the Trump administration. But the fact that so many Obama officials are working in sensitive NSC capacities with almost no Trump appointees around is disturbing.
A big part of the problem rests with the Trump administration. They have been slow to nominate and fill key posts. As of August 2017, a Washington Post analysis found that no nominees had yet been named for 354 of the 577 positions that require Senate confirmation. More Trump loyalists in mid-level and executive bureaucratic roles means more eyeballs and ears monitoring and managing information security to minimize leaks.43 The Trump team needs to get it in gear and fill slots with competent and trustworthy professionals.
It starts with jettisoning Obama holdovers and pushing through confirmation votes for key national security appointments, judges, and ambassadors who share, not undermine, the president’s principles. The problem, of course, is that Republicans don’t have an actual working majority—but a majority in name only. While it’s fine for the president to tweet about changing Senate rules, he shouldn’t stop there. He must put slow-walking Democrats on defense by making a sustained argument to the American people about the need to jackhammer through the congressional barricades blocking the change voters demand.
Trump has moved swiftly to appoint and confirm conservative federal judges, despite Democrat delays. By August, the president had already confirmed more judges than Barack Obama had at the same point in his term.44 It’s critical that Trump’s team apply that same focus and urgency to ousting Obama bureaucrats and installing national security professionals committed to protecting the nation’s secrets.
The GOP leadership can help, too. We need a full investigation of the Obama administration’s “unmasking” scandal that revealed Americans’ names in intel documents. Former Obama officials like National Security Adviser Susan Rice, CIA Director John Brennan, UN Ambassador Samantha Power, and speechwriter and adviser Ben Rhodes should all be investigated and held to account. The launch of a House Intelligence Committee probe and Attorney General Jeff Sessions’s leak investigations are a good start.45 But so far, a 25-year-old outside contractor named Reality Winner (you can’t make this stuff up; that’s her actual name) is the only person who has been arrested and charged with leaking classified information. Much work remains.
One way not to stop leaks is to conduct ham-fisted, profane late-night on-the-record interviews with liberal publications. Just ask former White House director of communications Anthony Scaramucci. Ranting that he wanted to “kill all the leakers,” as “The Mooch” reportedly did during his ever-so-brief 10-day tenure, may have provided him with momentary emotional relief.46 But it dragged the White House off-message, birthed a million mocking memes, and did little to root out the leakers placing our national security in peril. Dangerous threats demand seriousness and professionalism. When it comes to protecting America’s secrets, there’s no margin for error.
The dangerous national security leaks must stop. Revealing top-secret and classified material to score political points is an act of treason and betrayal. The administration must find the perpetrators and prosecute them to the fullest extent of the law before it’s too late.
A NEW MEDIA STRATEGY
Trump’s very presence in the Oval Office reminds the media of Election Night. His winning embarrassed and infuriated them to their core.
The president is unafraid to confront the press on its bias and “fake news” reporting. Now for the media, it is payback time. Anytime the president gains traction on his agenda, the media will work overtime to divert attention to the Russia investigations, invariably through anonymous sources.
As Trump adviser Steve Bannon put it, media are the “opposition party”:
They’re corporatist, globalist media that are adamantly opposed—adamantly opposed to an economic nationalist agenda like Donald Trump has. . . . Here’s why it’s going to get worse: Because he’s going to continue to press his agenda. And as economic conditions get better, as more jobs get better, they’re going to continue to fight. If you think they’re going to give you your country back without a fight, you are sadly mistaken. Every day—every day, it is going to be a fight.47
During the campaign, the Trump team dominated social media and energized voters with its populist message. They must now continue to develop new methods to reach all Americans with their agenda while avoiding message fatigue.
Sometimes less is more. Reserve the president’s access for the big moments and policy initiatives. The president’s first address to a joint session of Congress was a smashing success because he delivered an articulate and well-crafted populist message in a prime-time venue. Wisely, the White House canceled the next day’s press briefing to let the public’s positive response linger in the news cycle. Giving good stories time to breathe brings a sense of stability and steadiness voters find reassuring.
The president should spend at least two days a week outside of Washington and the White House bubble, to be with the people. Doing more rallies to sell his agenda and visiting Americans where they live and work will not only invigorate the president’s spirits, but will create needed pressure to pass key legislation. And he should not just visit red state America. He is president of all the people and must spend time in California, New York, Illinois, and even my home region of New England. There are millions of Trump voters in all of those states, and they—and their moderate neighbors—deserve to hear from their president. “The resistance” must not be allowed to restrict his travel out of fear of mass protests. This is where good advance work and political strategy come in—both must be engaged and coordinated.
There is one bit of media advice that Trump could learn from the Obama team: go local. The Obama administration invited local anchors into the White House to interview the president to get around the Washington press corps. This is a smart strategy. Not only does it give the president a chance to target his message to key markets, but those reporters are thankful for the opportunity and more likely to give him a fair shake.
Opening the White House pressroom to new voices was a masterstroke. Bloggers, regional reporters (asking questions via Skype), religious and conservative press were suddenly invading the elite’s most exclusive club. It’s the only time I supported open borders! When the site I cofounded, LifeZette, got the first question at Sean Spicer’s first full White House briefing, sneers of condescension reverberated in fancy media circles. Too bad. Our gifted political editor Jon Conradi leads a team of talented journalists with a diversity of thought and experience. Conservative media should be welcome, even in the West Wing.
A Final Word
No one can predict what will become of the Trump presidency. It’s up to the conservative-populist movement to hold the administration accountable to ensure it remains on track. Winning an election is never enough. Politicians stray from their promises, and poorly implemented policies produce unintended consequences. Conservatives must remain active and engaged throughout Trump’s presidency. Successful and enduring political movements are built on principles, not a single leader—even ones as dynamic as Reagan or Trump. Populists and pure conservatives each have the same basic goal—a great country where the average person has a chance at a better life. The Establishment has the system it wants and will attempt to steamroll anything and anyone that seeks to change it. As I said earlier, Reagan resisted and defeated the Establishment on the people’s behalf. We must do the same. If we do, we will continue to see major wins for our country.
America First populism works when words are backed up by action. As previously noted, an ironclad commitment to enforcing the nation’s laws, has sent illegal immigration rates plunging. Illegal aliens realize the U.S. government is serious about cracking down and are less likely to make border-crossing attempts as a result. Likewise, illegals’ violent criminal gangs, like the notorious MS-13, are being hunted down and deported. Under Trump, ICE performed the largest gang crackdown in history, resulting in over 1,378 arrests and the deportation of nearly 400 gang members to El Salvador.48
The same pattern of populist success extends to economic trends as well. There are, of course, the record highs in the Dow Jones industrial average. But beyond that, U.S. manufacturing activity has hit a three-year high—a strong achievement and further proof that Trump’s “Buy American, Hire American” agenda is breaking through.49 Other countries are cheating less on trade, too. In a report that must have pained them to publish, CNN was forced to admit that “America’s biggest trade partners have taken far fewer protectionist measures against U.S. business so far this year, possibly because they’re worried about retaliation.”50 (Having one of the nation’s preeminent trade lawyers, Bob Lighthizer, as America’s U.S. trade representative was a Trump masterstroke.) Even at the G20 summit in Hamburg, Germany, amid international whining about the U.S. withdrawal from the Paris climate accord, President Trump still managed to score key concessions on climate change and trade policy.51 These early and significant wins demonstrate what happens when America has a president with the resolve and determination to advance an America First populist platform.
The more victories the president racks up for working-class Americans, the more elites will rise up in opposition. Barricades to the success of populism under Trump come in many forms: special prosecutors, side probes of Russia’s involvement in the election, and a media exaggerating even the most tangential Trump family business interest in foreign countries. But for America’s sake, these must be overcome. Reagan’s transformative presidency inspired a new generation of young conservatives (like myself)—and Trump’s, if successful, can do the same. But it won’t be easy.
We know what doesn’t work: global trade deals that enrich other countries at the expense of our own workers; lax immigration policies that compromise the nation’s security, health care system, schools, and jobs; a tax and regulatory regime that stifles economic growth and competitiveness, and strangles innovation; and an imprudent interventionist foreign policy that costs us trillions of dollars and thousands of American lives. For decades a bipartisan Establishment blindly embraced these ruinous policies. The resulting economic and personal pain, felt across the vast American landscape, has fueled the rise of populism and its stalwarts—from Goldwater to Reagan, Buchanan to Trump. But it bears repeating that the conservative-populist movement that President Trump inherited and consolidated is not restricted to one man or one era. It will go on and it must be sustained by the members of the movement—one that will at times need to form alliances with disparate political factions in order to advance their common interests. This is especially important now since the populists are outnumbered. Remember, the president lost the popular vote by three million people.
Throughout the improbable 2016 presidential election, I personally witnessed the fighting spirit and sacrificial devotion of the American people. Though the media sought to depict Trump voters as “haters,” they embodied just the opposite: love of family, love of home, and love of country (and utter disdain for the media and political hacks who ignored them from day one). Sure, many of the Trump voters were angry—they had a right to be. The things they held most dear were under attack and no politician from either party was willing to even listen to their concerns. Then came Trump . . .
While some, even in his own party, continue to throw rocks, other pols—particularly left-wing Democrats—are smart enough to see the political handwriting on the wall. Socialist Bernie Sanders has smartly continued to play to the workingman through a series of regular prime-time debates on CNN. Crossing swords with everyone from John Kasich to Ted Cruz, (virtual CNN Contributor) Bernie is good at pointing out the problems Americans face. It’s his solutions that fall apart. (Note to CNN: the presidential campaign is really over and so is the Bern.) Joe Biden has also caught the populist bug since Trump’s election. The Amtrak addict opened a new PAC in June of 2017, teasing voters that he might mount a challenge against Trump in 2020. The man has been running for president since I was in college. Nothing would cement the Democrat Party’s “dinosaur” status quite like a Biden bid.
Liberal darling Senator Elizabeth Warren is also making a populist pitch to voters. She is extolling her version of populism: “the power of the people to make change in this country.” Shortly after the presidential election (November 19) in a speech to the Center for American Progress, Warren suggested that the problem facing America was not the size of government, but “Rather, it’s a deep down concern over who government works for.” (Actually, the bloated government and its distance from the people are exactly the problems.) She claimed the economic “game is rigged” and urged action to “level the playing field.” Her diagnosis of middle-class angst is partially on the mark. It’s her prescriptions that are poisonous: “invest in education” (tax and spend), “invest in infrastructure” (see previous), “Wall Street needs stronger rules and tougher enforcement” (that Warren gets to write).
This idiocy, peddled by the left, must be monitored and countered. Sanders’s and Warren’s polluted populism defaults to familiar socialist answers: an ever-expanding (and expensive) big government with layers of regulation written by career bureaucrats and enforced by elites. This will not cure what ails the American people. To shut down these populist pretenders, it will be up to President Trump and his allies to offer their own robust market-driven solutions. They’ll have to explain to the American people how their policies will benefit the voters prior to rolling out any legislation. Before the midterm elections, substantive legislative victories must be delivered or the president and his party will face a potentially detrimental populist assault from the left.
As Pat Buchanan recently reminded me, the principle of protecting liberty and freedom at all costs was at the heart of the American founding. “The ideal of Hamilton—everybody that built this country—was to make America economically independent to sustain and support our political independence,” Buchanan said. This is liberation from the New World Order. At the founding of the Republic, patriots made their own goods and defended their market. The Hamiltonian idea that we wouldn’t rely on British ships fueled economic and political independence that allowed the United States the freedom to engage in foreign affairs and conflicts only when it served our national interest. Massive international agreements tie a nation to the world’s problems (in 1914, European countries were tied together). Populist and nationalist movements in Europe have produced a mixed bag of successes and defeats. Emmanuel Jean-Michel Frédéric Macron trounced populist Marine Le Pen in the French presidential election, and the globalists have fiercely opposed Brexit’s implementation. Still, there are populist bright spots in Europe. Leaders in Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic, for example, have refused to accept more refugees in order to protect working people and national culture. Whether the EU will override those decisions and crush populist uprisings throughout Europe remains to be seen. Regardless, the historical connection between trade and security, economic strength and influence are lessons the world would do well to remember.
That same spirit of liberty and independence is what drives the populist movement today. The throngs I witnessed at that Leesburg rally that cold Sunday night and the voices I hear on the radio each day aren’t going away. They love this country, and they love their families too much to stop fighting. We all realize that the core problems we face in domestic and foreign affairs aren’t going to be solved in four years. Trump gave us the promise of a reprieve and a renewal. But victory is not yet assured. Bold steps must be taken by the administration to show its loyalty to the people and a willingness to do battle for them despite the pressures to do Washington’s bidding.
Things are now coming to a head. We are on the knife’s edge in this country. The left’s blind hatred for President Trump and Republicans has produced a disturbing new wave of dangerous rhetoric and violence by far-left radicals willing to settle political differences using the most extreme means possible. After Trump’s inauguration, Madonna said she “thought an awful lot about blowing up the White House.” Comedian Kathy Griffin took an ISIS-style photo of herself holding a blood-drenched severed head made to look like the president of the United States. A “Shakespeare in the Park” New York City play featured the stabbing of a Donald Trump look-alike in the role of Julius Caesar. And of course, in June 2017, a Bernie Sanders supporter named James Hodgkinson targeted Republicans before gunning down Republican House majority whip Steve Scalise and three others who were practicing for the annual Congressional Baseball Game. Until Democratic leaders denounce the corrosive, vile anti-Trump rhetoric and conspiracy theories peddled on cable TV, I’m afraid the left’s unhinged rage will continue. “[A] more civil and honest public discourse can help us face up to the challenges of our nation,” President Obama said in 2011.52 Members of his party would do well to heed those words and get their political house in order before the nation suffers the loss of innocent lives.
Beyond right and left, there are goals we must achieve for all Americans. This includes encouraging patriotism among all our people, ensuring their safety, balancing the federal budget, liberating the potential of our innovators, and restoring local control over our schools. All of these objectives—and many others—are well within our reach. To achieve them, however, we need new laws—and those laws must be well-crafted and expertly promoted.
Nearly two and a half years after his campaign began, President Trump still has barricades to overcome. There’s the barricade of a press corps that would rather see the country fail than see him succeed. There’s the barricade of a left dominated by radicalism and anti-Americanism. There’s the barricade of the bipartisan Establishment in Congress that is hostile to his America First priorities. There’s the barricade of China—an enormous economy dominated by a single tyrannical party determined to dominate Asia, if not the world.
These barricades—and others—may seem too imposing to clear, but they’re not. We must go forward undaunted, determined, and have confidence in the prudence, patriotism, and decency of the American people. We must reject those who would tell us that this country is too wicked, too corrupt, too unsophisticated, too stupid, or too decadent to govern itself—and that we have no choice but to submit to the dominion of elites at home and abroad. President Trump has won great victories already—and may win many more. But the promise of populism rests on its trust in the people, not in one person. We must fight for the power that is our birthright. We must fight for America—we must keep reminding the president and his political opponents in government that they work for us. In the end, the greatness of America lies not in its wealth, its armies, its beauty, or even its rich history. The greatness of America is that here, we are trying to build a country where the people—all the people—are the rulers, not the servants. If President Trump and his supporters can restore this simple truth to its proper place in American life, then this administration will have been a great success.