Former President Donald Trump realized a couple milestones this week. One was his birthday (appropriately on Flag Day, June 14th), when he reached the distinguished age of 75 years young.
The other was the six-year anniversary of the launch of his political career. Remembering back, it was a day that many of us didn’t treat with appropriate seriousness, but we recall it now with fondness as a time when at least one politician spoke forthrightly on real issues that were important to patriotic Americans. On June 16, 2015, Trump rode down the escalator at Trump Tower with soon-to-be First Lady Melania to the tune of “Rockin’ in the Free World” (by Neil Young), a rebel anthem if there ever was one. Rock the free world Trump did, indeed. As everyone knows by now, from the outset, Trump didn’t mince words. A mere few minutes into the oration, he famously said, “When Mexico sends its people, they're not sending their best. They're not sending you. They're not sending you. They're sending people that have lots of problems, and they're bringing those problems with us. They're bringing drugs. They're bringing crime. They're rapists. And some, I assume, are good people.” Democrats, the media (not trying to be repetitive here), the Bush-loving Republican establishment and those with delicate and easily offended sensibilities went bonkers. These naysayers didn’t necessarily refute the content of Trump’s address as much as the candid and blunt manner in which he approached American politics. Trump the candidate was a message-carrier from the get-go, a man who wouldn’t know a platitude if it kicked him square in the rear end. As perhaps America’s ultimate outsider, Trump primarily targeted the status quo preserving elites and both parties’ leaders for their many failures. It was a different -- and refreshing -- approach. Fact-checkers and liberal snoops often criticized and attacked Trump for his white-hot rhetoric and accused him of harboring racist views towards not only Mexicans, but all foreigners. And his willingness to single out the Muslim religion for radicalism was dissected and savaged during the contentious campaign. Trump spoke like many of us think. We’re not racists, but we are pragmatists. Some things just can’t be said in a politically sensitive way. The New Yorker became a hero to tens of millions who were sick to death of hearing nonsensical fluff from our “leaders”. Trump told the truth. Sometimes it was a tad exaggerated, but supporters and those who remained objective realized his heart was in the right place. The fake news media (his words, of course) constantly reviled Trump as a liar. So did the Washington ruling class. But as he himself pointed out earlier this week, they were the ones who got it all wrong. Lawrence Richard reported at The Washington Examiner:
“Former President Donald Trump released a statement outlining several examples of claims that he says he was falsely maligned for and has now been vindicated on. In a pair of emails, Trump said he was ‘right about everything’ leading up to the election and that legacy media outlets had disingenuously ‘lied’ about his claims to make him look bad.
“’Hydroxychloroquine works,’ Trump said in an email that included a full list of claims he alleged have since been proven true.
“’Have you noticed that they are now admitting I was right about everything they lied about before the election?’ the former president asked before mentioning other items on the list. ‘The Virus came from a Chinese lab,’ Trump said. ‘Hunter Biden’s laptop was real.’ ‘Lafayette Square was not cleared for a photo op. The ‘Russian Bounties’ story was fake,’ he wrote.”
Not one to abbreviate his list of grievances, Trump also said he was right about his administration’s plans to develop a COVID-19 vaccine before the end of 2020, and that blue state lockdowns didn’t work. Schools should’ve reopened. The former president boasted he was also correct about Critical race theory and how it is a disaster for our schools and country. Not to leave anything out, Trump also touched on illegal immigration. “[O]ur Southern Border security program was unprecedentedly successful.”
Richard’s report includes a blurb on Sen. Lindsey Graham’s recent observation that Trump would’ve won the 2020 election if the evidence of Chinese complicity in engineering the COVID-19 virus (in the Wuhan lab) would’ve been properly explored by the media. Trump did suggest last year that the Chinese government might have purposely gotten the world sick. The haters then went out of their way to trash the leader of the free world on that one, but protecting commies is what liberal gripers do best.
It’s true, Trump has been vindicated a lot lately, and he certainly was spot on with many of the things he said last year. It’s kind of painful to harken back, but people with common sense figured there was more to the Lafayette Square story than what the spiteful media reported on the incident. How -- or why -- would a president order a protest cleared in order to walk across the street to a vandalized church and hold up a Bible? He didn’t. It was the DC mayor who did it.
Again, anyone with a brain who wasn’t wooed by the sights of screaming “protesters” defying lockdown orders understood that the crowd wasn’t after anything in particular, except maybe to get on CNN wearing absurd t-shirts and possibly to spray paint a building when the cops weren’t in the area. They weren’t concerned about so-called police brutality and statistically rare police-on-black murders, and they certainly didn’t give a hoot about George Floyd.
They were hoodlums and miscreants, bored rejects from some “woke” university who automatically bought-in to whatever the radicalized faculty told them in class. Anti-Trumpers saw the violence and mayhem as a means to further demonize the president and weaken him politically. Sadly, all the hysteria over COVID convinced enough people that the only way to vote safely was by mail. What a crock.
I remember conversations with Trump detractors who doubted his sincerity in dealing with the pandemic. They took the side of the lockdown crowd, voluntarily sequestering themselves while bragging of “doing their patriotic duty” by wearing a mask outdoors. The ones with school aged children actually defended the various public school boards’ decisions to offer only “virtual” learning, even when they must have realized their children were suffering.
Trump was right. The schools should’ve never locked down. Period. People who were at risk could easily take measures to protect themselves while leaving the vast majority of folks to use common sense and additional actions to counter the spread, such as using hand sanitizer.
The costs of what people gave up have yet to be tallied. I’ve argued it before, but how many high school seniors never got a chance to have a prom or a “live” graduation ceremony? How many relationships and marriages didn’t happen due to excessive social distancing requirements? How much permanent damage has been done to the American psyche? I still see people strapping on masks to go into the supermarket; surely some of them are doing it even after being vaccinated. When will the fear level match the true threat?
Trump was right to go to extremes in removing the regulatory burden so drug companies could feel empowered and free to do whatever was necessary to speed through a vaccine. How many lives have been saved because the uncompromising Trump refused to listen to the fake news media’s pessimistic pontificating that a cure couldn’t be found in such a tight time frame? How much freedom has been restored because of Trump?
Democrats and liberals were so obsessed with finding a way to get Trump out of office that they refused to listen to what he had to say. They excused themselves from responsibility by jabbing at his conduct and personality when really all they needed to do was use history as a guide and trust their own instincts. Instead, they fell-in with a lifelong bureaucrat like Anthony Fauci, accepting the man’s word over that of the president of the United States.
Donald Trump was right when he tore into the ruling class when he announced his run for president. He was equally prescient when he coined the nickname “Crooked Hillary” to describe his opponent in the 2016 election. He was right about his economic policy. He was right about preserving the Second Amendment. He was right about Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell and Mitt Romney and Jeb Bush. He was right about the need for “extreme vetting” of Muslim immigrants and refugees. And he was right about COVID-19 and the evil Chinese government.
We still don’t know whether Trump will run again in 2024. He’s 75-years-old now. His enemies still loath him. And the public is still wary after January 6. But whether he runs or not, one thing is indisputable: he was right about many, many things leading up to the 2020 election. Vindication is sweet, but it won’t make you president.
Donald Trump vindicated
2020 Election
Lafayette Square
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teargas protesters
Muriel Bowser
GOP establishment
COVID-19 lockdowns
school closures
illegal immigration