Posted on 01/21/2021 12:17:04 PM PST by EyesOfTX
Would you look at that, the sun came up in the east this morning!
We’ve completed the cycle of a successful transfer of power. It turns out that Trump wasn’t going to declare martial law, there weren’t thousands of “MAGAites” ready to attack the capitol, and no, there were not Chinese troops in Canada ready to invade. I hope that all Americans, left, right, and center will take a few days to objectively evaluate where they get their “news” from.
VDO.AI First off, we need to start with some truths about presidential campaigns in general.
-There is an attempt to spin the other candidate’s future administration as “the end of America”. This was certainly the case by republicans when Obama was elected. The “TEA Party” movement immediately sprang to life and Obama only had 2 of his 8 years (the first two) with both houses of Congress. Our system of “checks and balances” works, and Americans have proven they will vote to check extreme agendas in either direction.
-The most bold promises, or threats rarely come to fruition in policy. I’m old enough to remember when Obama campaigned to close the Military Prison in Guantanamo Bay. He could have done that 12 years ago with the stroke of a pen, and the facility is still open. Remember when liberals tried to play on your fears and claimed Trump would end same-sex marriage and enact a Pence authored theocracy? Ha. Turns out Trump could have cared less about any of those issues.
So, hopefully now you have calmed down some and realized that America is going to be OK. We got through 8 years of Obama, we can survive 4 (or less) years of Biden. Any portion of term carried out by an unelected President Harris would be the least legitimate in American History. Non-elected presidents with no mandate are not to be feared politically. So, relax.
This is not a “Hit-Piece” on Donald Trump. I voted for him his policies twice. I’m an officer in the Military, and I witnessed first hand the boost in morale that Trump’s leadership brought vs his predecessor. I had the misfortune of being on active duty in a DoD agency that supported the State Department under Hillary Clinton’s mismanagement. I know all too well just how disastrous the Obama Administration’s failures in defense and foreign policy were…but “what difference, at this point, does it make”?
Donald Trump’s 1st and greatest achievement as President will always be preventing Hillary Clinton from ever being President. For that, we owe him a debt of gratitude. Trump has other accomplishments as well. His economic leadership built the US Economy to it’s strongest point ever. He led an effort to rebuild the US Military which is paying off.
Trump put many existing foreign conflicts to an end, and started no additional wars. He told Iran “If you f*ck around with us, we will do things to you that have never been done before.” Then he scattered pieces of Iran’s chief terrorist all over the desert as an example. Iran blinked. North Korea blinked. China blinked. Our trade imbalance with China is trending back toward balance. Israel is properly supported, our Embassy is in their capital, and Israel has US Peace Deals with several Islamic nations. Those accomplishments are incredible for a single term president.
Sadly, Trump left office as a President who could make all the spectacular slam dunks, but he couldn’t make a layup. This is why:
-Donald Trump didn’t expect to win. He was as surprised as the national media and the lib-tards that were screaming on the national mall at the inauguration. Trump did not have key cabinet positions identified and ready to go, and he didn’t have his agenda ready to roll out.
-Trump campaigned to “Drain the Swamp”, and immediately added “Swamp Animals” to his highest level positions. Trump’s appointment of Jeff Sessions as Attorney General was the most “swamp” thing ever, and Sessions’ recusal from the Russia Hoax (instead of declassifying everything and killing it in a day) crippled Trump’s term. Trump’s complaints about “the deep state” fail to recognize that the President of the United States holds the power to fire ANYONE who works within any executive agency. Got problems at the FBI? Get off your butt and go down there and get the top 200 members of the agency in the same room with the top 20 on the stage. Lay out the orders, and ask the director if he is going to follow them. No? You are fired, Deputy director, you are now the director. Are you going to follow orders? No? You are fired. Assistant Deputy Director, you are now the director. Are you going to follow orders???? And you keep doing that until you get someone who will do their job. Swamp animals have a word for guys like Trump… They are a “carton of milk” inside the beltway. That means they have a known expiration date, and federal jobs don’t expire. The swamp waited him out, and remains undrained.
-Trump did more to cripple his administration and torpedo his re-election with his own Twitter account than democrats could ever do to him. He should have realized that his Twitter account was driving incredible traffic (and profits) for Big Tech, and taken his messages direct to Americans via the White House webpage…and for the love of God, let the press secretary that you hired and pay scrub your messages. For all the talk of Trump playing 3D chess, he lost a game of checkers with Twitter.
-The entire point of the Russia Hoax was to delegitimize the Trump Administration, and Trump allowed the issue to fester when he could have ripped that band-aid off at any point by declassifying documents.
-Trump miscalculated motives and capabilities of former Military Generals. Trump allowed his idea of 3 and 4 star generals as being apolitical patriots to cloud his judgment on them. Any 4 Star General (or Admiral) has been a political animal since they were a Colonel/Captain. While military politics differ from civilian politics, the operations still occur within the same government and funding system. Google “Jim Mattis Board of Directors” if you don’t believe me. These 4 star swamp animals in their military retirement are nothing but lobbyists with a shadow-box. Is it any surprise that our former SECDEF is now on the board of directors for General Dynamics with over a million dollar annual compensation? And you wondered why his wars would never stop???
-Donald Trump did nothing to stop “Corporate Welfare”. While the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act is Trump’s legislative high point, his failure to force entire industries like Ethanol, Solar, other “renewables”, and dozens of other pet legislative initiatives continues to cost taxpayers trillions per year.
So, why didn’t Donald Trump get those things done?
That answer is really simple, but will be a tough pill for a lot of people to swallow. Donald Trump is not, and was never a Conservative Republican. Trump is a lifelong democrat, businessman, entertainer, marketer, and promoter. Trump’s favorite brand to promote has always been Donald Trump. Any good business man identifies places in the market where there is a void, and then they fill that void for profit. Trump personally hated Barrack Obama, starting when Obama personally mocked him at an event on the subject of Obama’s birth certificates.
Trump’s love for himself, and his individual hatred of Obama drove him to take Obama’s job and erase his legacy. In order to do that, he had an easy void to fill due to lack of Republican Leadership. So, Trump picked up some Republican talking points (2nd amendment, pro-life, strong military, America 1st) and CNN played an unwilling (and inadvertent) accomplice to getting Trump nominated and elected.
Trump’s marketing plan during the 2016 and 2020 campaigns was to set himself up as the only person who was fighting for the little guy. In doing so, he’s managed to obtain a unique cult like following with the majority of the US population loving him for attributes that aren’t accurate or true, or hating him for attributes that aren’t accurate or true.
The CARICATURE of Trump is being a far-right extremist, white supremacist maniac are no more true than the idea of him being a Reagan like conservative. The TRUTH of matter is that Trump’s policies most closely resemble the compromises that were forced by Newt Gingrich during the Clinton Administration. By Mid-1990’s standards, Trump is a left/middle Democrat while borrowing some of Ronald Reagan’s foreign policy pillars of “Peace Through Strength” and knowing he had to appoint conservative judges to maintain his Republican “street cred” in DC and for re-election.
Trump (or what he built himself up to be) was the equal and opposite over-reaction to Obama. The funny thing is that we now have in Joe Biden, a guy who was to the POLITICAL RIGHT of Donald Trump by those same mid-90’s standards. Democrats (especially racial minorities) have been pointing at the 1994 Crime Bill for decades as proof of “Institutional Racism”, as that law resulted in massive and disproportionate incarceration of minorities. Joe Biden authored that piece of Institutional Racism, and he’s now your hero replacement for Donald Trump. Kamala Harris is a former prosecutor who made a name for herself being “tough on crime” by sending hundreds of black-Americans to long prison terms for petty marijuana offenses.
This truth could not be believed if it was packaged as fiction.
So, as we keep our eyes open the next few weeks and months, we need to see how President Biden actually legislates, compromises, and leads. Heck, people with early stage dementia often wake up not knowing what year it is. Biden could wake up thinking it’s 1994, and we can get through that version of Joe Biden just fine. Anything left of that, we need to turn the page from “Trumpism” and lean on the young talent in national politics to stand on conservative principals to get us through it.
Beyond that, you need to get involved in your local politics. Your county officials determine who works at polling stations, where they will be, and who counts (and observes) the votes. Get up, get informed, get involved.
Nathan Kaspar is a native of Ganado, Texas and grew up on a family ranch and enlisted the Navy in 1996. Nathan later attended the University of Texas at Austin on a fleet ROTC scholarship, lettered in Football as a walk-on, earned a degree in Political Science and a Commission as a Naval Officer. After Naval Flight School and earning his wings, Nathan had several flying and non-flying tours that took him to garden spots such as Iraq, Bahrain, Dubai, and a nuclear counter-proliferation assignment in Russia. Now with 24 years of combined active and reserve service, Nathan splits time between his civilian consulting job in Austin, TX and his reserve military duties in Florida.
President Trump had 4 more years in hand until the fraud happened.
An opinion piece like this comes across as the writer accepts the election as legitimate. I’ll take the accomplishments of Trumps 4 years over what this writer classifies as ‘missed layups’.
Well .... here's the truth about bite me;
WHERE'S HUNTER ??
“-The entire point of the Russia Hoax was to delegitimize the Trump Administration, and Trump allowed the issue to fester when he could have ripped that band-aid off at any point by declassifying documents.”
The biggest political scandal in our history. Many, many crimes committed. Could’ve ended before it started with declass and release Trump. Never. Did.
The truth about Trump is that he was the best POTUS ever but that the best is not good enogh for America. It prefers mediocre or bad presidents. Your choice America.
Everyone else in the Federal government is still responsible for their own actions. Trump was the honest cop sent into clean up a corrupt police department. All the dirty cops simply turned on him and protected each other every chance they had.
That is why I am angry. The obvious, blatant, in your face, stay in your place, big brother is watching you BETRAYAL of everything I ever believed about my country.
He lost me when he got to “Americans will vote to check extreme agendas”..... maybe 40 to 50 years ago, but not anymore... Then Trumps love for himself..... nah, loser article by a loser
He was kissing Joe on the lips after the innogguurration.
Thanks but the author is wrong in the first couple of paragraphs where I stopped wasting my time reading.
Oh my! “Brashness!”. What a wimp.
Author makes some fair observations. Trump’s biggest shortcoming was not actually having the ability to live up to the expectations that were put on him, i.e. not being all-knowing, all-seeing, and all-powerful. In fact his actions were constrained by the threat of indictment, impeachment, the China virus, and people he should never have put in the positions he did. Some of that is on him, some is just a consequence of being just one man trying to drain a very wide and deep swamp.
If you doubt that, start listing the names of those who consistently stood by his side and fought for MAGA and America First. I’ll wait...
Wonder if he is a democrat.
bkmk
As in many other stories, this one is very hard on Trump for not firing everyone in sight on his first day in office.
Wonder why they never mention the awful advisers Trump had, many of who were not his personal choices.
And their constant refrain was “If you do that xxx catastrophe will happen.
Because he was not on the political inside, he thought he needed advisers who were on the political inside, That was his worst mistake.
He should have fired all of them and used his own common sense and understanding of human nature, along with the advice of a real constitutional lawyer.
I love Dave but I don’t think he really understands what’s going on. In time he will.
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