Growing push to blacklist former Trump administration officials
NewsBusters managing editor Curtis Houck calls the efforts ‘a really scary situation’ on ‘Fox Report.’
Whenever liberals see former President Donald J. Trump strolling through Palm Beach, they should disturb his peace just long enough to yell two words at him:
"Thank you!"
While they never will admit it, the now-former president secured numerous policy objectives that leftists advocate. However, Trump answered liberal prayers through conservative means. This, of course, makes him "worse than Hitler," as Refuse Fascism organizer Sunsara Taylor told Fox News Channel’s Tucker Carlson.
So, which leftist bullseyes did Trump hit with rightist bullets?
BIDEN CREDITS TRUMP ON VACCINE EFFORT BEFORE ADDING PROGRAM WAS IN 'WORSE SHAPE' THAN EXPECTED
•Cut CO2! Reducing perfectly natural carbon dioxide (or "carbon pollution" as Obama smeared it) approximates Holy Communion in the left’s Church of Climate Change. The left should be thrilled that CO2 emissions fell 2.9 percent between 2018 and 2019.
Why?
Fracking!
Yes, center-left boys and girls, that dirty, nasty, evil fracking that you hate more than steamed spinach yields abundant natural gas.
As skyscrapers, power plants, and buses switch to gas, they respectively yield 32 percent less CO2 than with heating oil, 50 percent less versus coal, and 88 percent less beside diesel. This helped push energy-related U.S. CO2 output into a post-1985 pit.
•Stop income inequality! For years, the left screamed for an end to American paychecks in different amounts. If only we all earned the same, they dreamed.
Under the income-inequality-hating Obama-Biden administration, the relevant Gini Coefficient actually increased from 0.466 in 2008 to 0.481 in 2016 — 3.218 percent more "unfairness."
Under the left’s despised "Donald Trump," Gini advanced from 0.481 in 2016 to 0.489 in 2017. But then Gini fell two consecutive years, to 0.486 in 2018 and 0.484 in 2019 — 1.033 percent less "unfairness."
Credit Trumponomics. Tax reductions, regulatory relief, and a pro-business tone ignited robust economic growth, buoyed the modest, and never bashed the moneyed. A rising floor, not a falling ceiling, squeezed Gini the right way.
•Fight for 15! The left loves the $15 minimum wage so much that it wants to impose it nationwide — even on employers who cling by their cuticles amid lockdowns and layoffs.
Regardless, Trump helped American workers enjoy $15-per-hour wages voluntarily.
Under the Trump/GOP Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA), numerous employers shared their tax savings with employees. Americans for Tax Reform reports that at least 45 employers hiked their minimum wages to $15 per hour, including major job creators such as Charter Communications, JP Morgan Chase, and Met Life. Cigna and at least two other enterprises hiked hourly wages to $16 — all without government mandates.
•War on Poverty! President Lyndon Baines Johnson launched the War on Poverty in 1964. SNAP, TANF, VISTA, and other tax-fueled acronyms became costly beads on the left’s collective social-spending rosary.
Five decades and some $16 trillion in federal outlays later, Manhattan Institute scholar Brian Riedl calculates, Trumponomics chopped the poverty rate from 11.8 percent in 2018 to 10.5 percent in 2019 — its nadir since federal estimates began in 1959, five years before the War on Poverty.
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Trump’s policies graduated 4.2 million from poverty and cut Obama-Biden’s 22 percent black poverty rate in 2016 to 18.8 percent in 2019 — a record low and its first-ever reading below 20 percent.
•Urban renewal! Since the 1960s, liberals have pushed to revitalize low-income, minority, inner-city communities. TCJA’s incentives (e.g. capital gains tax: 0 percent) have lured $75 billion in private investment and created some 500,000 new jobs in 8,764 Opportunity Zones in such neighborhoods.
•End mass incarceration! Black Lives Matter, among other Leftist groups, insisted on the release of thousands of largely Black non-violent offenders vacuumed into federal prisons during the War on Drugs. Obama-Biden snored.
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President Trump signed the First Step Act criminal-reform bill, which freed some 3,100 such federal prisoners in fiscal year 2019. In FY 2021, expect another 8,700 similar returns to normal.
•More school spending! Leftists cheer for higher educational outlays as predictably as roosters crow at dawn.
President Trump reauthorized the Washington, D.C. School Voucher Program (which Obama-Biden repeatedly tried to kill), boosted it with $85 million, and established steady funds for Historically Black Colleges and Universities.
•Slash drug prices! Cheaper pharmaceuticals are a leftist perennial. President Trump too often slammed the cure-producing drug industry. His Most Favored Nation Rule effectively let price-controlling foreign governments fix U.S. medication costs.
Trump’s approval of Canadian pharmaceutical imports might work if 37.7 million Canadians had enough for 331 million Americans.
Conversely, a January 15 roster of 605 Administration accomplishments says that Trump let pharmacists recommend lowest-cost options, "ended the costly kickbacks to middlemen" (cutting brand-name treatments up to 30 percent), and excised healthcare regulations, which "lowered drug prices for the first time in 51 years."
•Legalize homosexuality! Since 1969’s Stonewall Riots, the left has demanded the decriminalization of gay relationships. With marriage equality, this agenda has been fulfilled at home.
President Trump took this battle overseas, largely by challenging rather than appeasing Islamic fundamentalism. While Obama literally bowed before Islamo-potentates, including Saudi King Abdullah, the Trump administration pressed 69 foreign governments (many in the Islamic world) to decriminalize homosexuality.
Former Acting Director of National Intelligence Richard "Ric" Grenell, America’s first-ever gay Cabinet member, spearheaded this initiative. To prevent backlashes abroad, results were not ballyhooed. Still, Gabon legalized homosexuality, and Sudan has stopped executions for gay sex.
•No more wars! Since at least the 1960s peace movement, liberals typically have been dovish and conservatives hawkish. Regardless, President Trump rebuilt the armed forces that Obama-Biden neglected, and then he pursued a Reaganite policy of Peace through Strength.
Trump brokered four Middle East peace agreements with Israel and its Islamic neighbors. He also was the first American president since Jimmy Carter to launch no new wars. Hence, Trump earned four Nobel Peace Prize nominations.
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As former President Trump encounters lefties in greater Mar-a-Lago, he should offer them these two words:
"You’re welcome!"
Bucknell University student Michael Malarkey contributed research to this opinion piece.