By Steve Levy
When we hear a lot of our good friends going off on how mean, immature, nasty and unpresidential former President Donald Trump is, we can’t disagree with them. Trump may be an uncouth blowhard and a narcissist who acted terribly after the election, but the American people and our service-age men and women were a lot safer, as were the Ukrainians and Israelis.
Yet they still can’t believe that we feel we have to hold our noses and vote for him despite all of his many flaws, because we believe the alternative is even more problematic.
Personality and character do matter in our leaders, but the policy platform and the people that the president will appoint from top to bottom in administrative positions and in the judiciary will have a much greater impact on the future of our children and grandchildren.
Ultimately, policies are far more important than the demeanor of the candidate.
There are many among us who once were proud Democrats who revered the commonsense approach of a John F. Kennedy, who was pro-tax cuts, pro-civil rights and anti-communist, and of a Bill Clinton, who cut capital gains taxes, enacted tougher penalties against violent criminals and reformed the then-out-of-control welfare system. Unfortunately, it’s no longer Bill Clinton’s Democratic Party.
Yes, Republicans have their extreme wing, but the extreme wing of the Democratic Party, which consists of radical progressives, Democratic socialists, and even Marxists, have now taken control of the party.
Bernie Sanders might have lost the primary in 2020, but he won the policy battle. It is his radical agenda, and that of the squad, that has been implemented over the last four years, causing tremendous harm to our country.
Trump may be a coarse individual who you wouldn’t want your grandchild to emulate, but his policies, for the most part, were much better for our country.
THE ECONOMY
Trump implemented across-the-board tax cuts. Contrary to what the media says, these cuts were not just for the wealthy. He doubled the standard deduction for middle-class and working people, and sliced the Alternative Minimum Tax that clobbered business owners and solo practitioners. He cut the corporate tax from a near world high 35% to 21%, bringing back $655 billion in offshore funds to the U.S.
And the tax cut for investment and job growth spurred the economy, which previously grew at a tepid 1.6% in President Obama’s last year. Trump nearly doubled that, despite implementing tariffs on China to stop them from stealing our intellectual property and to bring manufacturing home.
WAGE INCREASES
The roaring economy led to wage increases we hadn’t seen in quite some time. Real wage growth, which is the difference between the increase in wages minus inflation, was a strong net positive.
Inflation was kept under control which further strengthened the working class buying power. Interest rates were at all-time lows, enabling first time homebuyers to experience the American dream.
The progressives in the Biden administration could’ve sat back and done nothing and allowed the good times to continue. Of course, Covid was a severe setback, but the initial PPP loans rebounded the stock market and the overall economy was stabilized and started to grow again.
Unfortunately, President Biden ignored the advice of Democratic economists Lawrence Summers, the former Harvard dean, and Steve Rattner, who forecasted that Biden‘s proposed spending would lead to record inflation. He ignored them, and their predictions panned out. Biden pushed through the American Rescue Plan and Build Back Better, both of which proved to be inflationary.
It’s not enough to say today that the rate of inflation growth is in the 3% range. After experiencing inflation rates of 4.7% in 2021, 8% in 2022, 4.1% in 2023 and 2.4% in 2024, the price of goods is 20% higher than they were when Trump left office.
And this huge inflation spike forced the Fed to dramatically increase interest rates to 5.5%, which brought the average 30-year home mortgage rates to a historic high of 7.79% in October 2023, while credit card and other interest rates rose much higher, hurting the middle class and crippling home sales.
The inflation and high interest rates didn’t just happen on their own; they were the direct result of bad Biden policies. Meanwhile, under Biden, our national debt rose by $6 trillion in just four years, from $27.8 trillion in 2020 to $34 trillion in 2024.
MORE BUYING POWER
Here’s the bottom line. Under Trump, an average family’s buying power increased by $6,000. Under Biden and Harris, it dropped by $2,000. That means most families feel $8,000 poorer under the Biden-Harris policies.
ENERGY COSTS
Inflation worsened as a result of the progressive Democrats’ war on “all of the above” energy strategy.
Yes, global warming is real and it’s man-made, but the answer is not to destroy America economically while the world’s biggest polluters, China and India, continue to pollute with abandon. As long as those other nations can do as they please, all of our green “belt tightening” will have a minuscule impact on the environment. However, it will have a catastrophic impact on our day-to-day finances and our freedoms, such as being able to buy a gas car or gas stove. The answer is to invest in innovation, not double our gas and home heating prices.
Biden canceled important pipelines here in America, but gave approval to a Russian pipeline to feed Russian gas and oil to the Europeans, making Europe more dependent on our enemy and hurting American energy producers. How can that be rationalized?
He prevented any more drilling on federal land and offshore and slowed the approval process for drilling on private lands, while at the same time getting on his hands and knees to beg our enemies in Iran and Venezuela to pump more oil so our gas prices don’t go so high that voters rebel.
The Democrats also shamelessly depleted our emergency oil reserves. In August 2020, the Strategic Petroleum Reserve stood at approximately 656 million barrels and reached a low point of 350 million barrels in June 2023. The Democrats did this so they could keep gas prices artificially low for the voting public, knowing darn well that the prices will soar again when these short-term measures are no longer available. This doesn’t even mention how vulnerable he’s made America were we subject to an attack.
We must understand the far-left extremists actually want energy prices to go through the roof. It will force you to use wind and solar. The problem is that they are not yet reliable enough to be a substitute for the other more productive energy sources. Solar is unreliable and doesn’t produce enough energy; wind power requires large infrastructure investments and years to bring online.
FOREIGN POLICY
The Biden administration has also made our enemies in Iran and Russia far more powerful to export their military aggression by making them rich oil exporters. Had he continued the same vigorous pumping of natural gas and oil under the Trump administration, we would have remained the country that set the market price for the world. Iran and Russia would not be able to get the type of money they were bringing in during 2022 and 2023 because American production would bring the market price way down. When other countries buy from us, they would not be buying from our enemies. Too late. This awful policy put billions in the coffers of our enemies to help propel a war against Ukraine and a terrorist incursion against Israel.
Ironically, Trump was perceived by the media and the Democratic Party as being a puppet of Putin, but a look at the history shows that he was far tougher on Russia and Iran than were Obama and Biden. When Russia was threatening an incursion against Ukraine, after they had already taken Crimea during the Obama administration, Trump responded by giving real arms to the Ukrainians to kill the Russians. Obama refused to do so, and offered only blankets as a way to placate the Ukrainians. Trump also took the handcuffs off our military that Obama placed on them and helped crush ISIS in a matter of a few months. He also took out Iran’s top terrorist plotter and ordered a strike on Russian soldiers in Syria when they crossed a red line. Russia and Iran got the message.
When the Russians saw the pathetically weak withdrawal from Afghanistan that President Biden employed, they were emboldened. President Biden simply wanted a photo-op for the anniversary of 9/11 to say that he had ended the Afghanistan war. So he ignored the advice of the generals and astonishingly pulled out the military before evacuating American citizens. He thereafter left $80 billion in military equipment behind for the Taliban and abandoned a strategic airport that the Americans held onto Afghanistan just miles away from the Chinese border.
Trump also had a bad policy initiative in wanting to get out of Afghanistan over time, but it is likely he would not have pulled out the military before the civilians and was intent on keeping that strategic base.
Trump weakened Iran by making Iranian oil exports unmarketable. It can’t be ignored that Iran did not initiate major terrorist attacks on Trump’s watch as they did with Biden. Also note that Russia invaded its neighbors under Obama and Biden, but not Trump.
DEMS CAPTIVE TO HAMAS SUPPORTERS
And Jews in America were safer under Trump. The Democratic Party is now being held captive by the Hamas-loving wing of their party. They’ve played footsie with the intolerant antisemitic Squad that has support in swing states such Michigan and Minnesota. Not wanting to alienate the pro-Hamas sector, Biden and Harris have played it both ways in the Israeli conflict, first saying he is with Israel and then trashing Israel for trying to defeat the terrorists who raped and killed their women and children. And their prosecutors have refused to indict the Hamas thugs who chased Jewish students off campus.
SOROS MONEY
The Democrats have not only sold out to the Hamas wing, but also are dependent on the blood money from one of the world’s most evil players, billionaire George Soros. Soros is part socialist, part anarchist. He made his fortune via capitalism, but now is pouring millions into dismantling the American system to make it a Marxist utopia. The way he is doing it is to fund radical anti-police groups and rogue Marxist district attorneys in our nation’s largest cities. Their one objective is to foster chaos by refusing to jail violent criminals. All of these rogue prosecutors are Democrats and all are funded by Soros. Soros is evil and Dems have embraced him for his funding stream. VP candidate Tim Walz recently met with the Soros family to get even more donations.
THE BORDER
On the border, Trump had done something no president before him was able to do: effectively seal it off. He didn’t need comprehensive immigration reform, or any legislation for that matter, passed by Congress to effectively close the border. He implemented a Remain in Mexico policy. He told all asylum seekers that they would be turned away at our border and would have to apply in a different country. President Biden, on the other hand, engaged in a deliberate attempt to open the border. That’s not me saying this, it’s his own words in the debate of 2020 where he said he wanted to see “a surge” of illegal aliens at the border because that’s who we are as Americans.
This has been the left’s goal for decades: Import millions and millions of illegal immigrants to whom they can then give citizenship and have them voting for Democrats.
This crazy policy has helped shore up short-term political power for the far left, but it has been devastating for the impacted communities and will be even more devastating for our children and grandchildren down the road. It also has depressed wages in our minority communities.
New York City has been burdened with $10 billion in local costs because of this open border.
And Biden could have stopped the flow anytime he wanted to, simply by reinstalling the successful Trump policies that he disbanded on day one. The nonsense that he needs this so-called bipartisan immigration bill (which really isn’t bipartisan) is a red herring. That was a bill drafted by Democrats and one Republican Senator, James Lankford of Oklahoma, who has lost his mind. That bill would allow up to 5,000 illegal aliens to cross the border per day before the president would be forced to take any action. That’s almost two million illegal aliens a year.
Biden is claiming he has recently stemmed the flow of illegal immigration but it’s not true. He’s just having them apply through a new app that legalizes these individuals before they ever get to America and then he pays to fly them in. They thereafter get Social Security numbers. That process itself is probably illegal and is subject to a lawsuit.
Does anyone believe that, if Kamala Harris wins, she will take any efforts to reverse Biden‘s open borders? She can’t because she, too, will owe her election to the left wing of her party who wants open borders. They want open borders because the far-left progressives are really Marxist, who believe in a worldwide working class solidarity without borders.
ANTI-AMERICANISM BEING TAUGHT IN OUR SCHOOLS
Many of them truly dislike this country, which is why they’re trying to change the country through our schools.
The biggest reason to support a very flawed Donald Trump is his understanding that there must be an end to critical race theory, DEI (Diversity, Equity and Inclusion) and other Marxist teachings, not only in our colleges, but in our grade schools as well.
Billions of dollars were funneled into the Covid bills pumping up these critical race theory programs in our institutions and our schools. It’s a Marxist theory that labels white people as being exploitive capitalists and people of color as being helpless victims. It is divisive and tears our nation apart. It’s why so many of our young students support Hamas over Israel.
The crazy leftists now are trying to disintegrate the differences between men and women in our culture. Parents are deemed the enemy. Teachers are deemed the benefactors who can help confused kids get sterilized and remove their sexual organs without parental permission or involvement. They want biological males to be allowed to play in girls sports and to use the girls locker rooms.
They are making graphically pornographic material acceptable reading material in our school libraries. Object to it and you will be fired, canceled or investigated as being anti-trans or anti-gay. Biden’s Department of Justice ridiculously targets concerned parents at school board meetings or Catholics attending Latin mass as being potential terrorists requiring surveillance. Meanwhile, they ignore real crimes from rioters in the Black Lives Matter summer of 2020 or Palestinian rioters kidnapping school janitors or threatening Jewish students.
A federal court wrote a 100-page opinion holding that the Biden administration coordinated with social media giants, at times through cooperation and at times through coercion, to silence critics of the administration. The court labeled these actions the greatest violation of the First Amendment in American history.
INCREASED CRIME
This critical race theory has caused the deaths of thousands of Americans. The “defund the police” and Black Lives Matter movements were based on a concept that putting criminals behind bars is racist simply because a large number of people of color are arrested for violent crimes. It led to carnage and a record increase in violent crime in some regions since 2019, that disproportionately impacted minority communities.
The FBI originally claimed it dropped this year somewhat in some categories, but don’t tell me that things are better today. If you raise my taxes over three years by $1,000 and cut it by $100 in the fourth year, don’t tell me that you’ve cut my taxes by $100. No, you raised them by $900 over three years. Likewise, even if we had a small reduction in crime this year, it’s still very much higher than it was when they took office. But, wait! We find out later that the FBI had omitted the nation’s largest cities from their bean counting. When they counted the correct way, they conceded crime was up yet again.
OPPOSING SCHOOL CHOICE
Millions of American children are trapped in violent, failing schools, especially in the inner cities. School choice and charter schools give these kids a way out and a more equal footing to get ahead. But the Dems are beholden to the leftist teachers unions and therefore block the ability of parents to choose a better school for their kids. They keep raising our taxes to double the aid to these failing schools while test scores continue to drop, when the proven answer is to allow more charter schools, which deliver higher scores at a lower cost.
DESTROYING ELECTION INTEGRITY
Democrats under Biden and Harris have been eroding the integrity of our election process. In Europe, they still vote the old-fashioned way, with paper ballots (not electronic machines). They show up to vote in person and the results are announced that same day. The next day, everyone accepts the outcome. And they require voter ID.
The Democrats oppose voter ID and allow political operatives to knock on peoples’ doors and have a ballot checked off, only to take it and dump it in a dropbox with no chain of custody. They’re even allowing illegal aliens to automatically be registered to vote in some states when they apply for their driver’ licenses. They have diluted the need to verify mail-in signatures.
WHAT DEMS STILL WANT TO DO
If the increased crime, illegal border crossers, gas and grocery prices, interest rates and foreign chaos is not enough to sway you, check out what Harris and far-left Dems still want to do.
When Biden took office and had Democratic control of the House and the Senate, he pushed for a doubling of the capital gains tax from the 15% to 20% that has existed since Bill Clinton’s time to almost 40% for some earners. If not for Senator Joe Manchin voting no, this increase would’ve taken effect and could’ve cratered the economy.
If Harris is elected, she will try to do the same.
More alarmingly, the Democrats are looking to begin taxing Americans on unrealized capital gains. Right now, you don’t pay tax on the capital gain until you sell your stock or your house. Harris and the Democrats want to make you pay the tax if your 401(k) increased in value this past year, even though you haven’t cashed it out and actually realized the income.
Harris opposes voter ID, and said she will seek amnesty for the illegals she and Biden allowed in over the last four years.
There are plenty of reasons for a Republican to have voted in the primary for a more traditional GOP standard bearer, but Trump prevailed. Now it’s down to a binary choice.
Trump may be a jerk, but he is the only candidate left who offers an alternative to the crazy new leftist radicals who have taken over the new Bernie Sanders-controlled Democratic Party.