Still Winning : Our Last Hope to Be Great Again (9781546085287)

by Hurt, Charles

  I grew up reading The Federalist Papers and early on learned that a federal government that can give you anything—including a morphine drip—can take anything away from you.

  Simply put, if the federal government is in charge, you have no leverage. If I want to go to a witch doctor, then, by damn, I ought to be able to. If my insurance company doesn’t want to cover my witch doctor, then so be it.

  So that is why I and millions of others are against Obamacare.

  But that is not why Donald Trump is against Obamacare. He is against Obamacare because it doesn’t work. He is not ideological in his stance, and it’s not because he hates Democrats or Obama for the viciously partisan way in which the law was passed. Trump hates the policy because it has made a difficult process much more difficult by any commonsense standard.

  It’s easy to want to kill Obamacare, but President Trump wants to fix it because that’s what he does. He sees a problem and talks to people about how to try to fix it. He has conversations with all kinds of people and does what he sees as the best, most concise option. He wants to find practical solutions for problems that trouble regular Americans.

  In so many ways, his 2016 presidential campaign and his performance in the White House exemplify that. The campaign was a lean operation that executed the essential needs of a political operation and nothing more. The White House has followed that same model and Trump has been more like a mayor than a typical American president.

  But that doesn’t mean President Trump is a less powerful or effective leader of conservatism and freedom than past presidents like Ronald Reagan—and the reason is fairly simple. For decades now the entire field of political debate in Washington and among the so-called elites has shifted so far left that political ideas that were part of the radical fringe just a few years ago have become closer to mainstream.

  This is largely the result of the relentless work done by three heads of the Leviathan that seeks to destroy the American spirit from the inside: Hollywood, the media, and academia.

  On the media, it is important to remember that for a slew of reasons, the press has always leaned leftward. Reporters tend to come from big cities and spend their “learning years” in university settings. And they skew toward being social justice warriors.

  Often you hear people lament all the noise of today’s chattering media. They pine for “the good old days” when news was confined to the three networks providing a steady diet of seemingly straight news in staid fashion from the likes of Walter Cronkite. As for me, I loved the days when multiple newspapers in major markets came rolling out and were devoured before the pages had time to cool. I cherish my time in Detroit, with two excellent newspapers at each other’s throats every day. Yes, even the lore of The Front Page suited me just fine. But the truth is, the press was pretty jaded to the left back then, too.

  It wasn’t until the emergence of talk radio, cable news, and—finally—the Internet that the wool was pulled from America’s eyes and people began hearing another side of the “news” as it had been fed to them for forever. The emergence of Fox News as a balance to all the one-sided, monolithic, cosmopolitan drivel has been the greatest example of smart, honest news-gathering aimed at filling the giant void left by the vast, so-called mainstream media.

  But giving regular Americans a voice in the national political debate did not come without a price. The result has been the leftward march of once-great institutions like the New York Times and the Washington Post—papers I grew up reading at home—into partisan hysterics. Both papers have entirely abandoned all pretense of fairness or balance in the Trump era.

  Network television news has not done much better. And the liberal cable response to Fox News has been off-the-charts crazy. MSNBC is unwatchable by any fair-minded viewer. CNN, once a respected global cable news-gathering machine, has gone full-throttle looney with seriously impaired anchors and guests whose only requirement seems to be that they are willing to attack Trump. And the political manifestos that crawl along the bottoms of TV screens are not so much informative as they are offensive, taking direct shots at the president of the United States at every moment possible.

  During the 2016 campaign, CNN took to using these crawls at the bottom of the screen as real-time “fact checking” opportunities. For example, during the Brett Kavanaugh confirmation process, CNN ran a crawl reading: “White House denies Trump was mocking Kavanaugh accuser after Trump mocks Kavanaugh accuser.”

  These lower-third banners that are used to ostensibly convey a snapshot of the conversation on the screen have instead been weaponized into another form of editorial opinion woven into the day’s “reporting.”

  As a result of the endlessly dishonest political “journalism” and the general leftward lurch of the media in recent years, the whole field of debate has shifted so far to the left that regular Americans—Republicans, Democrats, and Independents—no longer even recognize the debate.

  And the media darlings who are given hours and hours and hours of television time to promote their half-baked political ideas have become kookier and kookier. Few have been kookier than David Corn of Mother Jones magazine and Michael Isikoff of the Yahoo! News website. They wrote a book together spinning all the wildest, most unsubstantiated Russian hoax conspiracy theories and titled it, appropriately, Russian Roulette. This amuses me, considering who it is that always gets shot when playing Russian roulette.

  Even after publicly acknowledging that the nonsense in the so-called Steele Dossier is unsubstantiated and much of it likely false, these two goats, Corn and Isikoff, continued shoveling their slop all over television.

  The attention is less on ideas and debate to better the national discourse and more about who can get the best sound bite, go viral, and make a name for themselves in political journalism. The conveying of information to the audience has become almost irrelevant as long as they continue to tune in.

  It was precisely that yawning disconnect between the political debate in Washington and the actual concerns among regular Americans that convinced President Trump to run in the first place. “What do these people stand for?” Trump asked with an incredulous half smile on his face one afternoon in his penthouse apartment in the Trump International Hotel in Las Vegas.

  It was still early in the primary and the debates still featured nearly two dozen Republicans running for the nomination. As we talked, with the sparkling desert far below, we watched the television. It was muted and showed the debate hall where Trump—polling ahead of everyone else—would take center stage that night with all the other candidates flanking him. Cameras showed different candidates and their campaigns checking out the stage and the podiums. This amused Trump.

  “Why can’t these people just say what they stand for? Why do they have to go check everything out? I just show up, take center stage, and they line up on either side of me.”

  He waved the TV away in disgust.

  He was wearing a pressed white shirt, open collared, and suit pants. As always, Trump is very comfortable in his own skin. And he genuinely likes talking to people. “All these guys are doing debate prep,” he said to me. At this Trump wagged his shoulders back and forth as if mocking a wooden soldier, similar to his waddling presidential duck walk. “I am sitting here with you!” he said. “This is my debate prep right here! Go ahead, ask me some tough questions!” He laughed.

  Perhaps the finest display of President Trump’s brand of practical conservatism was his State of the Union address in February 2019. It was also the finest speech of his entire political existence. It is important to remember that it was a speech that almost did not happen. The year 2018 ended with the government shut down. President Trump was, of course, being blamed by Democrats, who had just taken control of the House in the 2018 midterms.

  Additionally, Democrats were coming into power in the House with the exact same old leadership they had had twelve years earlier, when they gained control and President George W. Bush was in the White House. And, as they did
the last time they were in power, Democrats were almost certain to blow their opportunity by overreaching.

  The new Congress had not even begun and Democrats got right down to the business of overreaching. Of course, the media blamed President Trump entirely for the shutdown. He had asked for money to build a wall on the southern border, something that many Democrats in both the House and the Senate had favored earlier.

  In fact, the wall—or fencing or steel slats or whatever physical barrier you want to call it—that was being built on the border at that very moment had been generously supported by both Democrats and Republicans. But now it was Trump asking for money to build more barriers. Democrats pounced. They saw an opportunity to play politics. They refused to give President Trump any more money for additional walls on the border. They called him a xenophobic racist.

  While the media was blaming President Trump for refusing to open the federal government unless he got his wall funding, the reverse was also true. Democrats were suddenly refusing to fund the government if it meant doing anything more about securing the southern border. President Trump rightly saw this as a political opportunity. And while, in the end, President Trump did not get the funding he wanted before agreeing to reopen the government, he did manage to win a larger fight. The master marketer managed to redefine the entire debate so that it was all about border security and the need to build a physical barrier at the southern border.

  A casualty of the whole shutdown was that after inviting President Trump to the House chamber to deliver the State of the Union address, Speaker Nancy Pelosi then withdrew her invitation and canceled the entire event. Ever dishonest and hopelessly terrible at messaging, Pelosi lied and claimed she had to cancel the event for security purposes since the federal government was partially shut down. Only deluded anti-Trumpers, devoted Democrats, and the media failed to see through her idiotic stunt.

  Having turned the whole debate about the shutdown into a discussion about how to secure the southern border, and with the ever-important Super Bowl fast approaching, President Trump finally acquiesced to reopen the federal government. Pelosi then reversed herself and once again invited President Trump to come to the House chamber to deliver his second State of the Union address. It would be his best speech yet. It was the finest encapsulation of everything he has stood for and for which his presidency has fought.

  The emotional highlight of the speech was, as it has been since President Ronald Reagan began the practice, the heroic American men and women and children President Trump had posted in the gallery for the speech. If it took an acting star from Hollywood to invent the tradition of heroes in the gallery, it was a modern reality television star who perfected it.

  The first people President Trump introduced were three heroes from three-quarters of a century ago. Highlighting “the majesty of America’s mission and the power for American pride,” he introduced Private First Class Joseph Reilly, Staff Sergeant Irving Locker, and Sergeant Herman Zeitchik, who had been among the tens of thousands of American troops who stormed the beaches of Normandy and leapt from Allied airplanes on June 6, 1944, to liberate Europe from the evil grip of Nazi socialism.

  It was the simplest celebration of one of America’s finest hours. Plenty of people in the chamber that night did not care much for the president, but no one could help but applaud the sacrifice and success of these grizzled old warriors from the Greatest Generation. President Trump would come back to those men and their sacrifices before the night was over.

  It was a broadly presidential moment and more than just stylistically. At a time when partisan rancor has never been so deep and harsh in Washington, President Trump sought to find common ground even on political issues that have increasingly divided Americans.

  “The agenda I will lay out this evening is not a Republican agenda or a Democrat agenda,” he said. “It is the agenda of the American people.” Though many of the issues he chose to talk about that night were issues that have led to complete dysfunction and gridlock in Washington, President Trump managed to present them in a way that huge majorities of American citizens would entirely agree with.

  There was low-hanging fruit. His declaration of war on childhood cancer included an introduction of ten-year-old Grace Eline, who as a little girl had helped raise forty thousand dollars to fight cancer—only to later be diagnosed with the wretched disease herself.

  Also, there was true, genuine bipartisanship, such as his successful efforts to reach across the aisle and find common ground on prison reform. It is certainly not a high priority of political conservatives, but it was a true effort at negotiating with natural political opponents. He talked about his efforts to bring down the cost of drug prices, end human trafficking on the border, and lower unemployment, including among blacks, Hispanics, and women.

  On the hottest of hot-button issues in politics today—abortion—President Trump never flinched. He took possession of the issue in a manner rarely seen in politics. “Lawmakers in New York cheered with delight upon passage of legislation that would allow a baby to be ripped from the mother’s womb moments before birth,” he said. “These are living, feeling, beautiful babies who will never get the chance to share their love and dreams with the world.”

  Then he talked about Virginia governor Ralph Northam and his stunning admission that a law the governor supports in that state would allow a baby to actually be delivered before determining with the mother whether to let the child die. But, the governor said, the baby would be kept “comfortable” while his or her fate was decided.

  Talk about death panels!

  With this, the debate is no longer about “pro-choice” versus “pro-life.” It has suddenly become a debate about simple, cold-blooded murder and is anathema to the millions of American voters who oppose it. President Trump called on Congress to “pass legislation to prohibit the late-term abortion of children who can feel pain in the mother’s womb.”

  In what some felt were the most eloquent words in his speech, President Trump said, “Let us work together to build a culture that cherishes innocent life.… And let us reaffirm a fundamental truth: all children—born and unborn—are made in the holy image of God.”

  He also spoke of the economic and humanitarian disaster that has drained the life out of Venezuela over the past decade, since the once prosperous and thriving country embraced socialism and turned into “a state of abject poverty and despair.” Like many Americans, President Trump said he was alarmed by new calls in our own country to adopt socialism. “America was founded on liberty and independence—not government coercion, domination, and control,” he said. “We are born free and we will stay free.”

  Tonight, he said, “we renew our resolve that America will never be a socialist country.”

  Amazingly, amid the roar of approval, there were actually Democrats in the audience who were sitting on their hands for this. Among them was Vermont senator Bernie Sanders, who sat with a sour-puss look on his face, head shrugged forward like someone had stolen his bicycle. What makes this so shocking—and sad—is that Bernie Sanders is no longer some fringe wacko gadfly nobody listens to, though that is what he has been for most of his political career.

  Today Bernie Sanders is one of the most visible and popular leaders of the Democrat Party and he came tantalizingly close to winning the party’s nomination for president. In fact, had the primary not been rigged against him and stolen by party leaders and the nomination handed to Hillary Clinton, socialist Bernie Sanders certainly would have been the party’s nominee for president in 2016.

  This is the political genius of President Trump. Even as he forges common ground with the vast majority of American voters, he also forces his opponents to take increasingly absurd positions. The idea that an avowed socialist holds such a celebrated position of power in a major political party in America today is nothing short of stunning.

  As President Trump closed his State of the Union speech, he returned to the old American warriors seated in the balcony o
f the House chamber. He recalled their sacrifices from so long ago. Then he introduced Joshua Kaufman, an elderly man seated alongside the three American soldiers, Joseph Reilly, Irving Locker, and Herman Zeitchik. The old men exchanged glances and nodded to the crowd.

  As a boy, President Trump told the chamber, Joshua Kaufman was a prisoner at the Dachau concentration camp in Poland. As he awaited his destiny in a jammed cattle car, alone and scared, he found a hole in the wall of the car. Looking through the hole, he could see American soldiers and American tanks rolling into the death camp.

  “To me,” Joshua Kaufman told the world, “those American soldiers were proof that God exists.”

  Just for a moment, in the magnificent House chamber, we could see America at her shining best and feel again what we can become.

  CHAPTER NINE

  Survivors of a tornado welcome President Trump to Lee County, Alabama in March 2019. (Official White House Photo by Andrea Hanks)

  TRUMP 2020—DOUBLE DOWN

  This spring, I sat down with President Trump in the Oval Office and caught up with him about how things were going and how he felt looking toward the 2020 election. It had been nearly four years since we first spoke, when he called me after he read my positive column about his announcement speech.

  “That was no notes,” he said of his announcement speech, when I reminded him of that first telephone conversation. “I did that sort of spur of the moment.”

  He smiled and laughed lightly, marveling at his own audacity in announcing a presidential campaign off the cuff. Trump’s charm in person is irresistible. That is why all the crazy accusations about him being hateful or racist or evil simply never stick among regular people who are not suffering from Trump Derangement Syndrome.

  Before I arrived at the White House, President Trump had hosted Jens Stoltenberg, NATO’s secretary-general, to talk about the European Union (EU). When White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders ushered me into the Oval Office, the president had retired to his private study to freshen up.