Amazingly, three American hostages have been returned. The comparison of the Trump presidency and the Obama presidency, as reflected in this one example, couldn’t be more stark. It was during the Obama presidency that student Otto Warmbier was taken hostage, tortured to the point where he would never recover, and finally released under President Trump’s watch. Unfortunately, it was too late for Mr. Warmbier. We watched in horror as he returned home and died shortly thereafter.
President Trump also officially recognized Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, fulfilling a promise other presidents failed to keep, and strengthening ties with our closest ally in the Middle East. And for all those so-called allies who opposed the move at the UN, the president put them on notice that his administration would remember that when they later come with their hands out for aid.
While maintaining his anti-regime-change policy, President Trump has twice launched limited, targeted strikes against Syria’s Assad regime for its illegal use of chemical weapons against its own citizens, letting Assad and the world know the United States will not stand by while international law is flouted in brutal fashion. As for Assad’s ally Russia, the Trump administration has stood up to Russian aggression, announcing several sanctions packages against Russia and expelling Russian diplomats.
An “America First” Plan for Syria and the Middle East
The liberal left claims the recent air strike on Syria’s chemical production facilities was another “one and done” by a president who has no plan there.
The conflict in Syria is based upon centuries-old religious differences, going back even before the Crusades. As long as different religious views vie to steer a nation’s politics, the battle within will never end. Trump knows this and has no intention of keeping the U.S. in Syria.
However, Assad’s second use of chemical weapons on his own people within a 12-month period was in violation of the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC), which Syria acceded to in 2013, during the Obama administration, under the not-so-watchful eye of Russia. Russia and Iran had long been attempting to meddle and spread their influence in Syria and throughout the region. There was widespread agreement that the threat of Iran in Syria was a clear and present danger to all concerned. When it became clear chemical weapons were again being manufactured and storage facilities built in Syria, President Trump made the decision to attack those facilities with the help of British and French forces.
Since Iran’s sworn mission is to destroy Israel, they intentionally kept Israel out of the strike.
A clear message had been sent to Russia, Iran and North Korea: “If you violate international law, there will be consequences.”
The aftermath: Not one civilian was killed. Syria’s chemical weapons manufacturing has been set back years, and North Korea announced it was shutting down its nuclear testing.
President Trump has designated his trusted senior adviser Jared Kushner to work on bringing peace between the Israelis and Palestinians. Jared, along with Assistant to the President Jason Greenblatt, Ambassador David Friedman and Jared’s “right hand,” Special Assistant to the President Avraham Berkowitz, began working on this difficult task. Berkowitz is a Harvard Law graduate who shares Jared’s calm demeanor. He is particularly conversant with the situation in Israel, having spent two years in Israel before college studying at Yeshiva Kol Torah in Jerusalem.
The team Jared headed visited the region and listened to important stake holders. They worked methodically on a plan that is feasible, given the current realities on the ground.
In March 2018, Kushner hosted over 20 countries at a White House conference, including Israel, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar. It was the first time in many years that both Israel and its Arab neighbors were in such a high-level meeting together. The Palestinian Authority chose not to attend. Nevertheless, Kushner’s ability to assemble all those countries in the same room is, in itself, an important diplomatic achievement.
The message the conference sent was that progress waits for no one. If the PLO wants to be part of the solution, great. If they are unwilling to help their fellow Palestinians, the Trump Administration will move forward without them. The Palestinians must get on the bus or be isolated.
Syria, North Korea and Israel are just a few of President Trump’s foreign policy accomplishments, using his promised strategy of peace through strength. And while he secured the much needed $700 billion in funding to rebuild the military, he has not recklessly plunged America into new conflicts, as his predecessor did. He’s also employed some “tough love” on our NATO allies to start paying more of their fair share of their own defense, as required under the treaty.
Using American power judiciously as leverage, he is on his way to brokering peace on the Korean peninsula after almost 70 years of conflict, an honorable end to the war in Afghanistan, and a contained Iran. That’s what you can achieve in world affairs when you put America First.
Restoring America at Home
A booming economy and a more stable, peaceful world are wonderful accomplishments, but they are means, not ends. We don’t become more productive merely to produce for its own sake, but to live more comfortable and enriching lives. And we don’t fight wars and negotiate peace merely for its own sake, but so every American can live in the free society that is their birthright. Nothing we accomplish in the workplace or on the international stage means anything if it doesn’t result in our being able to rebuild the America we deserve here at home. No one understands this more implicitly than Donald Trump.
The very first building block of that America is the rule of law, which was under all-out assault from the Left when Donald Trump assumed office. That’s why President Trump is reshaping the judiciary and appointing conservative judges who will stand up for our constitutional rights, including Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch, fourteen Circuit Court judges, and seventeen District Court judges. This doesn’t mean simply ruling according to conservative preferences. Justice Gorsuch has already voted with the liberal justices on the Supreme Court on an immigration case, because the Constitution called for that vote.
While appointing justices like Gorsuch with the Second Amendment in mind, President Trump also recognizes the need for sensible regulation of the right to bear arms. He has issued an effective ban on bump stock sales and has signed into law critical pieces of legislation designed to better enforce existing gun laws, including the Fix NICS Act, which strengthens federal background checks.
As candidate Trump said many times on the campaign trail, you don’t have a country without borders. Neither do you have the rule of law without effective enforcement of immigration laws. Republican and Democratic presidents have ignored the problem of illegal immigration for decades. The last president encouraged it. But there’s a new sheriff in town.
Working with states, President Trump is deploying the National Guard to the southern border to help ICE and border patrol agents. And let me remind you, he is taking this step because the Swamp in Washington refuses to give him the tools he needs, including building the wall he promised the millions of voters who want to see it built.
Nevertheless, President Trump did secure $1.6 billion in funding for 110 miles of physical barriers on the southern border, and the Department of Homeland Security has contracted and is testing border wall prototypes. Meanwhile, during the first nine months of his administration, ICE made 110,568 arrests of illegal aliens, a 40 percent increase over the same period in 2016. The president is working with agencies to fight the vicious criminal gang MS-13, which he calls “animals”, leading to the arrest of more than 4,000 gang members last year.
One of the most serious problems facing American families is the high cost of health care, which was exacerbated by President Obama’s signature health care law. With the individual mandate eliminated by the tax reform bill, President Trump signed an executive order designed to offer greater choice, increase competition, and bring down health insurance costs by expanding associat
ion health plans (AHPs), short-term limited duration insurance plans (STLDI), and health reimbursement arrangements (HRAs). He also terminated Obamacare’s unlawful cost-sharing reduction (CSR) payments that gave unauthorized money to health insurance companies.
If the health care system was crippled and expensive for average American families, it was downright broken for our veterans. Fulfilling another campaign promise, President Trump signed legislation that offers new protections to VA whistle-blowers and has allowed the VA to fire 1,298 failing employees, as of this writing. He also ordered the development of a plan to provide transitioning veterans access to mental health care, achieving same-day mental health care at every single VA facility. In addition, the Trump administration launched a new twenty-four-hour White House VA hotline to help veterans.
The tragedy of heroin and other opioid overdoses is one more glaring problem politicians have paid lip service to and done nothing about. That’s the Swamp for you, always ready to grandstand, but never ready to deliver. President Trump declared the opioid crisis a nationwide public health emergency, released his Initiative to Stop Opioid Abuse and Reduce Drug Supply and Demand in March 2018, and is mobilizing his entire administration to address this problem and drug addiction in general. The omnibus funding bill signed by President Trump contains approximately $4 billion to combat the opioid crisis.
The President’s Bipartisan Push for Prison Reform
In 1993, I was elected District Attorney in a county of approximately one million people. I was reelected and then reelected again. I ran an office of prosecutors where our daily fare was to deal on the battleground where the fight between good and evil unfolded every day.
Our job was to settle scores for victims, the ones who never chose to be a part of the system in the first place. They didn’t do anything; they didn’t ask for it. Yet, out of the blue, like a thunderbolt, criminals made the decision to turn their lives into a living nightmare. As prosecutors, we could not take away their pain or turn back the clock to undo the damage, but we could seek justice on their behalf.
When I looked at the criminal justice system then, I didn’t see many shades of gray. My philosophy was that it was the criminal who made the choice to commit a crime, and no amount of namby-pamby whining would excuse the wrongdoer. It didn’t matter what the excuses were—broken home, down on their luck, too drunk or high to know, or a rough childhood. There was so much focus on the defendant and their rights that I felt the system should be called “the victims’ justice system,” to support the victims, rather than the criminals.
As a county judge, my thought process was different. The purpose of sentencing was fourfold:
• deterrence
• retribution
• rehabilitation
• incarceration
Today, many are convinced prison reform is necessary for the criminal justice system to work. They believe balancing overcrowding, costs and recidivism should influence sentencing. As part of that, they also see a need to assess the risk of re-entry into society.
To me, the first duty of the criminal justice system is to obtain justice for the victim. Once that has been accomplished, and the offender has been held accountable, then it’s time to talk about prison reform.
A 2013 Rand Corporation study concluded that inmates participating in educational programs exhibit a 43% lower recidivism rate than those who don’t, and a 13% higher chance of employment. All these programs represent productive early steps in decreasing recidivism rates and thus helping address overcrowding in prisons and the high cost of incarceration, but they are only pilot programs that affect a small percentage of the prison population.
Enter Donald J. Trump.
The President campaigned on a platform of helping the forgotten men and women of this country, and many believe none are more forgotten than ex-convicts. Once a convict has served his sentence, the punishment should end.
Prison overcrowding with nonviolent offenders allows violent criminals to be released earlier than they should be. That’s a problem. And we must do whatever we can to see that a life of crime is not the only thing ex-convicts know, making it inevitable they’ll be back to re-offend, at the expense of new victims. The president believes that and so do I.
Jared Kushner agrees and like me has a special connection to this issue. His first priorities after the election were helping the President transition from successful businessman to successful President, the day-to-day operations of the White House, and helping promote the President’s key priorities. But as the administration became established and key objectives were accomplished, Jared was able to devote some of his attention to prison reform.
In September 2017, Jared held the first round of listening sessions on prison reform at the White House. He invited a bipartisan group to ensure diversity of ideas and opinions. The meetings were attended by senior officials at the state and federal levels, including cabinet secretaries, Governors and U.S. Senators.
Around this time, Jared decided to back the bipartisan First Step Act, a bill sponsored by Congressmen Doug Collins and Hakeem Jeffries, to reduce crime by better preparing inmates for life outside of jail.
By November 2017, momentum for Jared’s initiative began to build. The President held a roundtable with Governors, the Attorney General, conservative activists and faith leaders from around the country, following up with the bold statement, “We will be very tough on crime, but we will provide a ladder of opportunity for the future. We can help break this vicious cycle,” the vicious cycle being high recidivism rates. A prison system that leaves former prisoners unprepared to join society helps neither former inmates who want to make a new start nor the rest of society, who suffer the repeat offenses and pay for the repeat incarcerations.
After the president’s roundtable, Republican Governor Matt Bevin of Kentucky praised President Trump’s efforts to USA TODAY, saying, “It takes someone to stop blowing smoke on it, which is what liberals have done for years. This has the ability to be something transformative, something like Nixon going to China and turning the world on its head.”
Jared continued to build a strong coalition of bipartisan support and in January 2018, during his State of the Union address, President Trump gave the initiative strong support, saying, “As America regains its strength, this opportunity must be extended to all citizens. That is why this year we will embark on reforming our prisons to help former inmates who have served their time get a second chance.” As Kellyanne Conway said, the President’s policies are positioned to give “equal opportunity for all.”
On March 7, 2018, the President signed an Executive Order creating a council to make recommendations on ways to reform prisons. The administration also publicly backed the First Step Act, which made it to the floor of the House for a vote on May 22, 2018. While the bill had bipartisan support, some Democrats opposed it. Jerry Nadler, a congressman from New York made a plea on the House floor to Democrats (and Republicans) to vote against the bill. Despite that resistance, the bill passed the House overwhelmingly by a vote of 360-59.
Senate Democrats are already signaling they will try to obstruct the bill. They don’t want President Trump succeeding at anything, no matter who much it might benefit the Americans they represent. They certainly don’t’ want him succeeding where they failed to help a population disproportionately composed of people of color.
There are some who oppose the bill because it doesn’t go far enough. Senator Lindsey Graham wants reduced mandatory minimum sentences for nonviolent offenders included. The ACLU and the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund are concerned that a narrow, first step approach would delay sentencing, understaffing, confinement and other concerns. Senator Chuck Grassley (R. Iowa), Chair of the Judiciary Committee and Senator leader on criminal justice reform recognizes the need for prison reform but is concerned that the First Step Act will not pass without sentencing reform, which does not yet have enough bipartisan support the Senate.
Some of th
e Republican hesitance in the Senate may be due to Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ strong criminal justice position, which emphasizes the punitive approach. I agree with that for violent criminals, but Sessions doesn’t seem to consider the total cost to society of recidivism, including monetary costs to taxpayers, the social cost of the repeat offenses, and the opportunity costs of all those services better-prepared former inmates may have contributed to society through gainful employment.
Whatever their reasons, it’s time for Republicans to stop dragging their heels on this and not let the perfect be the enemy of the good. I’m not saying sentencing reform isn’t needed, but this bill will start chopping away at the overall problem immediately. Pass the First Step Act and then continue the debates on sentencing reform.
Are you listening, Mitch McConnell? You have a chance to do something that will help your country and your party in this November’s midterm elections. Yes, it will also reflect positively on the president, but you’ll just have to put your RINO instincts aside for a change. Order this bill to the floor of the Senate for a vote.
Even Kim Kardashian has done more than RINO Mitch to move this bill forward. She visited the White House and met with the President and Jared Kushner to discuss ways she could get involved in the prison reform effort. Kardashian instantly brought a national spotlight to this important issue and helped put pressure on the Senate to bring the bill to the Senate floor.
The implementation of risk assessments could help overcome resistance to this bill. Risk assessments collect information on behavior and attitudes associated with lower rates of recidivism. This is generally known as the Risk-Needs-Responsivity (RNR) model. The concept is often criticized for being correlated with race and therefore discriminatory. If the assessments are discriminatory, fix them. But they should be used extensively throughout the criminal justice system, from pre-trial detention through release considerations. Not only will the success rates be higher, but those with legitimate concerns about this approach will know we aren’t just releasing anyone and everyone to cut costs and address overcrowding in prisons.
Liars, Leakers, and Liberals_The Case Against the Anti-Trump Conspiracy Page 19
