However, the danger in this situation is that the entrenched establishment system has already defined the problem it wants to investigate—and it has predetermined that problem is centered on the Trump team.
By the system’s definition, any Russian efforts to penetrate and shape American politics must be centered on Trump—forget about the fact that the Russians tried and failed to hack Republican computer systems during the election.
This is the establishment presumption under which General Flynn and Jared Kushner have been asked to testify.
But no Trump team member should agree to testify without being granted immunity. Their careers and their very liberty may be at stake.
Fishing expeditions driven by the Justice Department, congressional staffs, and the news media take on a life of their own and can easily trap innocent people through procedural mistakes. There is a grave danger that Trump team members will testify as though they were participating in a benign or honest process. That can lead to disaster.
Every word someone says can be measured against all other testimony and all available evidence. Any discrepancy, no matter how innocent, can lead to a charge of perjury or obstruction of justice.
Ironically, there is vastly more evidence of Russian involvement with Hillary Clinton and the Democrats than with Trump and the Republicans.
But as a very senior former prosecutor said to me recently, “This has now become a blood sport. The goal is not justice or truth, the goal is destruction of conservatives.”
We are not watching an unbiased, truth-seeking process.
Obvious system-wide bias aside, there is another profound flaw with the current parameters of the discussion.
There is indeed a grave threat to American freedom from foreign manipulation and foreign corruption—but it is vastly bigger than Russia, and has vastly broader focus than this election.
We need a deep, thorough exploration of foreign efforts to shape American politics and policies.
For instance, it is vital to look at the tools Russia is developing for hybrid warfare and how they are being applied in the United States, in Europe, and elsewhere.
Hybrid warfare is a system of using intelligence, information, cyberwar, economic pressure, corruption, diplomatic pressure, and subsidized low-level violence to gain ground. It has been used in Ukraine, Estonia, and several other places to advance Russian interests. Russia has relied on this method to avoid dangerous conventional conflict. The Kremlin wants to maximize its impact while minimizing the risk of a major war.
This wide exploration should also include China, the foreign advocates of radical Islam, and countries that seek specific influence on American policy as it relates to them.
This is the drama that is unfolding. We have no idea how it will evolve.
THE MEDIA
The media opposition will be the most constant—and the most ridiculous.
Early in the administration, the media willfully mischaracterized so-called mass resignations of senior staff at the Department of State in an effort to promote a narrative of chaos in the Trump administration. It was actually four political appointees who had been handpicked by President Obama—and they had been fired. There was no symbolic walkout. This will continue.
Just watch: the same pundits, reporters, and commentators who were wrong about Trump winning the Republican nomination, wrong about him winning the general election, and wrong about him getting his cabinet picks confirmed, will continue to be wrong about his ongoing agenda.
They will be wrong because they still have no real connection to normal Americans. During the campaign, those in the elite media wrote off Trump’s candidacy because he was talking about issues that were in their minds inappropriate. They watched him talk at rallies about renegotiating our trade deals, restoring control and security to our immigration system, fighting Islamic supremacism, and giving people school choice. These topics are anathema to the elite. So, to the mainstream media, the thousands of people who were showing up to Trump rallies across the country couldn’t possibly affect the election. This is the level of contempt they had for normal Americans.
There’s no reason to think this will change. So far, not one major media outlet has stopped to consider that after having been completely wrong about the last two years of American politics, it might be time to reassess how connected it is with the American people.
Instead, following the election, reporters and commentators immediately blamed pollsters for the media’s botched analysis and lazy, pretentious reporting.
Pollsters, as a group, erred by adopting a fixed idea about America’s voting pattern. Many incorrectly assumed that the same number of African American voters would turn out in 2016 as they did when President Obama was elected in 2012. And they assumed that turnout for white voters would resemble Romney’s support the same year. For some reason, they decided those two data points were constant.
Even in the early evening on election day, analysts were tweaking the numbers to support their 2012 model that said Hillary Clinton would win by a healthy margin and Republicans would lose the Senate. They repeated this with conviction—until the moment Trump secured 270 electoral votes and the Senate Republicans earned a fifty-two-seat majority. Pollsters were fixated on the past and rejecting everything the present was showing them.
This is a symptom of a big problem with modern polling—which is essentially part of the media. Pollsters used to make predictions based on what people told them in landline phone surveys. Historically, they were fairly accurate. But now, given the huge number of communication platforms out there—mobile phones, text messaging, email, social media, video chat services—everyone communicates differently. Many polling outfits haven’t adapted to the new world of communication. So analysts now stare at computer models that run on old information and hope the country hasn’t changed.
Only the Pew Research Center and Gallup had the foresight—and the integrity—to stay out of the day-to-day election numbers, because they realized any poll they created would add to the confusion. Instead, Gallup and Pew have focused on what Americans think about particular issues over time.
Rutgers University public policy professor Cliff Zukin pointed this out in a story Time published on October 15, 2015.
[Gallup and Pew] have contributed to the political process, they’re not just in it for the short time,” said Zukin. “They do not want to mislead the public and they don’t want to take a chance of not being able to do it well—it takes a lot more resources to do it well now.10
I’m interested to see whom the news media will blame when they are wrong about President Trump’s tax reform plan, or his infrastructure agenda, or his plan to eventually repeal Obamacare.
In the meantime, the entertainment media continue to viciously attack the president and his supporters.
On March 24, liberal host Bill Maher opened his show by insulting voters who voted for Trump—in other words, half of America.
“I know you real Americans hate being called stupid,” said Maher. “But you gotta meet me halfway and stop being stupid.”
Much of this opposition is to be expected.
Trump, to his credit, is threatening the Left, the media, and the old guard simultaneously. He’s combating an established elite class, and a set of left-wing values that have been building in this country for decades. We have not seen anything like it in our lifetime. Studying Abraham Lincoln might provide a comparable sense of hostility.
Dr. Guelzo, the Gettysburg College professor and Civil War Era expert I mentioned in chapter 8, sent me a few newspaper clippings from just after Lincoln’s election. It is remarkable how similarly they track with the Left’s coverage of Trump after the election.
From the Memphis Daily Appeal on November 13, 1860:
Within 90 days from the time Lincoln is inaugurated, the Republican Party will be utterly ruined and destroyed. His path is environed with so many difficulties, that even if he had the ability of Jefferson and the energ
y of Jackson, he would fail, but he is a weak and inexperienced man, and his administration will be doomed from the commencement. If he takes that radical section of the Republican Party, the conservative wing of it will cut loose and repudiate him. If, on the other hand, he courts the conservatives and pursues a moderate conciliatory policy, the radicals will make open war upon his administration.
Remember: This is about Lincoln.
Here is another from the South Carolina Lancaster Ledger, also in November 1860:
There is intense excitement here. Large crowds have gathered in the streets. The pervading spirit among the masses is resistance to Lincoln’s administration, and everywhere that determination is manifest.
This next one is most interesting to me. It was written by the New York Herald’s Charleston correspondent.
Thursday night the streets were filled with excited crowds. Till nearly midnight, the streets presented the most animated appearance. The crowd illuminated their passage by rockets and other fireworks, and made the air resound with their deafening cries. No one talks of anything but the necessity for prompt action. It is believed that separate and immediate action on the part of this state will be followed by action on the part of several other southern states forthwith. It is hardly prudent for any man to express his opinion adverse to immediate secession. So heated are the public passions, so intolerant of restraint is the popular will.
Think about university campuses. Think about the number of conservative young students who are ridiculed. Think about what happened the day of Trump’s inauguration, when the violent young fascists took to the streets with clubs and bricks.
The scene in Charleston this correspondent is describing is so much like today’s Left, which vehemently rebukes dissenting opinion.
It is hardly prudent for any man to express his opinion adverse to immediate secession. So heated are the public passions, so intolerant of restraint is the popular will.
Today’s Left resembles Charlestonians about to secede in defense of slavery. I hope they will think about that comparison. Until Trump successfully realizes his bold new vision for America, the confrontation will continue. The following chapters are dedicated to exploring how President Trump can succeed.
PART THREE
THE FOUR-BOX MODEL FOR THE TRUMP AGENDA
President Trump will succeed at making America great again for all Americans if he can keep his policy focus and organize his efforts. The following chapters describe a model I’ve suggested to him that could help him strategize his policy goals. The model includes four boxes: safety, American competitiveness, health care, and making government work. President Trump needs to think about how every single policy he implements fits in each of those boxes.
When President Trump was selecting his cabinet, he was especially glad to get Generals Mattis and Kelly. He was in awe of Mattis as a real fighter who insisted on winning. He loved Mattis’s phrase that the marines could be your best friends or your worst enemies—and you get to choose. President Trump felt he had really accomplished something when General Mattis said yes.
Similarly, the then-president-elect revered the sacrifice General Kelly had made in losing his son in Afghanistan in 2010. He felt that Kelly would bring a competence, a dignity, and a sense of honor that Trump really valued. It is from this sense of respect for those who risk their lives to defend America that Trump approaches rebuilding and strengthening our military.
CHAPTER TEN
THE SAFETY BOX
President Trump’s first, and most important job, is to be the commander in chief of our military. And the primary role of the federal government is to keep Americans safe from all threats foreign and domestic. The founders framed our nation this way, because there is no effective freedom without safety. There is no ability to pursue happiness without safety. The poor are especially vulnerable and likely to be exploited when there is no safety.
So it is only logical that safety is the first box in the four-box policy model President Trump should adopt.
After years of President Trump’s predecessor refusing to enforce immigration law; failing to properly support law enforcement in the face of open, visible lawlessness; allowing longtime alliances abroad to wither; and allowing investment in our military to degrade; Trump has his work cut out for him.
SAFETY AT HOME
Restoring the rule of law within our borders is critical to making Americans safe at home. Most Americans understand this, and that’s why President Trump’s pledge to be a law-and-order candidate resonated. Meanwhile, the elite were completely befuddled by Trump’s pledge.
The reason for the disparity in perception is simple. After reaching a peak in 1991, crime rates had fallen in the United States through 2014. This trend of falling crime rates was considered such a well-established fact by the elites that nothing could shake them off it. They were blind to two realities that were obvious to normal Americans who were watching the news and in tune with their communities.
First, violent crime was beginning to tick back up again. FBI statistics released in September 2016 show that violent crime increased 3.9 percent in 2015 compared with the previous year.1 Preliminary FBI data from the first half of 2016 show that violent crime again increased in all categories compared with the first half of 2015.2 (Notably, it increased the least in the Northeast, which may have added to the elites’ lack of awareness.)
The elites were so stuck in the conventional wisdom that they couldn’t process this new reality. Remember in chapter 2 when we talked about the four-sided table of Trump, and that one of those sides was anti–political correctness? We reviewed how political correctness can also mean adhering to the conventional wisdom. Trump’s ability to recognize that violent crime was on the rise before anyone else is a great example of that.
Second, Trump understood the power of television and knew how disturbing the violent protests related to police shootings across the country were to normal Americans. He watched in horror as five police officers were gunned down by a sniper in Dallas, and he was aghast at news reports of radical Islamic terror attacks in San Bernardino and Orlando. He also understood that the huge spikes in shootings in Chicago, St. Louis, and Baltimore were earning major media attention and making Americans nervous.
These two dynamics are why Americans’ concern for crime and violence has risen to a fifteen-year high, according to results of a Gallup poll published in April 2016.3 The pollster reported that 53 percent of adults asked say they worry “a great deal” about violence and crime in the United States, while 26 percent of adults say they worry “a fair amount”—making a total of 79 percent of concerned adults.
The elites were stuck on outdated conventional wisdom while Trump saw Americans being killed, families being devastated, and our country falling apart. President Trump quickly repudiated the “nothing to see here” elites and sided with the large group of Americans who rightly believed their country was becoming less safe and more insecure.
It’s no surprise that more people are anxious about becoming the victims of violence after you consider the recent rise of open, visible, violent rebellions against law enforcement in this country. The public has always questioned police officers who use lethal force in the line of duty—and this should not change. But the culture surrounding how police are held accountable has taken a violent turn toward mob rule.
In 2014, protests erupted in Ferguson, Missouri, after an officer shot and killed Michael Brown. These demonstrations lasted for weeks, eventually turning into full-scale riots. People set fire to cars and buildings, looted stores, and attacked police. The violence continued even after the state’s governor called in the Missouri National Guard.
Nearly a year later, after a grand jury decided not to indict the officer involved in the shooting, deciding that Brown had never surrendered to police and had tried to take the officer’s weapon, the rioting erupted again. More buildings were burned and more stores looted.
In April 2015, after days of p
eaceful demonstrations in Baltimore, Maryland, over the death of Freddie Gray while he was in police custody, some protestors turned to rioting. After Gray’s funeral, the BBC reported, “That afternoon and evening rioters tore through parts of Baltimore leaving a path of debris, burnt or smashed cars, and looted storefronts.”4 The riots lasted for days and left Baltimore looking like a war zone.
And similar riots erupted in New York, Chicago, St. Paul, Baton Rouge, and Milwaukee over the deaths of Alton Sterling and Philando Castile, both of whom were killed by police officers.
I am not arguing that the police acted appropriately in all these events. But rioting was absolutely the wrong response. Each of these shootings and subsequent riots were highly televised and shared across social media. The American people were seeing a wave of mayhem moving across the country. Trump saw it too. He tapped into the concerns of the American people and had the courage to pledge to put an end to the lawlessness.
Trump had lived in New York City when it seemed almost ungovernable with crime. In 1986, the New York Times reported, “The number of reported murders soared by 50 percent or more in 21 of New York City’s 75 police precincts [since 1985], reflecting the pervasive impact of drug-related crime on neighborhoods.” There was a serious sense of insecurity that was reducing tourism and frightening New Yorkers.
And he lived through a revolution in law enforcement that had almost miraculous results. He knows that we know what works.
In 1995, Mayor Rudy Giuliani and New York police commissioner William Bratton implemented a system called CompStat. As a result, the NYPD reports the number of murders in the city dropped by 85 percent from 1990 to 2014.5
Understanding Trump Page 16
