HOW IS PRESIDENT TRUMP GOVERNING? PROS & CONS

After being President for two and a half years, there appears to be a large difference of opinion on President Trump’s job performance.  As someone schooled in government (Fels Government Center, Wharton School, U of Penn) and with over 40 years of working with the Federal government and some work with a State government and a large city government, I thought I’d use my perspective as a 1/2 conservative, 1/2 classic liberal on the Trump presidency so far.

To be perfectly fair, it’s probably impossible for a multi-billionaire, married to a gorgeous, successful, wonderful woman, and having raised 5 successful and great children, to be humble.  Therefore, when he goes overboard with bragging about his accomplishments, I understand (but do not condone) President Trump’s style but am still calling it a “con.”

Another “con” is President Trump’s  being thin-skinned and having to rebut or comment on every criticism directed a him.  He gives his enemies credibility by even bothering to comment on their usually absurd criticisms.  He strongly believes in hitting back which he thinks will stifle more attacks if he doesn’t hit back.  President Trump’s sometimes inarticulateness and lack of precision and specificity is another one of his cons.  A good example is his claim of millions of fraudulent votes in the 2016 presidential election.  He should have immediately followed his comment up with citations to about half-dozen studies showing that he was right and then cite specific examples that people can better relate to, such as comedian Al Franken stealing the Minnesota Senatorial election from Norm Coleman in 2008.

Trump’s critics accuse him of lying and he and his supporters do not provide enough specifics to counter their spurious claims.   I can usually demolish any of their claims in less than 5 minutes for each one so I know it’s easily possible.  I’ll cite just one example, President Trump’s inaugural swearing in crowd-size disagreement: the Obama photo of his inauguration crowd size and the Trump photo were obviously taken from different vantage points, Obama’s from a low height looking out over the podium, Trump’s from the high top of the Washington monument, looking from the back of the crowd.  In addition, the photos were taken at different times of day: the Obama photo at noon when he was sworn in, the Trump photo at about 11 am, about an hour prior to Trump’s swearing in when the crowd wasn’t all there yet.  I know this to be true because I watched the proceedings all inaugural morning.  However, I believe President Trump should have simply brushed it off by saying something, “no big deal, we had a lot of people and so did President Obama.”

All of the “cons” concern President Trump’s personal shortcomings, as well as things that he has said.   Now let’s look at the “pros,” those positive features of President Trump’s presidency. He has done more in his time as President than any other President in American history that I know of.   The Sunday morning political shows are pitiful in explaining this, only looking at legislative accomplishments.  His tax cuts and jobs act, has stimulated the economy to unbelievable highs and unemployment to new lows.

President Trump used Executive Actions, mostly Executive Orders, to get many things done, like temporary immigration bans from countries that have poor records of vetting citizens, of reversing duplicative regulations that kill jobs and hamper job creation, of enforcing immigration laws, etc., etc., etc.  In addition, President Trump has persuaded many large corporations to pledge billions for new plants and jobs in America.  Moreover, due to his Reagan-like economic plan and pledges from many business leaders, the stock market has increased in value by over $8 trillion since the day Donald J. Trump was elected president, November 8, 2016.  Moreover, both African-American and Hispanic-American employment is highest in history and female employment is the highest since the 1950’s.  President Trump has earned the reputation of sleeping only a few hours/night…of being an unbelievably hard-worker.  Were it not for fake news on CNN, MSNBC, ABC, CBS, NBC, New York Times and the Washington Post, I believe the President’s approval would be about 65%.  Instead, it’s 53% today.

Whether you agree or disagree with what President Trump is doing, he has already fulfilled many of his campaign promises and has pledged to fulfill them all, including building the southern wall, cutting everyone’s taxes, bringing back corporations to the U.S., making unemployment in the U.S. under 4%, etc.

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