Many people voted for Biden in 2020 not because they especially wanted him as president, but because they had been so programmed by the media and the Democrat Party to hate President Trump that they felt they could not vote for him. Do I really believe he got as many votes as they say he did? No. Not on your life. But that is another story.  Many of them have since regretted that decision.  President Trump is unable not to respond to criticism, especially when it is unfair and untruthful, and his responses are often harsh and nasty sounding.  That they do not reflect the dignity that Washington insiders  and others view should be a part of the presidency is obvious, yet they won him the support of millions of hard-working, everyday Americans who would have liked to be able to respond in exactly the same manner to some of the criticisms hurled their way by Democrats.  It resounded with them mightily.  And so did the promises which he made, and, in so much as the Democrat allowed him, kept.  And he took a country struggling out of a recession and turned it into a booming economy with jobs for everyone who wanted to work and a sense of pride again in being an American.  

But the relentless lies of the media and of the Democrats made many believe that with Biden the country would continue as it was, but without the “mean tweets.”  They hoped to continue in their prosperity but without the constant barrage of charges, criticisms, and ugliness on both sides.  Their lives, they believed, would now be peaceful and pleasant.  How wrong they were is detailed below in part.

Immigration:

President Trump promised to build a wall on the southern border and the wall was well under way when he left office.  He also negotiated other policies which greatly reduced the number of illegal aliens crossing the southern border.  In his last year in office, only a little over 400,500 were apprehended by Border Patrol.

            *Biden invited everyone to come.  Then when they did, he tried to tell them to stay 

home. It hasn’t worked.  Over two million have been caught by Border Patrol in the first seven months of 2022 and nearly as many in 2021.  Estimated escapees who were not apprehended number more than a million since he has been in office.  Those who drown crossing the Rio Grande are so numerous that the morgues in border towns have to pile the bodies on top of each other.  Border towns are overrun with illegals at the rate of about 8,000 per day!  Biden flies some of the lucky survivors to mostly various Republican states around the country in the dead of night, and now border Governors have begun shipping them to Democrat “Sanctuary cities and states” who suddenly find themselves not so eager to have those illegals after all! Martha’s Vineyard managed to feed 50 of them and house them for only two nights in a church basement before calling in a hundred National Guardsmen to escort them to a hangar at a military base.  One man testily remarked it was as if he had gathered up his garbage and then just gone and dumped it in someone else’s yard!  Sanctuary indeed!

The Economy:

Under President Trump, women, blacks and Hispanics saw historical lows in unemployment.  Jobs were going begging for workers, not because people were staying home, but because they already had jobs. Huge numbers of those who had given up looking for jobs under the Obama administration, went back into the workforce, causing the unemployment rate to fall to what statistically is considered “total employment.”  President Trump brokered new trade deals with Canada and Mexico and the EU and had nearly completed one with China, all of which protected U.S. workers and benefited Americans more than previous trade agreements had. 

The Tax Cut and Jobs Act also reduced taxes for millions of Americans, putting considerable money back into the wallets of over 90% of taxpayers. Also because of the tax cut and jobs act, companies found it profitable to bring manufacturing jobs back to the U.S., jobs that former President Obama said we would never see again. Americans became confident in the economy, pleased with the direction in which the country was going, and optimistic that they themselves would continue to become better and better off.

The rate of inflation was less than 1.4% at the end of President Trump’s term. Gas in this part of the country could be purchased for under $2.00 a gallon in some places and averaged $2.39 country-wide.  We were energy independent for the first time in decades as a country, and in fact, were exporting gas and oil overseas.

Biden immediately closed down the XL Pipeline from Canada and several others, as well as stopping fracking in many locations.  Permits for drilling on federal lands since then have been slow tracked and the regulations made so convoluted that if a company drills and does not strike oil or gas, they must apply for another permit to drill again in a new site, waiting months upon months for that permit to be approved and so on.  In the meantime, gas prices shot up to nearly $5.00 a gallon here before dropping to $3.43, in part because our Democrat governor dropped the gas tax until after the November election.  Now it is rising again, up to over $4.00 here in Paris. 

The 1.4% inflation rate under President Trump became 8.3% higher than 2021 in August, which was 5.3% higher than in August of Trump’s last year in office.  That means prices on average had risen 13.6% since Biden took office.  August’s 8.3% rate of inflation over a year ago was the highest since 1981 and though September saw 8.2% inflation due to a drop in gas prices, a rise in the CPI of 0.04% over August does not bode well!  Also, the temporary fall in gas prices is gone and gas pumps even in middle America once again read well over $4.00 and climbing.  And the rise in the Producer Price Index (what it costs producers to make the goods they sell to us) continues to rise, so inflation is not likely to decrease as manufacturers will eventually pass those costs on to the consumer.  In addition, as the cost of transporting the goods increases, that will also raise consumer prices.  Many small trucking companies have already gone out of business because they could not afford to pay for the fuel for their trucks.  In addition, California, where many goods come in from China, has regulations that do not allow for independent truckers to work for a trucking company and travel in their state.  Thus, companies that would hire independent truckers to augment their own trucks and drivers to pick up goods in the ports and drive them cross country to market cannot use them.  This has put many independent truckers out of business and exacerbated the supply chain crisis as fewer trucks are available to convey those goods.  A new nationwide regulation will go into effect next year, expanding this same ban on independent drivers, truckers, and so on.  They must be “hired” and paid benefits by the companies who now hire them as independents.  This will cost the companies on the average 30% more and will either keep them from hiring independents or force them to raise their prices to offset the added expenses.  In addition, the former independents will now be forced to unionize, costing them a goodly percentage of their pay in union dues.

We talked with the man who sold us a car last winter, (a car which we ordered a year ago but which wasn’t delivered until the end of February and is still missing some back-up warning system and heated seats because the chips are not yet available—although we are paying for them already) and he told of his frustrations with getting a vehicle delivered.  New cars that have been ordered are placed on lots from which they are retrieved and delivered as trucks become available.  The one he was waiting for was an hour’s drive away, but he had already been waiting for two weeks, and every time he called, they said they were sure it would be delivered soon.  No trucks.  No drivers. No deliveries.  We have also been waiting to buy a crockpot from Walmart to replace one we purchase which was damaged.  It has been a couple of months now and none have yet arrived.  They are “coming” we are told.  But even Walmart has no idea when.

A 30-year fixed rate mortgage had an interest rate of 2.65% under President Trump.  Under Biden that same mortgage has an interest rate of 8%.  The average rent across the country has risen by nearly $400 a month, making feeding a family, putting gas in the car, and keeping a roof over your heads extremely difficult.  The average American family has effectively lost $6,000 in buying power per year, $12,000 for a family of four,  since Biden became president! In addition, retirees are being forced back to work and those hoping to retire are having to change their plans as the stock market’s consistent plunges has wiped out their savings.  The Nasdaq was at 13,342 at the end of President Trump’s term in office and now sit precariously at 10,829 under Biden, having just plunged again last week. We know people who have lost $300,000 from their retirement fund in this year and a half.

The unemployment numbers look good under Biden.  But when they figure unemployment, they figure only those who file for unemployment, who indicate they are looking for work.  This does not include the millions who are still sitting at home living on the COVID checks  and extended unemployment and extra child credit from the Biden administration and not bothering to look for work at all, as well as those suffering from long COVID.  Businesses remain understaffed.  We ate at the Outback in Terre Haute a couple of weeks ago.  The grass hadn’t been mowed, the bathrooms were dirty, and they were out of coasters and waiting for a shipment that hadn’t come.  Businesses have closed down because they didn’t have enough employees to keep them open.  As for new jobs that have been filled, those have largely been jobs that workers had filled pre-pandemic and have simply returned to, not actual new jobs that have been created.

We contract for propane for the winter in the summer before.  In the summer of 2021, our bill was $1000 more than it was in the summer of 2020 under Trump.  This summer it was another $1000 higher again.  We are retired.  We can’t afford prices like these to continue to go up and up and neither can most Americans!

Racism:

A racist, by definition, is “a person who shows or feels discrimination or prejudice against people of other races, or who believes that a particular race is superior to another.”  President Trump has shown just the opposite.  His original so-called Muslim ban was not only deemed well within his duties as a president by the Supreme Court, but in fact, only included immigrants from seven majority Muslim countries which had been listed by President Obama’s administration as having failed governments.  It would be impossible to be sure that anyone entering from these countries did not have ties to terrorist organizations simply because no valid government records were available about them.  A British reporter, for example, discovered that within 24 hours in Syria, he could obtain a passport and a complete false background.  In addition, the ban only covered 7 of the 50 Muslim countries in the world, involving only about 12% of the world’s 1.6 billion Muslims. 

 Furthermore, if President Trump were trying to be racist here, he failed woefully.  Islam is a religion, not a race and many Muslims have skin as white as the President’s. If the charge is that he is prejudiced against Middle Eastern people (a race as defined by most anthropologists) he made two serious blunders.  A man who felt superior towards and was prejudiced against Middle Eastern peoples would not have made his first foreign visit to Saudi Arabia nor would he have befriended Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and moved the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem.  (Israelis are Middle Eastern also!)

So, he is not prejudiced against Middle Easterners unless they are trying to kill Americans.  Then who is he prejudiced against?  Not Asians.  Elaine Chou, wife of Senator Mitch McConnell, is Secretary of Transportation and a member of his Cabinet. . . both a woman and an Asian.  Another mistake if he is truly a racist.

But wait!  What about black Americans?  Let’s begin with the Republican primary debates.  There were 17 candidates, a woman, two Hispanics, an Indian (from India), and a black American and 12 white men.  At one debate, the candidates were called onto the stage one by one by the announcer.  Amid the roar and applause, Ben Carson, the black candidate, did not hear his name called and did not leave the wings.  The announcer continued with the next name and then the next.  Each of the other candidates brushed past him as he waited in the wings, but not Donald Trump.  Showing compassion and friendship for his opponent, he stopped by Carson when his own name was called, placed his hand on Carson’s shoulder, and waited with him while the rest of the candidates went onto the stage.  At last Ben Carson’s name was called again, followed by that of Donald Trump, and the two men took their places on stage.  No one who is prejudiced against another race would act with such compassion for someone he despised. And while I would not accuse any of the other candidates of being racist either, still not a single one of them waited with Carson. Not a one.  Only Donald Trump.  Ben Carson became the Secretary of Housing and Urban Development and a member of President Trump’s Cabinet.

Under President Trump, the black unemployment rate has dropped to 5.9%, the lowest it has ever been since records have been kept.  Hispanic unemployment (another race he is accused of hating) has dropped to 4.9 percent.  Under President Obama, the incomes of blacks fell more than $900 adjusted for inflation.  Gradually they are realizing that under this president their lives improved considerably. Even the rate of job growth for blacks was 40% higher per month than under President Obama. This under the president that the left calls a “racist.”

The President pushed for school choice so that poorer students can opt to go to schools where they can get a better education.  Those who benefit from this voucher system in cities like Washington D.C. and Milwaukee are predominantly black. Unfortunately, bowing to the unions who support them almost exclusively, the Democratic Party pushed back against school choice and many cities run by Democratic mayors, such as Chicago, did not allow the use of vouchers. President Trump also met regularly with a group of black ministers to discuss the needs of their communities and ways in which the government might help meet those needs.  Opportunity Zones were created in cities as a part of the Jobs and Tax Relief Act.  This provided incentives for new businesses to start up in impoverished areas, many of which were black communities, providing jobs and services for the community.

On Martin Luther King Jr. Day in 2018, fifteen-year-old C.J. Pearson posted the following on Twitter:

.@realDonaldTrump has done more for black folks in one year than Obama did in eight. #MLK would be proud. #MAGA #MLKDaypic.twitter.com/bpkP2greqd

— CJ Pearson (@thecjpearson) January 15, 2018

And he is not the only black American to feel that way. Pastor Darrell Scott of Cleveland said, “This is probably going to be . . . the most pro-black president I’ve seen in my lifetime.  This president actually wants to prove something to our community, our faith-based community and our ethnic community.  The last president didn’t feel like he had to.”

Biden, on the other hand, has promised much and delivered nothing of real help, resulting in much discontent among blacks.  The minimum wage was increased to $15 in many places, but while this was good for some workers, it simply put others out of jobs as companies, especially fast food chains, cut staff or hours in order to cover the increased payroll costs.  The infrastructure bill was intended to help with roads and bridges in black areas, but includes many useless “green” proposals such as 7.5 billion dollars to provide rural and low-income areas with electric school buses which they will not have the means to charge since those areas are not generally rife with charging stations!  Other of Biden’s executive orders designed to help black Americans, such as his aid to poor black farmers which specifically excluded poor white or Hispanic farmers, were deemed unconstitutional by the Supreme Court since they obviously discriminated against farmers who were not of the “preferred race.”  Most black Americans still vote Democrat, but the number of black Republicans is slowly increasing, especially among the young.  In addition, when they can, black Americans tend to move to Red states.  In the last decade, while the population of people of color in many blue states has diminished, Texas saw its black population grow by 23% while Georgia and Florida saw 15% and 13% growth respectively.  You go where life is better and those states were governed by Republicans through those years, providing more opportunity and freedom for all their citizens.

As for his personal feelings towards blacks, Biden commented about Obama before Obama’s presidential run, “I mean, you got the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy. I mean, that’s a storybook, man.”  And he often refers to an African-American senior advisor as “my boy.”

In his early career as a senator, his best friend and mentor was Senator Robert Byrd, a former high-ranking member of the KKK.  Biden also worked hard against busing because he said busing for desegregation would force his children to grow up in a “racial jungle.”  He said that poor kids were just as smart as white kids, suggesting that only black kids are poor.  He said you can’t walk into a Seven-Eleven or a Dunkin Donuts unless you have a slight Indian accent.  His racial comments go on and on and on.

Foreign Policy:

President Trump’s unpolished demeaner was no better liked abroad than it was among the elite of America, but world leaders found themselves doing his bidding none the less.  At his urging, NATO countries began paying more of their fair share for their own defense, an expense that the U.S. had been meeting for decades.  

He removed us from the Paris Climate Agreement which simply required billions of American dollars while benefitting Americans in no way whatsoever.  At the same time, the U.S. more than met its “goal” of reducing CO2 emissions, something that none of the other Paris Climate Agreement countries managed to do.

He cancelled the disastrous Iran nuclear agreement which the Iranian government had already broken several times, making the agreement void anyway.  

He scattered the ISIS Caliphate, sending the remaining ISIS terrorists fleeing into other Arab countries. He ordered the assassination of several high-ranking terrorists, including General Soleimani of Iran’s Qud Forces, who was planning attacks against more Americans in the area.  Iran fired a few missiles at a base housing U.S. troops in Iraq with no apparent casualties in retaliation.  End of story.

When President Obama told Syria’s Assad that to use gas on his own people was a red line that the U.S. would not let him cross, Assad used gas on his own people and Obama did nothing.  

But when Assad used chemical weapons on civilians during President Trump’s term, President Trump immediately ordered a massive Tomahawk missile strike on the airfield from which the chemical attack had been flown.  President Trump followed through on his threats as well as his promises!

No doubt, this same reputation of following through on his threats was remembered when he met with Kim Jong-Un of North Korea, a face-to-face meeting in which he was able to persuade the dictator to stop firing missiles over Guam and Japan. Under Biden, the missiles have started to fly over Japan once again.

Russia had seized Crimea from Ukraine under Obama’s presidency while Obama did nothing, and Putin desperately wanted Ukraine’s Donbas region at the least, but with President Trump in office, he didn’t dare move until Biden showed his ineptitude by bungling the Afghanistan withdrawal.

He moved the American Embassy in Israel to Israel’s capital city of Jerusalem, something which Congress had voted to do decades ago but which succeeding presidents of both parties had been afraid to implement.  He also brokered the Abraham Accords normalizing relations between Israel and the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Morocco, and Sudan.  

President Trump involved us in no new wars.

President Trump and his administration had a well-developed plan for withdrawing troops from Afghanistan, one which was based upon the continuing good behavior of the Taliban.  This plan was provided to Biden, but Biden ignored it. He did not remove American non-military personnel and Afghanis visa holders first as he should have. Nor did he give warning to any of our allies. Instead, he recklessly began withdrawing troops by abandoning Bagram Air Force Base in the middle of the night without even the Afghani military knowing that they were leaving. That base had a more efficient air field for evacuating people.  It also had a prison filled with terrorists.  With the Americans gone, the Afghani military was overrun by the Taliban and the prison emptied.  A few days later some of those prisoners killed 13 young American soldiers in two suicide bombings.  

Our allies were angered and frustrated as they were left struggling to evacuate their civilians as well as their troops, also through the same, commercial airfield in Kabul.  Afghanis stormed the waiting planes and there are vivid photos and videos of them clinging to the aircraft wings and then falling off as the planes took off.  Sadly, most of those Afghanis had no right to be on those planes.  Because of the hasty, inept withdrawal, hundreds of American civilians and thousands of Afghanis with visas who had worked with the U.S. military were left abandoned when the last plane flew off.  Rescue attempts were made by various private groups, and most Americans were eventually evacuated by them, not by the government.  But the Taliban, aided by the records and biometrics we had so helpfully left for them, went about hunting down, torturing and killing those to whom we had promised a home in America. Biden’s withdrawal brought shame upon the United States!

Biden has left other Americans behind as well.  While Trump brought American prisoners home from a number of hostile countries, Biden has been unable to do so.  The latest attempt to rescue a female basketball star from Russia where she is serving a long prison sentence for being caught with a small amount of marijuana on her has apparently failed.

Foreign leaders understood that President Trump meant what he said and that he would not stand for aggression against Americans. Biden is so befuddled and appears so confused both on U.S. television and in conferences which he has attended in Europe that no one takes him seriously.  The majority of Americans in a recent poll thought he was not fit to carry out the duties of the presidency.  That is frightening.  But what is more frightening is that they are correct!  His wife has to direct him or lead him off of stages; he was honoring a congresswoman who had been killed in an accident for her work on hunger and he kept looking around the room and asking where she was; when Obama visited the White House, after Biden finished speaking, he turned to the large group behind him with his hand held out to shake hands with people and he was absolutely ignored as he looked around for someone, anyone with a hand to shake.  This is no leader and everyone, here and abroad, knows it!

In addition, Biden’s confused attitude toward Putin, announcing on the one hand that he needs to be removed from power and on the other hand trying to use him to renegotiate the Iran nuclear deal, along with his constant shipment of our military hardware and billions of dollars to Ukraine to assist in their fight against Putin’s Russian forces, could eventually push Putin into declaring war on the U.S. and other NATO countries.  This would, in effect, be WWIII, with countries equipped with nuclear weapons and the means to deliver them to American cities and other NATO countries!

Education:

President Trump pushed for school choice, the ability for parents to use the tax dollars provided to educate their children to send them to any school of their choice, not just the school in whose public-school district they reside.  For those areas where school choice was not banned by Democrat governors and legislators, this enabled parents whose children attended failing schools where gangs and drugs were rife to send their children to better, safer schools where they could actually get an education.

Sadly, because both the National Education Association and the American Federation of Teachers give huge sums of money to the Democrat Party, they are therefore able to exert great influence on the candidates that they support, including Biden.  This is why The AFT President was able to keep most schools closed even when virologists knew that children did not get COVID at school or pass it to others there.  And that is why Democrats continue to fight school choice.  The NEA and AFT only represent public school teachers.  Teachers in charter schools or church-run schools are not unionized and thus don’t pay dues into the teachers’ organizations’ coffers.  So, to protect their dues-paying teachers, no matter how bad they might be, no matter how poor an education they may be providing for the children, the NEA and AFT fight to defeat school choice.  At the same time, they support biological males in girls bathrooms and dressing rooms and on girls’ sports teams, the teaching of sex education beginning as early as kindergarten and teaching about anal and oral sex and that it is possible to change from a boy to a girl or a girl to a boy,  sexually graphic books in school libraries, and drag queen reading hours.  Both the teacher organizations (of which I was a local officer for most of my 44 years of teaching) and the Democrat Party have abrogated the rights of parents in overseeing the education of their children and abandoned the good of the children in favor of their own desire for power.

Freedom of Speech:

Even while the media constantly picked at the first lady for her choice of clothing (she wore heels when leaving to visit a hurricane site as did Jill Biden.  Melania changed to tennis shoes on the plane as one hopes Jill did as well, but no one chided Jill for her heels!). And social media sites allowed people to post pictures of a beheaded president and comments about the president’s minor son locked in a cage with a pedophile, yet President Trump did nothing to try to stifle free speech.  He did not use the DOJ or FBI to force the social media sites to silence those voices nor did he send the FBI out to raid the homes of those making such horrific comments.

Under Biden, conservative activists are being arrested by the FBI on flimsy, possibly unconstitutional charges for simply singing and praying outside of abortion clinics a year or more after the fact and afterlocal authorities had found they had done nothing wrong. The DOJ has also set the FBI on parents who complain at school board meetings about what their children are being taught.

Do I wish President Trump to run again in 2024?  I don’t know. I think he can win, but it would be another four years of exhausting, constant, attempted indictments by Democrat D.A.s in cities in which he owns businesses. I think Governor DeSantis, a younger man, would also do a fantastic job and with less baggage.  Either one of them will be vilified from the moment he declares himself as a candidate because that is how Democrats fight best — with ad hominem arguments.  They aren’t so good with facts since the facts aren’t so good for them (see above).  Either man would restore this country, hack away at the rot in Washington, open up our oil and gas again, replenish our depleted emergency oil reserves, ensure freedom of speech which the Biden administration is intent upon silencing, and stop the FBI from continuing to harass people simply for disagreeing with the government.  Regardless of which man runs, he will have my vote, for although I have voted for Democrats in the past, there is no longer a single Democrat for whom I would vote for any office, not even dog catcher!  Especially not dog catcher!