We can return to the explosive job creation, rising wages and general prosperity we had before the pandemic. We can have economic freedom and opportunity, and resist cancel culture and censorship. We can put annus horribilis, 2020, behind us and make America great again, again. We can do all this — if we make the right choice on Nov. 3.
The New York Post endorses President Donald J. Trump for re-election.
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Elections are always about the economy, but never more so than this year.
So a reminder: Until the necessary shutdown to fight the coronavirus, the unemployment rate stood at 3.5 percent, the lowest in a half-century. African American unemployment was 6.8 percent, the lowest figure since 1972.
Adults out of the workforce for years found new prospects; for 17 months of Trump’s term, there were 1 million more job openings than people unemployed.
That drove up salaries. For the first time in a decade, wage growth exceeded 3 percent year-over-year. It also narrowed the wealth gap. Between 2016 and 2019, real median incomes rose the most, 9 percent, for those without a high school diploma. Real median incomes declined 2.3 percent for those with a college degree, mostly because older workers retired, according to the Federal Reserve’s Survey of Consumer Finances.
How did President Trump do it? First, by trusting the free market. He championed lowering the corporate tax rate to a figure more in line with the rest of the industrialized world. He cut cumbersome regulations, particularly ones rammed through as President Barack Obama was headed out the door. He streamlined the permitting process that would delay infrastructure projects by years, sometimes decades.
A Joe Biden administration would be beholden to a socialist left that sees an opportunity to remake the nation in its vision, one more dependent on government debt. Consider Biden’s dance on fracking — against it for his party, in favor of it in general because he knows what a positive force it’s been for Pennsylvania. Which position would he have in office?
Trump also rejected the globalist axiom that trade deals and unfettered immigration were better for Americans. The US has lost 3.7 million jobs to China since 2001, according to the Economic Policy Institute. And this undermining of our workers with cheap foreign labor did nothing to encourage openness and democracy in Beijing. China’s authoritarianism has only grown worse with concentration camps for Uighurs, crackdowns in Hong Kong and the shuttering of independent churches. The nation remains a manipulative planned economy that devalues its currency and exploits its trade deficit.
Further, the president recognized that unfettered illegal immigration was unfair to American workers, a common-sense belief held by such right-wingers as Bernie Sanders.
Biden would open the border floodgates again, and by all appearances would go back to “normalization” with China — a byword for them eating our lunch.
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Domestically, President Trump has rolled back the excesses of previous administrations.
His Education Department reversed Obama’s spectacular overreach that turned college bureaucrats into star-chamber judges in sexual assault cases, with no rights for the accused. He’s encouraged school choice — a work in progress that Biden would stifle because of his fealty to the teachers unions. Trump passed criminal justice reform, freeing those locked up far past the point of reasonable punishment. He rightly railed against the permissiveness of politicians in cities such as Portland to the lawlessness on their streets.
He’s defended pride in American values against those who slander our entire nation as a racist enterprise.
Most importantly, throughout his time in office and culminating with the nomination of Amy Coney Barrett, Trump’s judicial appointments promise to curb the leftward shift of the courts and the activism that Democrats have come to count on. The left has achieved through legal decisions what it couldn’t through legislation.
A new crop of judges and justices promises to decide the law on its constitutionality, not through activism.
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Joe Biden has tried to make this election about the coronavirus, but it’s unclear he’d do anything different except trigger new lockdowns — a strategy the WHO now discourages.
Trump is criticized for his early handling of the virus, but his institution of a travel ban and aid to the states undoubtedly saved lives. The same perfect hindsight the media expects of the president they rarely apply to others. Consider that Gov. Andrew Cuomo wrote a self-praising book about his response to COVID-19, even though New York’s death toll is higher than that of any other state. And because he’s a Democrat, the media let him get away with it!
Today, those who are infected with the coronavirus survive at much higher rates. We are likely to have a vaccine in the coming months, far earlier than many experts thought possible. The media don’t want to admit it, but that’s all thanks to the “warp speed” policy instituted by the White House.
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On foreign policy, President Trump has repeatedly embarrassed the conventional wisdom. After previous administrations promised but did not move our embassy to Jerusalem, he did so, and, despite the doomsayers, nothing happened.
The Obama administration tried to co-opt Iran with bundles of cash, which the theocratic regime used to sow chaos across the region, stirring up unrest in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Yemen and the West Bank. The Trump administration cut off the money, killed the architect of the terror campaign, Qasem Soleimani, and, despite the doomsayers, the world became safer. The result? Arab nations have increasingly accepted Israel, signing historic peace deals.
As promised, Trump has not entangled us in new foreign wars, and has been pulling us out of the old ones. He cajoled Mexico to handle immigration caravans from Central America, and successfully pushed NATO allies to pay more of their commitments. When journalists write that the United States has “lost its standing in the world,” they usually mean our standing at Davos cocktail parties. For the rest of us, it’s clear that Trumpism is focused on pursuing what’s best for our country.
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Here’s the part about Twitter. This paper has, before the 2016 election and often through his term, bemoaned President Trump’s habit of speaking before he thinks. Trump himself admitted in an interview with Barstool Sports in July: “It used to be in the old days before this, you’d write a letter and you’d say, ‘This letter is really bad,’ you put it on your desk and you go back tomorrow and you say, ‘Oh, I’m glad I didn’t send it.’ But we don’t do that with Twitter.”
He’s vainglorious and thin-skinned. He cannot change, and nothing we say will curb those impulses — though we acknowledge that considering how frequently Democrats have pushed discredited theories about Russian collusion and insulted his every action, Trump can be forgiven for being angry. Twitter gives him an unfiltered platform to push back and present his side to the American people.
We can only counsel that a president who lowers the temperature rather than pouring gasoline on every fire will have a happier nation (and a higher approval rating).
The question is what matters more: words or actions? The media are enormously fixated on Trump’s tweets and extemporaneous remarks, never learning the lesson that most of the time, he is just riffing. In endorsing him, we’re choosing to focus on President Trump’s actions and accomplishments. He has kept his promises.
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As this campaign has made clear, Joe Biden is a figurehead candidate for the Democratic Party. He rarely takes questions, sticks to his stump speeches, puts a lid on the day at the late hour of 9 a.m. There’s no reason to think his presidency would be any different. The assurgent left of the party, AOC and the Squad, are salivating at the possibility of pushing through their agenda. Kamala Harris is measuring the drapes. Whatever moderate impulses Joe Biden may have, expect them to evaporate quickly in office — particularly if there’s a united blue Congress behind him.
President Trump will not be looking to remake the country. He will trust that America will, given support but not interference, bounce back. He will, in short, not get in the way. Re-electing him is the best choice for the United States.
Plus, it’ll really tick off Hollywood.