All the media outlets have come to bury Trump, but I come to praise him in my new column at RealClearPolitics.
By FRANK MIELE
President Trump’s first year and a half of his second term has been nothing if not controversial. After winning decisively in 2024, he has seen his popularity drop sharply.
In fact, Democrats are eagerly looking forward to gaining the majority in Congress in November, so they can impeach Trump for his uncouth presidency, and if they win the Senate expel him into the nether regions of history by making him the first president convicted of high crimes and misdemeanors.
But what are those high crimes?
Apparently, resisting the release of the Jeffrey Epstein files is near the top of the list. So is his insistence that elections in the United States can be rigged. Oh yes, and he calls people names. That’s pretty rude. And most damnable of all, he dared to add his own name to the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts.
Yet before we decide that Trump deserves political exile, it might be worth asking a more basic question: What has he actually accomplished?
I feel silly bringing it up because it’s ancient history, but does anyone remember the border chaos when Joseph Robinette Biden was president? Does anyone remember Biden’s Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas declaring that the border was closed, while millions of illegals from around the globe poured across the border from Mexico?
Well, that’s over. If anyone needs to know the difference between Republican efficiency and Democratic malfeasance, this is exhibit number one. Almost overnight, Trump’s Border Patrol closed the loopholes that had invited dangerous criminals into our country on the Biden watch. I don’t know about you, but that’s why I voted for Trump – and he delivered. Now, if only Democrats and the liberal courts would allow him to deport the millions of people in our country illegally. But don’t blame Trump for that.
What else?
Trump got rid of taxes on tips. He got rid of taxes on overtime. He didn’t get rid of taxes on Social Security, but he secured a $6,000 income deduction for seniors over 65. Those were all in the Big Beautiful Bill. Don’t believe it when Democrats tell you that it only benefited billionaires.
If all he cared about was billionaires, he wouldn’t have started TrumpRx with an executive order last year. That program allows consumers without insurance to access coupons from drug manufacturers designed to make those prescriptions available at prices comparable to the lowest available internationally. Did you get that? Who benefits? People without insurance, which means people who can’t afford insurance, which means people at the lower end of the economic scale. And who does it hurt? Big Pharma billionaires, who can no longer get away with charging Americans 10 times what they charge for the same drug overseas.
Reducing government waste is another hallmark of Trump’s second term. For decades Washington treated waste, fraud, and abuse as inevitable. Trump’s administration made combating fraud a priority across government, creating a national anti-fraud task force, expanding efforts to identify fraudulent benefit claims, and increasing coordination among agencies that previously operated in isolation. Whether every initiative succeeds remains to be seen, but at least someone is finally treating taxpayer dollars as if they belong to taxpayers.
And what about foreign policy?
For decades American presidents complained that Europe was relying on the United States for its defense while spending too little on its own militaries. Trump did more than complain. By openly challenging NATO members to meet their commitments, he forced a conversation that previous presidents avoided. The result has been increased defense spending throughout Europe and a recognition that collective security requires collective sacrifice.
Now let’s talk about a sensitive topic – Iran. Critics constantly complain about higher energy costs resulting from the war.
The argument is that Trump should not have launched the war because it would be costly. But what was the cost of avoiding war? Allowing the Islamic republic free rein in disrupting the Middle East through their terrorist proxies? Permitting Iran to continue enriching uranium and developing ballistic missiles? As everyone admits, the idea of an Iran with nuclear warheads is unthinkable. So the fact that Trump did what no other president has had the courage to do should not really be counted against him.
And if you want to talk about Trump’s efforts to make the world a safer place, you have to bring up both Venezuela and Cuba. His administration took action against the Maduro regime in Venezuela and arrested President Nicolás Maduro. The benefit to the rest of the world by removing this dictator was significant – in particular because it removed an oil source from China and added an oil competitor to Russia. But even more important was liberating Venezuelans from a dictatorship that had drained the country’s resources for more than a decade.
As for Cuba, that country has been a prisoner of communism for more than 65 years, and even without an invasion, Trump has been applying pressure to the regime with a blockade and threats of military action. It looks like only a matter of time before Cuban refugees in Florida may be able to return to their homeland to rebuild their country from scratch.
Think about that legacy. No recent American president has done more to challenge hostile regimes abroad while simultaneously confronting long-neglected problems at home. Whether history ultimately judges every decision favorably is impossible to know, but it is already clear that Trump altered the course of events in ways that previous presidents were unwilling or unable to do.
Whether one likes Trump personally is beside the point. The purpose of a presidency is not to avoid controversy. It is to solve problems. During the first 18 months of his second term, Trump tackled problems that Washington had spent years insisting were unsolvable. The border is the clearest example, but it is hardly the only one.
Before Americans decide what comes next, they ought to remember what has already been accomplished.
About Heartland Diary USA
Heartland Diary is solely operated by Frank Miele, the retired editor of the Daily Inter Lake in Kalispell, Montana. If you enjoy reading these daily essays, I hope you will SUBSCRIBE to www.HeartlandDiaryUSA.com by leaving your email address on the home page. Also please consider purchasing one of my books. They are available through the following Amazon links. My new book is “What Matters Most: God, Country, Family and Friends” and is a collection of personal essays that transcend politics. My earlier books include “How We Got Here: The Left’s Assault on the Constitution,” “The Media Matrix: What if everything you know is fake?” and the “Why We Needed Trump” trilogy. Part 1 is subtitled “Bush’s Global Failure: Half Right.” Part 2 is “Obama’s Fundamental Transformation: Far Left.” Part 3 is “Trump’s American Vision: Just Right.” As an Amazon Associate, I may earn referral fees for qualifying purchases through links on my website.
