Are you better off now than you were one year ago?
From the Potomac to Puget Sound, President Donald J. Trump and other Republicans should ask voters this exact question. Their answers should buoy GOP prospects for November’s mid-term elections.
Saturday marks one year since President Trump’s inauguration. Since January 20, 2017, Trump and the GOP Congress have mopped up much of the previous management’s mess. Obama’s hectoring, anti-business tone has been hushed. His class warfare, “global-warming” fetish, and lead-from-behindism are neutralized. Some 1,500 absurd and intrusive regulations, many of them Obama’s brainchildren, have been junked. And Obama’s taxaholism has been replaced with the deepest tax cuts since 1981.
These Trump/GOP reforms have over-delivered on all expectations. As President Trump said Thursday in Pennsylvania: “The good news keeps pouring in.”
• Since President Trump replaced Obama, GDP growth has climbed from 2.1 percent to 3.2, a 52.4 percent acceleration in output.
• The Dow Jones Industrial Average has soared from 19,827 to 26,017 on Thursday, up 31.2 percent. This is splendid news for the 54 percent of Americans who own stocks, including retirement-account owners.
• The number of Americans employed has increased 1.8 million, up 1.2 percent.
• Unemployment has fallen from 4.7 percent to 4.1, down 12.8 percent — the lowest rate since 2001.
• The home-ownership rate has risen from 63.7 percent to 63.9, a 0.3 percent improvement.
• The Consumer Confidence Index has advanced from 113.7 to 122.1, up 7.4 percent
Unlike triumphant Republicans, Democrats achieved nothing last year. They are visionless and idea-free, other than to “Resist!” Trump.
Meanwhile, the Left’s serial anti-Trump narratives have imploded, one after another:
• Trump is a Kremlin puppet! After digging for 18 months, the FBI and, later, special counsel Robert Mueller have unearthed zero evidence that Trump colluded with Moscow to win the White House. Meanwhile, Trump has yanked Vladimir Putin’s chain far more than Putin has pulled Trump’s strings. Sending offensive weapons to Ukraine, which might aim them at Russian troops, is hardly the behavior of Moscow’s marionette.
• Trump’s tax cut won’t help the middle class! Each and every congressional Democrat battled the tax-cut that has unleashed rampant economic growth.
Meanwhile, since the Trump/GOP tax cut kicked in, Americans for Tax Reform calculates that at least 190 companies have reported paying their workers bonuses of up to $3,000, boosting their pension deposits, and hiking base hourly wages up to and beyond $15. Some 2.2 million employees are savoring these $1 billion-plus in benefits.
• Trump is a racist! His alleged “s***hole countries” remark about El Salvador, Haiti, and certain African states — reported by Senator Dick Durbin (D-Illinois) — now is disputed by Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen and GOP senators Tom Cotton of Arkansas and David Perdue of Georgia. They all say that they did not hear Trump make that comment at a White House immigration meeting last week.
Moreover, the Donald J. Trump Foundation gave the University of Utah’s Moran Eye Center $10,000 to support Senator Rand Paul M.D.’s free cataract surgeries for poor Guatemalans in 2014. Private-citizen Trump donated another $10,000 for the Kentucky Republican ophthalmologist’s similar trip to treat some 200 vision-impaired Haitians in 2015.
Democrat Andrew Stein, former New York City Council president, gathered medical supplies after a 1980 storm slammed Haiti. But he needed a plane to deliver the aid. “I called Donald Trump. One-two-three, he gave us a plane to take all the supplies over.”
• Trump is mentally ill! Tuesday’s marathon press conference by non-partisan White House physician Ronny Jackson, M.D. defanged "Fire and Fury" author Michael Wolff’s much-echoed claim that Trump is one Twitter storm away from being wheeled off in a straightjacket. On Trump’s insistence, Dr. Jackson administered the Montreal Cognitive Assessment. Trump scored a perfect 30 out of 30.
“The President is mentally very, very sharp; very intact,” said Jackson, a U.S. Navy Rear Admiral.
One year into the Trump/GOP Era, everyday Americans are better off than they were when Obama left town. Washington Democrats? Not so much.
Deroy Murdock is a Manhattan-based Fox News contributor and a contributing editor with National Review Online. He has been a media fellow with the Hoover Institution on War, Revolution and Peace at Stanford University. Read more opinions from Deroy Murdock — Click Here Now.
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