Every week on Monday, the WoW! writers, community and our invited guests weigh in at the Wow! Forum, short takes on a major issue of the day, the culture, or daily living. This week's question:What Grade Does President Trump get For His First 100 days?
Scott Kirwin:I give the President an “A” for one reason: Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch.
If he fails to deliver on any of his promises he would still merit an “A” as long as he keeps the Supreme Court conservative during his term.
Conservatives should appreciate that.
Don Surber: A-plus
1. Neil Gorsuch
2. Cabinet of Competents. The stars are Mattis, Tillerson and Mnuchin.
3. Executive orders rescinding some of the damage from Obama.
4. Getting Republicans to pass CRAs galore.
5. Taking out a Syrian base. MOABs. Message to the world DF w/USA
6. No TPP and negotiating trade
7. Hillary is not my presidentRob Miller: Hey it's the end first inning so let's analyze who won the game, shall we? And why not, when everyone else is?
But before we go there, lets keep two things in mind. President Trump (I still love the sound of that) has faced more insane opposition, disrespect and obstruction than any president in living memory. And that includes members of his own party who actually like the status quo, like Rat Ryan. You can't compare The Donald to other presidents who were given at least nominal respect. Even Dubyah never faced this kind of disgusting disrespect for our democracy, at least not nearly so openly. When the Left is deliberately stalling your cabinet appointees for no reason except 'resistance' just finally getting the most important of your appointees in place is a major accomplishment.
And second, that while he has a lot of concrete accomplishments, there are also a number of subtle ones that will bloom over the long haul. We're waging a civil war here. And this is going to be a Grant-style brutal slogging rather than a rapid Sherman-style March to the Sea.
So first, let's look at this president's accomplishments. First of all, he has totally revitalized the office. Rep. Jim Meadows, who heads the Freedom Caucus recently weighed in on that one. Even though he has been critical of The Donald from time to time, he's amazed at his work ethic and recently said so in an op-ed. Meadows wrote that President Trump is the kind of person you could have a conversation with at 2 AM yet at 6:30 he's in his office working. Is it any wonder the Freedom Caucus is starting to come around now that they understand what a revolutionary figure they're dealing with? We're not dealing with someone who saunters in at 10 AM and quits early to go play another round of golf.
And what is he spending his time doing? Destroying th e literally thousands of executive orders and ridiculous regulation handcuffing the country.
President Trump is a builder. He understand that in order to build something, the foundation comes first. To build a foundation to really jump start the amazing American economy, you have to release it from the chains it was shackled with over the last eight years. The Donald is doing exactly that. The results are already starting to show. And this is just his first 100 days, while battling headwinds.
Second, he has revitalized America's foreign policy. He is in the process of putting real muscle on NATO by insisting that they fulfill commitments for defense spending. The UK, for the first time in years is actually rebuilding its navy and starting to beef up the British Army. Germany and Mutti Merkel remain holdouts, mainly because they have U.S. bases there, but most of NATO is getting with the program. Even NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg endorsed Trump’s call for other nations to pay their fair share for defending themselves.
Having our Navy destroy a Syrian air base sent a clear message to Russia's Putin and Syria's Assad that there is a new sheriff in town and that they weren't dealing with Barack Hussein Obama anymore. And Trump's MOAB strike in AfPack is one of the first positive moves we've seen there in a long time. Not only did it take out 94 jihadis, but it destroyed a major tunnel network along with lots of supplies and weaponry.
President Trump also has had a pretty good record when it comes to revitalizing relationships with America's allies, especially Egypt, South Korea, Japan, Israel, the UK, and our allies in Eastern Europe. And a hugely successful meeting with Chinese general secretary Xi Jinping that established the chemistry between the two leaders. Before that meeting, China was making threatening noises about the US giving South Korea a THAAD anti-missile system. Afterwards not a peep and it's obvious the twomen agreed that North Korea is getting out of hand. Another aspect is that the president and Xi obviously have come to a similar understanding to the one the U.S. and Japan came to inthe 1980s' ; no more one way trade deficit. Watch and see. China will end up building plants here and employing Americans, just like Japan did.
Legislative accomplishments? Here's a brief list:
The Keystone Pipeline
Reining in the EPA. No more war on coal.
Signing eleven Congressional Review Act bills to dump almost all of Obama’s end of term regulatory orgy. Not to mention requiring two regulations to be dumped for every one adopted.
Obama’s rule that forced states to send federal Title X family-planning funds to Planned Parenthood. President Trump's new executive order allows states who object to abortion on demand and bartering baby parts to opt out of doing so.
The VA scandal is finally being addressed, and while that's going on, thanks to President Trump, vets now have increased access to private sector health care. No more taking a number and waiting to die.
And just wait until tax reform kicks in.
ObamaCare? A temporary setback. The Donald is still transitioning a bit and learning that running a major corporation has its differences from running a government.Among those lessons is that in government, if someone in a key position is screwing up or sabotaging your policy, you can't just fire them. But this president is a quick study who rarely makes the same mistake twice. The ObamaCare failure is one that helped him, as we will see.
And then there's the major reduction in illegal migrants... over 60% from this time last year, when Barack Hussein Obama presided over a handcuffed ICE and the Border Patrol. Give it time. Trump's travel ban and AG Jeff Sessions' threat to defund sanctuary cities who don't follow U.S. immigration laws were stopped by two hyper-partisan judges. One of them is a long time crony of Obama's who knew him in Hawaii and was at the same Harvard Law class with him. The other was an Obama bundler. Both based their opinions on totally spurious legal grounds and both were confirmed because Mitch McConnell refused to use the nuclear option and block them. These judgments will be overturned in time because the law, the federal McCarran-Walter Act of 1952 makes it quite clear that the president has the authority to regulate immigration and selectively ban immigrants from specific areas. And as for the sanctuary city nonsense, because an injunction on something that hasn't even happened yet is a legal absurdity.
What we have in President Trump is a revolutionary figure. After a quarter century of decline, America is actually starting to function again, to awaken from that long slide to socialist despondency. What grade to give him? Hard to say, because of the obstruction he's been subjected to. But I'll say this. While I don't agree with everything he's done, I've never been more proud of a president, not since Ronaldus Magnus rode off into the sunset. And part of that, I'll have to admit, is because he infuriates the right people. You can take that as a solid "A" if you like.
Michael McDaniel: I, like many Americans, have been pleasantly, if guardedly, surprised by the performance of President Trump. I agree with him on much, including the idiocy of worrying about an arbitrary, 100 day-long period. It is ironically fitting he is ignoring the self-congratulatory dinner of the progressive press in favor of spending his time with actual Americans on the final day of his first 100 days. He has been masterfully trolling the press, and this is yet another example of his brilliance in not preventing them from behaving like the fools, liars and intellectual pretenders they are.
Above all, it’s clear Mr. Trump intends to fulfill his campaign promises, which suggests they are more than political fluff. They may actually be--dare I say it?---convictions. They may actually represent his core beliefs. All that stands in his way is the press, a bit less than half the Congress, a bit less than half the country, and congressional Republicans.
Everything about Donald Trump is horrifying to the left, but they’ve been knocked on their expansive asses, their heads spinning, by the reality of a president used to working for a living. And not only working, but working at a furious pace. Mr. Trump is a man whose fortune was made by hard work, attention to detail, and a canny understanding of his fellow man and what is and is not possible. Just as the sight of George W. Bush--an actual fighter pilot--in a flight suit outraged and horrified Democrats and the press, the sight of Mr. Trump sitting behind the Resolute Desk in his battle dress, looking entirely comfortable and presidential, does the same.
As the press and their fellow leftists obsess over individual issues, imagining that like them, no one can possibly do anything other than handle one thing at a time, Trump juggles, effortlessly, as many running chainsaws as he pleases, and surrounds himself with people capable of doing the same.
His executive orders have been uniformly within the law and the boundaries of executive power, his cabinet choices, superb, indicative of a keen intelligence and dedication to the rule of law. His choice of Neil Gorsuch for the Supreme Court appears to be an equally inspired choice, though it is always possible, as often happens with Republican presidents, Gorsuch will go native and adopt progressive principles.
His children and wife quietly go about their business, and Mrs. Trump seems unlikely to impose her will on the nation’s children by starving them to death rather than forcing them to eat unpalatable food for their own good.
His accomplishments, mostly ignored by the media unless they are criticizing what are plainly lawful and reasonable measures, are many and significant. Conservatives, however, continue to be surprised when the DOJ or the VA or other federal criminal conspiracies continue to push unlawful and abusive policies that were the hallmark of the Obama Administration. Those agencies have, for decades, been stacked with leftist revolutionaries, people whose hatred for America is exceeded only by their hatred of Americans. It will take some time to clean even a portion of them out, and as hard working as Mr. Trump is, there are only so many hours in the day.
Heartening to Americans is his determination to once again make America a nation to be respected and appreciated by her allies, and feared by her enemies. Because of decades old neglect and abject stupidity in foreign policy, we will not restore our rightful place in the world without the expenditure of blood and treasure, but if we don’t do it now, nothing but humiliation and the decline of western civilization is our future. Mr. Trump appears to understand that, while not for a moment appearing to desire unnecessary conflict.
His greatest challenge--America’s greatest challenge--is the feckless and fractious Republican Congress. Not only do they seem determined to resist Mr. Trump nearly as much as the Democrats, they seem determined--idiots--to destroy themselves. It won’t be long before formerly Republican Americans agree with them and give them what they want. If they can’t, when they control every lever of government, govern, the public is poised to end them, once and for all, and they seem too stupid--they’ve manifestly earned the title: the stupid party--to recognize that reality.
Overall, Mr. Trump has turned in an impressive performance, and has demonstrated much of his bluster during the campaign was a masterful act, calculated to win the White House. His tweets confound the press, Democrats, and Republicans alike, but for Americans, they work. As for the future, if the Secret Service can keep intruders out of the White House--not a certainty by any means--Mr. Trump may succeed in draining the swamp to an unprecedented degree. We had all better hope he does.
David Schuler :I had prepared a much longer disquisition but I think I'll limit my remarks to this. If you're going to try to assign a letter grade to President Trump's term of office so far, I think the only fair grade is Incomplete.
As of today his actual accomplishments are very few. The greatest are the nomination and confirmation of Neil Gorsuch and getting Chinese support in dealing with North Korea. How extensive that support will actually be remains to be seen.
He has no legislative accomplishments. Some of his executive orders are already having effects; others like the travel ban are running into fierce opposition.
The transition has been rough. It took until April 27 before he had a complete cabinet. He's made many fewer appointments at this point in his presidency than any of recent memory.
President Trump is already backpedaling on some of his campaign promises, notably the wall. That was to be expected from a president as transactional in his approach as Trump.
If you consider his not being Hillary Clinton to be enough, that's a pretty low bar. All of the other candidates and 300 million other Americans all fit the same description.
If you're going to assign a letter grade based on actual accomplishments to date, it would have to be a D. I'm more charitable than that so I say "Incomplete".
Laura Rambeau Lee : Contrary to mainstream media opinion, President Trump’s first one hundred days have been positive. Illegal immigration is down 67% since he was sworn into office on Inauguration Day. He has by executive order: dismantled President Obama’s climate change regulations; placed a hiring freeze on federal employees; approved the Keystone XL pipeline and other energy producing ventures; mandated for every new regulation created two must be eliminated; imposed travel bans from countries involved in terrorism and where vetting of people wanting to come in is difficult if not impossible. These are just a few of a total of sixty-six executive orders President Trump has signed making good on his promises as he campaigned for the presidency.
Although the attempt to repeal and replace Obamacare failed, this is a positive as President Trump promised to repeal it and many of us were against the new bill as it was written. Hopefully Congress will work out a better plan to repeal and replace Obamacare. We must make sure the fix will truly help the people who have suffered under the high premiums and co-pays mandated by the “Affordable” Care Act. The Democrats know it will implode unless something is done, so they too have an interest in making sure a good bill is passed. Their future elections may very well depend on fixing Obamacare.
On a different level President Trump has been uniquely positioned to expose the radical left in America like no one else has been able to do. Many of us have been aware of the expanding influence of the left, which includes socialists, Marxists, Islamists, and communists. They have been successful over the past couple of generations of infiltrating our politics at every level of government, our schools and universities, and the media. His win despite the odds against him has them outraged and incensed. Their plans, first under President Obama and continuing under a Hillary Clinton presidency, have been exposed and they are publicly showing their true intentions. Americans are now seeing how pervasive their influence and numbers have become. They realize we are in a fight to save our republic from those who want to destroy our country.
Finally, but most significant in my opinion, was the Senate approval of his nomination of Constitutionalist Judge Neil Gorsuch as a Supreme Court Justice. This alone was the reason many Americans voted for Trump for President. In the near term the Supreme Court will continue to lean ever so slightly to the right as Justice Gorsuch replaced Constitutionalist Justice Antonin Scalia. President Trump may well have the opportunity to appoint at least two more justices during his term which should bring the court more in keeping with the powers afforded to it within the framework of the Constitution for many decades.
All in all I give President Trump a grade of B for his first one hundred days in office. He has more to learn as all new presidents do, but it appears he is a quick study and up to the tasks before him.
Well, there it is!
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