US election: Donald Trump’s achievements too readily overlooked
Jennifer Oriel
The Australian, 9 November 2020
For more than 70 million Americans, Donald Trump represents hope. He won the 2016 election against a sure-bet Democrat with a political pedigree and the global media on her side. He won the second-biggest popular vote in US electoral history last week despite a four-year onslaught by the political media elite. On present numbers, he has increased the Republican share of Hispanic voters and improved his standing among African-Americans. Trump has forever changed American politics and the breadth of his achievements impresses where his style, and his handling of the pandemic fail.
The 45th US president restored law and order by defending police against militant racists and nominating black-letter lawyers to the Supreme Court. He chipped away at left-wing orthodoxy in the public service and on campus by testing the limits of free speech. He demanded equal treatment for America in foreign policy by telling free-riding allies to boost their military spending and pay their fair share for defence. He called the bluff of bully states and withdrew US money from the Paris Agreement, which rewards totalitarian regimes with Western workers’ money. He protected Americans from illiberal enemies by closing the border to terrorist-producing states. He defended Israel by negotiating the most celebrated Middle East peace deal in recent history. He encouraged the revival of American manufacturing in towns gripped by unemployment and sliding into the despair of intergenerational opioid addiction. And he worked to restore the democratic norms established by the founding fathers. Trump stood for the millions of Americans that globalists treat like an unpleasant aftertaste of the industrial era. For all of that, the politically correct will forever regard him as an enemy.