The Patriot Post® · Trump's America: Year One in Review
Today marks the one year anniversary of Donald Trump’s surprising election victory. Thus we now take a brief look back at Trump’s first year — the successes, the failures and the bit of both.
The successes:
Trump’s most improbable and therefore impressive feat was winning the election. After the vast majority of the mainstream media and commentators on both sides of the political aisle had given him almost no chance to win, Trump not only did win, but won decisively, proving that his campaign was much more in tune with the nation’s concerns at large than was anyone else, especially Hillary Clinton.
Trump’s nomination and the Senate’s subsequent confirmation of Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court is clearly his biggest achievement, and it’s potentially his longest-lasting impact on Washington. Gorsuch has proven to be an intellectual power with a deep commitment to the Constitution. Trump gets a positive grade for Gorsuch alone.
Trump has also strongly held to his commitment to drain the DC swamp via his deregulation crusade. Thus far he is on pace to outdo Ronald Reagan in slashing the scope and size of Washington’s bloated regulatory overreach, which is proving to save Americans billions. And his administration is proving to be fairly adept at making positive changes.
The failures:
The biggest and most obvious failure for Trump and quite frankly even more so for congressional Republicans is the inability to repeal or even moderately overhaul ObamaCare. In fact, Trump has yet to see a major legislative achievement despite the GOP controlling both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue. Trump has failed to win over and build a united front with congressional Republicans, which has derailed much of his first year’s agenda and threatens future accomplishments.
The bit of both:
Honestly, this is where most of Trump’s first year should be classified. On foreign policy, Trump has proven to be surprisingly much more adept than most believed he would be. He has seen success in beating back the Islamic State and positively pressing the U.S. presence on the world scene, but the growing threats posed by North Korea and Iran as well as relations with China remain more of an open-ended question.
Trump’s relationship to the mainstream media has also proven a mixed bag. While he has successfully exposed the leftist bias and fake news propagated by the MSM, he has also frequently engaged in distracting and needless Twitter spats. Americans’ trust of the MSM is at historic lows, but trust in Trump isn’t much better.
As for immigration, Trump has successfully empowered law enforcement to crack down on the problem, which has produced a significant decrease in the number of illegals crossing the border. However, the construction of a border wall has been stymied by Congress’s slowness in getting a budget put together.
Every administration has its ups and downs and growing pains, and Trump’s is no different. On balance, however, despite suffering through historically negative press coverage and facing entrenched resistance from the opposition party, Trump has had a relatively good first year.