Have you ever gone to buy a house and saw clues that the previous owners did not take good care of it? Maybe there was rotting wood around the front door. Maybe there were missing shingles. Perhaps there were signs of water damage in the basement.

You likely thought to yourself, “If I am seeing this, what else is there I can’t see?” Well, that is essentially the position President Trump finds himself in today.


He came into office wanting to put America back on track. Of course, he knew there were problems caused by eight years of neglect. But the vast majority of what he is contending with now stems from problems the previous occupants of the White House largely ignored and allowed to fester.

For example:

• President Trump is trying to rebalance trade with China because for decades administrations of both parties pandered to the communists in Beijing. Clinton, Bush and Obama allowed trade deficits to grow, rarely spoke up for America’s industries or for human rights in China. And as China built up its military, the previous administration allowed ours to decline.

• Three aircraft crashes in the past week resulted in the loss of seven military personnel. In recent years, the military has been forced to cannibalize parts, while progressives pushed a radical social agenda at the Pentagon and political correctness took root at our military academies. Unfortunately, trends like that are not reversed quickly. It will take time.

• This weekend, the Syrian regime reportedly gassed its own citizens again. When did the Syrian government start using chemical weapons? During the Obama administration, when Assad crossed Obama’s “red line” without any cost.

• At the same time, ISIS was allowed to expand throughout Iraq and Syria. Obama even joked that ISIS was not a serious threat but just a “JV team.” Trump moved quickly to deal with that threat, and he has been largely successful in crushing the Islamic State’s caliphate. Of course, he has gotten very little credit for that accomplishment.

• Why is President Trump sending National Guard troops to the border and demanding money for a border wall? Because previous administrations refused to secure the border. George Bush pushed amnesty, and Obama did a multitude of things that encouraged more illegal immigration.

• Why are the courts blocking almost everything Trump wants to do?  Because Obama packed the federal courts with left-wing ideologues who issue rulings based on their preferred political results instead of the clear meaning of the Constitution.

• Why did we suffer through a year of threats from North Korea’s dictator and torment the residents of Hawaii with false nuclear missile warnings? Because Clinton, Bush and Obama followed a failed policy of all carrots and no sticks, so that North Korea is on the verge of becoming a nuclear power capable of striking U.S. cities. At least with this one, Obama had the decency to warn Trump.

Essentially, President Trump is trying to fix the rot caused by years of neglect or politics as usual. Critics complaining about the noise should get out of the way and let the workers get the job done.

The Intolerant Left

I have written many times that the Left is not interested in having a debate on anything. It wants to shut down any discussion of conservative ideas. It wants to make conservative values unspeakable. 

For example: 

• Harvard recently suspended a Christian student group after it dismissed a leader who was engaged in a same-sex relationship.

• The CEO of Twitter promoted a story that declares America is in the throes of a second civil war and urges the country to become like California, where conservatives are relegated to obscurity.

• Meanwhile, many conservatives on Twitter, including Ted Cruz, are complaining of censorship and lost followers.  

• African-American Trump supporters Diamond and Silk have been “blacklisted” by Facebook.

• The Atlantic hired conservative columnist Kevin Williamson to add some diversity to its pages. He lasted all of two weeks before the left-wing mob claimed his scalp and forced his firing.

• My friend Laura Ingraham posts a tweet critical of gun control activist David Hogg and more than a dozen skittish corporate sponsors are cowed into submission by the left-wing juggernaut.

• And, of course, whenever any conservative speaker tries to step foot on a college campus, antifa is there to shut them down.

Over and over again, the Left demonstrates that it has zero tolerance for free speech and traditional values. Men and women across the political spectrum who cherish freedom must be vigilant and willing to confront the totalitarianism of the Left. Like Marxism and Stalinism before it, today’s left-wing movement is anything but “progressive.”