Trump Derangement Syndrome Persists

Platform or personality? When deciding for whom to vote, how much weight does each carry in voters’ minds? Is it more important to agree with candidates than to like them? What if you like them but you don’t concur on the issues? As I’ve listened to people in the four years since Donald Trump first announced his candidacy for president it has become evident among his detractors that hatred for him as a man far outweighs whatever his performance has been as president. Trump’s supporters, however, care more about what he does than about what he says or tweets.

Trump supporters cringed when he said he got the most electoral votes since Ronald Reagan because a quick search reveals that he didn’t. His egotism is so enormous that the presidency with its all its ego-stroking perks cannot satisfy it, but his favorability ratings climb nonetheless. Trump’s base is satisfied because he’s doing what he said he would do, like appointing conservative judges to the courts, cracking down on illegal immigration, and reining in China’s illegal trade practices.

That drives the left and the media — which Trump supporters see as conjoined twins — absolutely bonkers because they not only hate Trump, they also disagree with him on the issues. Rather than criticize his policy positions though, they fire ad hominem salvos — continuously. Trump is racist, sexist, xenophobic, they insist, and so are those who voted for him. Leftist politicians and media have done little else throughout Trump’s presidency, but the effect has been the opposite of what they intend. Rather than drive them apart, relentless criticism of both the president and his base drives them closer together.

Some Trump supporters wish he would consult with staff before talking or tweeting. If he didn’t trip over his own tongue so much he could have implemented more of his agenda by now, they believe, and who could argue? Others say they held their nose voting for him in 2016 but have since grown to like him in spite of the dumb things he says. As Senator and former opponent, Lindsay Graham said last week at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC): “We have a lot in common; I like him and he likes him.”

The Mueller report is due any time now but many are beginning to realize that it will have no evidence of Trump collusion with Russia in the 2016 election. However, Democrats won a majority in the US House last November and with that comes control of key committees, so Democrat chairmen are using subpoena power to scrutinize Trump on many fronts. Will they find anything with which to impeach the president?

It’s hard to believe they will considering that media coverage of Trump has been more than 90% negative and they’ve been looking everywhere for negative things to report. The two-year Mueller investigation has probed so many areas far afield from its original charge of investigating Russian collusion that we have to wonder what’s left to investigate. It seems clear now that removing Trump from office is the goal for Democrats and if there’s no Russian collusion, they’ll look for something else.

Meanwhile, Democrats who want to run against him are voluminous and more announce almost every day. They’re promising the moon: free tuition, free medical care, government jobs for everyone, money for those unwilling to work, reparations for descendants of slaves and Indians, and rebuilding every single structure in the whole country. When asked how to pay for all that, they say they’ll tax the rich and print money.

Meanwhile, the national debt has reached $22 trillion, eclipsing annual GDP — Gross Domestic Product — the sum total of all economic activity in the country. Some of us remember that twenty years ago President Clinton and a Republican Congress worked together to balance the federal budget and even talked about spending the surplus to actually pay down the national debt rather than keep adding to it every year.

Trump’s tax cuts have stimulated the economy and government revenues are rising, but government is expanding even faster and so is the annual deficit. It’s growing at about $1 trillion a year again. This used to used to be a big issue for Republicans though doesn’t seem to be anymore ever since Trump took office. Americans paid $523 billion interest on the debt in 2018 and that will keep rising. How long can this go on?

All of us know how much we make and how much we spend — what happens when we spend more than we make. There’s a limit to how much debt we can sustain before it seriously cramps our lifestyle. We don’t need degrees in political science or economics to understand the same is true for our country no matter what part of the political spectrum we occupy.