The Big Picture and the War for the White House By Bryan Preston
Four years ago I was a very reluctant Trump voter.
I had laughed at a friend who told me, about two weeks before the 2016 election, that Donald Trump would win. It seemed absurd. Clinton was a lock. Everyone knew that.
But when it came time to vote, I looked at Trump and didn’t know what I would get. I looked at Hillary Clinton and knew exactly what I would get if she won.
As I weighed up the two candidates I figured at least I might get something I’d like from Trump. Maybe a good judge or two. Maybe a tax cut. Clinton was a guarantee that I would get no policy I could support, no good judges, nothing but corruption, deceit, and endless media fawning over every breath she took. She would be horrible. Trump might be interesting. He might be better than I expected, or worse, but he couldn’t be worse than Clinton.
So I rolled the dice and voted for Trump.
It was liberating. I hadn’t advocated for him. He wasn’t my first choice.
Four years later, as I explain in this week’s War for the White House podcast with Hot Air’s Jazz Shaw and Townhall’s Reagan McCarthy, I wasn’t reluctant at all. Based on my policy preferences and goals for the future of this country, Donald Trump has earned four more years in the Oval Office.
Here’s one example of why (and we all go into some others in the podcast):
Donald Trump sees the big picture when it comes to the economy and foreign policy. Like no president since Ronald Reagan, Trump understands how to achieve peace through strength. He prioritizes American interests, which separates him from every Democrat and too many Republicans.
In Reagan’s case, it took a military buildup and the idea of creating the technology to shoot down incoming missiles to drive the Soviet Union — the evil empire — into collapse. The media mocked it as “Star Wars,” proving they haven’t changed much over the years. Some say Reagan won the Cold War without firing a shot, and that’s not really true. We fired millions of shots in Korea and Vietnam. But we never had to fight an all-out war head-to-head with the Soviets, so in that sense, Reagan (and Thatcher and Pope John Paul II) did defeat them without firing a shot. Reagan avoided the catastrophe of a devastating world war and freed millions by putting America’s interests first and having the courage to go against the Democrats, the media, and many in his own party. Sound familiar?
Trump has taken a different but no less effective approach to peace through strength. He understood that a strong American economy, including energy independence, is key to establishing peace in the Middle East and securing Israel’s future. He unleashed the broadest economy we have ever seen with his tax cut and by unshackling U.S. energy producers from the onerous regulations Democrats had placed on them. This created the strongest economy we have ever seen, benefiting all Americans. It also led to the United States becoming the world’s top energy producer, which gave us a stronger hand against Middle Eastern despots and Putin. The pieces were always there. Trump put them together.
Now we’re seeing the payoff in the Abraham Accords. It’s no accident that it took Trump — a non-politician who didn’t come to office listening to so-called “experts” like John Kerry who always put the unreliable Palestinians in the center of all peace efforts regarding Israel. Trump ripped up that script. He moved our embassy to Jerusalem, as Democrat and Republican presidents had promised to do but never did. He marginalized the Palestinians and has negotiated peace between Israel and three of its Arab neighbors — so far.
Trump has also begun to establish an alliance with India. This may turn out to be one of the most important bilateral relationships the U.S. will have in Asia over the next few decades — so we can be sure the Democrats would turn their backs on it, just because Trump did it first. They’ve become a party devoid of ideas, running purely on an ideology that is a proven failure and a disaster for human rights.
We don’t need the Democrats putting American energy back in a cage and weighing the economy down with their failed faith in big government.
We need four more years of a non-politician who sees the big picture and is not stuck in Washington’s swamp-think. That’s Donald Trump.
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