RUTHFULLY YOURS

1. Leans into voters’ concerns about the disastrous border crisis – and tells them how he’ll fix it.

2. Talks up his plan to keep the economy humming through deregulation, keeping taxes low and also by pushing his “Drill Baby Drill” plan to expand America’s energy stockpile and independence, and…

3. Shuts up about everything else. Don’t feed Democrat narratives with threats to abandon NATO or impose 60% tariffs on China. Stop whining about the 2020 election, stop denigrating rival and former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley’s husband and wardrobe, and lay off President Joe Biden. The president is destroying his reelection hopes all by himself; he doesn’t need any help.

Also, talk less about what a great job you did before and more about how you’ll do it again, even better. Voters want to know and they want optimism.

There’s been a lot of chatter about what Joe Biden should do to confront the terrible blow delivered by Special Counsel Hur. There has been less commentary about how the presumed GOP nominee should navigate this gift from the blue. My view – don’t interrupt Biden’s decline and fall.

Odds makers have Donald Trump in the lead, with one site giving him a 52% chance of winning in November, against 27% for Biden. Shockingly, Michelle Obama is next most likely to become president, with a 15% chance. That says everything.

Democrats are in disarray, with many turning on their standard-bearer for letting them down. But really, it is the Democratic universe – the leadership, Dem donors in Hollywood and Silicon Valley, White House aides, the liberal media, Jill Biden and the whole dishonest crew – that has nurtured this cancer in their midst. They knew the president was in decline but have lied repeatedly about his vigor and his sharpness – even to themselves — and conspired to hide it from the public.

If you receive your news from MSNBC, you might have no idea Joe Biden can barely finish a sentence without stumbling. You don’t know that the White House has been shielding his decline by limiting his interactions with the press, using more easily-managed stairs to deplane and stage-managing his appearances to prevent him looking befuddled and lost.

On social media, clips of Biden’s deterioration are everywhere. His miscues are no longer “gaffes”; believing you just sat down with France’s former President Francois Mitterand, who died in 1996, is senility mixing up the channels.

Reliable lefties like Ross Douthat at the New York Times are openly calling for Biden to step aside at the convention, allowing delegates to choose another candidate. Maureen Dowd, also at the awakened (panicked) Times, says Biden’s denial of his infirmities isn’t going to beat Trump, though she fails to provide a better plan.

Trump can capitalize on Biden’s slide. But he must stop stepping in the middle of the story, such as he recently did when he recalled telling NATO members that if they didn’t pay their share of the alliance’s defense budget he would not protect them from Russia aggression. That, of course, made headlines of just the sort Democrats savor – Trump is reckless! Trump cannot be trusted!

Trump must keep the spotlight on the president’s age and on the horrors perpetrated by Biden – the millions of illegals swarming across the border, the soft-on-crime approach of this White House, the resulting mayhem in places like Chicago and New York and the hugely inflated prices of everything. These issues are shipping voters into the “R” column. They remember these problems didn’t exist under Trump.

Meanwhile, wars in Ukraine and the Middle East demolish Biden’s absurd claims of diplomatic know-how. Rather, those conflicts showcase the extreme cost to the world of a weak man sitting in the Oval Office. Biden touts his “experience”; what good is experience if you can’t remember?

Donald Trump is not a weak man. He is powerful – as a speaker and as a leader – ready to use the might of the U.S. presidency to close our borders. He has done it before and can do it again. Joe Biden has the same tools at his disposal, but refuses to take them out of the tool box. Trump should lay out how he will convince Mexico to host asylum-seekers on their side of the border, how he would deport criminals in the country illegally, and how he would team with Greg Abbott to prevent crossings instead of taking the Texas governor to court as Biden is doing.

Similarly, Trump should push for a reasoned America-first approach to energy. Rather than chasing oil supplies from enemies in Iran and Venezuela, the United States should exploit our abundant natural resources here at home. Open up new federal lands to drilling, accelerate permits and back off Biden’s costly new fees and regulations which are making it more costly to drill.

Greenlight LNG exports which help the U.S. reduce our trade deficits with China and Japan, are critical for our European allies, and which actually help the climate as natural gas backs out coal. Ease Joe’s fuel efficiency mandates which are costing taxpayers hundreds of billions of dollars and which may well kill U.S. automakers. When Ford is losing $60,000 on every EV it is forced to make, something is very wrong.

Finally, tell voters about Joe Biden’s plan to hike taxes, which will slow growth and cost jobs. The next president needs to extend the Trump tax cuts; the former president should make that happen.

Trump right now has the wind at his back. Jamie Dimon, one of the world’s financial leaders, told the shocked elites at Davos that Trump had been right on a lot of issues; he was correct.

If former President Trump can focus on those issues that worked for our country – the border, the economy and energy specifically – he can win in November.

Published on Fox News