Americans Are Dreamers, Too: Trump’s State of the Union Triumph

By John Zmirak Published on January 31, 2018

Donald Trump’s first State of the Union address was political Kryptonite. The left has scooped up so many elite institutions and so many media outlets, that it firmly believes it’s invincible. It is every bit as smug and supercilious, and arrogantly self-confident, as Batman found Superman in the Dark Knight comics — which inspired the less than thrilling Ben Affleck film. Relax: My metaphor is better than the movie.

Speaking Straight to America’s Heart

Make no mistake, Trump is the Dark Knight in this scenario. He’s an underdog fighting with unconventional weapons, against a steely, implacable alien smug in his rectitude. Trump is the local hero, fighting for his own Gotham City and its people. He’s willing to say things that our rulers have long forbidden, to dig up old pieties like love for flag and country. And the left is apoplectic that he’s even free to speak them. They can silence students in public schools, get programmers fired from Google. But they cannot silence … that man. Or his voters. Boy, have they tried.

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Trump is not snowed by the high-minded Kantian doublethink that the left pumps like sleeping gas out of every duct in each school and workplace. Values may be universal, but cultures and governments aren’t. People are indeed equal, but our debts to them are wildly unequal. We owe more to our parents than our neighbors, and to them than to distant strangers. We should care more for the well-being of fellow citizens of the United States than of earth. To treat an illegal immigrant as equal to a veteran, or a black man whose ancestors literally slaved for this country and had to fight for the citizenship that Democrats would throw around like Mardi Gras beads ….

Well, that’s just crazy. To import millions of low-skill workers at just the moment when black and Hispanic unemployment rates have hit record lows … that’s outright un-American. Trump speaks these blunt home truths, and each one is a bullet laced with Kryptonite aimed straight between the eyes.

More Trump, Please

I’ll offer it right now, my totally unsolicited advice to President Trump. Please give a speech like this every week. Use your own or RNC money to buy an hour on Fox, every Wednesday night. Because when you’re on your game, you’re the best Republican communicator since Reagan.

Stop tweeting so much. Stand up before Americans and tell them the facts that the media won’t share with them. Like the unprecedented economic growth that your first year in office has seen. Or the stories of victims of illegal immigrant violence. And tales of real live heroes, like those you highlighted last night. America needs to hear that, and compare it to the crabbed and tortured rhetoric of leftists. Let them churn out screeds about the evils of “cis-gendered straight white males.” Meanwhile, you’ll be showcasing Latino border guards who fight off MS-13. See who wins a fight like that.

President Trump, please give a speech like this every week. Use your own or RNC money to buy an hour on Fox, every Wednesday night. Because when you’re on your game, you’re the best political communicator since Reagan.

Get video of the Democrats refusing to stand or clap for the flag. For the job growth among minority communities. For the president’s heartfelt reference to God, family, and country. That should make for killer campaign ads come November.

Save Our Allies Against ISIS

Now to the speech’s low point. (I’ll end with the high point, I promise.) When the president rightly called on a heroic U.S. soldier, wounded in the battle against ISIS, I knew enough to cringe a little. Because right then, even as the president spoke, most of the heroes in that war could not be present. That’s because they are soldiers of the Syrian Democratic Forces. Kurds and Arabs, Muslims and Christians, they fight for religious freedom against both ISIS and al Qaeda.

And right now America’s “frenemy,” NATO member Turkey, is bombing the blazes out of their women and children. And endangering U.S. soldiers nearby. I wish that Trump had thought to have a Kurdish soldier present, to take some credit. And that he’d promised to reign in the savage bloodlust of Islamist Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan, who’s bombing Kurdish hospitals when he’s not busy blackmailing Europe with more Muslim migrants.

It’s a blessing that so few U.S. soldiers had to die in the fight against ISIS. But it’s not a miracle. It’s the fruit of Trump’s prudent choice to ally with the freedom-loving Kurdish people. Now is not the moment to betray them. Or the next fight that rolls around, thousands of American soldiers will fight and die instead.

Americans Are Dreamers, Too

Trump’s best moment came on immigration. On this his signature campaign issue, Trump said all the right things. He was right to invite the victims of illegal immigrant violence. Then he used his own excessive generosity toward smuggled children (“DREAMERs” in the cloying Democrat acronym) to show up how unreasonable the left’s position is. He rightly demanded a border Wall and an end to chain migration.

But the devil is deep in the details, as conservatives have noted. His current plan before Congress does nothing to implement E-Verify, and force employers to check if workers are legally in the country — or using Social Security numbers stolen from U.S. retirees. And the reforms he offers on chain migration won’t take effect for nearly a decade — plenty of time for the Democrats to reverse them, and import enough voters to turn Texas blue. Once again, it seems like Americans concerned about border security are meant to act like Charlie Brown, and pray that this time Lucy doesn’t snatch away the football.

In the State of the Union speech we saw Trump at his best. Let’s write our congressmen and insist that they hold him to it. Write the president himself, and tell him not to fall for the Democrats’ bait and switch, or cave in to their fake moral blackmail. And remind him that our allies fighting for freedom now in Syria deserve America’s clear support. They had our backs, let’s not stab them in theirs.

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