President Trump - One Year In

By Olivia Pierson

When Trump took office at the beginning of this year, there were five main agendas that I considered monumentally important in judging the strength of his efficacy as Leader of the Free World: 
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1. The US economy
2. Combatting ISIS
3. Stemming immigration through the Southern border
4. The ongoing menace of Iran going nuclear
5. Dealing with a nuclear armed North Korea

While the usual media outlets like to mundanely mimic the unduly negative narrative that President Trump’s first year in office has yielded very little, nothing could be further from the actual truth.

President Trump has accomplished in his first year of governing what his predecessors, Bush and Obama couldn’t do in both their two-terms combined: rebooting the American economy. This has been achieved largely by Trump’s commitment to his campaign promise of slashing regulations and increasing manufacturing.  For every new regulation imposed, two existing ones have to be cut.

GDP has increased from 1% growth to 3.1%.  Over a million new jobs have been created and unemployment is now down to 4.1%, the lowest it’s been since 2001. The stock market has set new record high after high throughout 2017. All this has taken place before tax cuts have even made it through to legislation.

In altering the terms of engagement by giving more decision-making power to his competent generals on the battlefield instead of to bureaucrats micromanaging like grannies from the Whitehouse, President Trump has swiftly advanced the defeat of ISIS.  The terror group has lost all its territory in Iraq and Syria, and hundreds of thousands of jihadist murderers have been killed.  Strictly speaking, they are not completely over, it is expected that they’ll morph into guerrilla units wherever they can, but after a year of intense focus on obliteration instead of “containment,” their hope of a caliphate has been blown back to hell, whence it came.  The biggest threat from ISIS now comes via muslims living in Western countries who carry out attacks in their name.  This remains a problem for each sovereign country to deal with, but all countries share intelligence with each other to help mitigate this ongoing threat. 

Since we have mentioned Syria, it is also worth noting that President Trump is the only leader in the world who had the balls to punish Assad for his use of chemical weapons on civilians in April of this year.  UN war crimes investigators confirmed in June 2017 that it was indeed Assad who committed this crime, not the rebel groups he tried to blame.

This criminal action of Assad flew in the face of the Geneva Convention, measures which ought to be enforced by all United Nations member states, but only President Trump enforced it by launching 59 cruise missiles at the al Sharyat airbase.  After developing a troubling habit of using chemical weapons on his own people, Assad has not resorted to this tactic since. Fancy that.

After Trump won the election and by the time he was inaugurated, the number of illegal immigrants crossing the Southern border dropped by 40% due to his rhetoric alone. Since then border crossings are now down by 71%, the lowest level since the year 2000. This is due to enforcing existing laws alone, without even building ‘the wall.’  Prototypes are now being erected which means the wall is still very much on the agenda.  When this does actually go up, illegal immigration through that border will be a thing of the past.  Washington politicians on both sides of the aisle have been running their yaps about how to stem illegal immigration through this border for thirty years.  President Trump has made unprecedented improvements on this issue in less than one year of his administration.  Unbelievable.

For many years, Iran has been under sanctions/restrictions by the UN over its ability to develop ballistic and nuclear weapons technology.  Most of these restrictions were rescinded when Obama cut the new Iran deal. Unfortunately, the new deal is almost unenforceable due to its weasel wording and as a result, Iran continues to violate the deal by continuing to openly test and develop ballistic weapons (while Iranians genocide bait on Quds Day this year; "Death to America! Death to Israel!  Death to the house of Saud! Death to the UK!") 

The wording of the previous UN resolution was this: 
“Iran shall not undertake any activity related to ballistic missiles capable of delivering nuclear weapons, including launches using ballistic missile technology, and that States shall take all necessary measures to prevent the transfer of technology or technical assistance to Iran related to such activities.” 

This is the wording under the new Iran Deal:
“Iran is called upon not to undertake any activity related to ballistic missiles designed to be capable of delivering nuclear weapons, including launches using such ballistic missile technology, until the date eight years after the [Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action] Adoption Day or until the date on which the [International Atomic Energy Agency] submits a report confirming the Broader Conclusion,* whichever is earlier.”
(*the Broader Conclusion being that Iran only intends their nuclear plans for peaceful purposes)

Well, it has not been eight years since the signing of the deal, nor has the IAEA submitted a report confirming the Broader Conclusion, yet Iran constantly tests ballistic missiles capable of delivering nuclear warheads.  The latest test was in September 2017.  All Iran has to do is wait out eight years then they’re allowed to do whatever they want, but they have not even had the decency to wait thanks to the piss-weak wording of the deal.

Not only that, Iran is currently engaged in proxy wars in Lebanon (and seems to have won there), in Yemen, in Syria, in Iraq and is fomenting anti-Arab strife in Qatar, which has severed diplomatic relations between Qatar and the the UAE.

President Trump has decertified the deal and his position is this:
“We will not continue down a path whose predictable conclusion is more violence, more terror, and the very real threat of Iran’s nuclear breakout,” he said in a speech at the White House.

“In the event we are not able to reach a solution working with Congress and our allies, then the agreement will be terminated. It is under continuous review, and our participation can be canceled by me, as president, at any time.”

It remains to be seen what will come to pass over this now decertified deal, but as it currently stands President Trump has put it on notice.  He’s got his hands full with North Korea right now.

In regard to North Korea, President Trump is pushing forward strengthening ties with South Korea, Japan, China, Vietnam and the Phillipines. Considering the acts of aggression the NORKs have indulged in over the years - and gotten away with, to say nothing of their ongoing violent threats, dealing with the Kim regime as a world menace is long overdue.  President Clinton, President Bush and President Obama all failed in action to stop this sore from festering. If anything highlighted their dismal failure in a very pertinent way it was the cruel torture and death of American student, Otto Warmbier. This was Kim Jong Un giving the finger to President Obama - with both of his chubby little hands.  Obama did nothing, of course.. repairing to his cowardly default position of 'strategic patience.'

It is now up to President Trump to bring this menace to a head; peace is preferable, but I have no doubt that he will act militarily rather than allow Kim Jong Un to acquire the ballistic/nuclear capability  he seeks to be able to hit the American homeland. If people think this little bastard, Rocket Man, is difficult to deal with now, imagine how utterly impossible he will be if he acquires the capability he is so close to having.  Whether Trump likes it or not, he has to clean up after the toxic mess his predecessors left him.  He is not shrinking from that immense challenge but rather tackling it head-on.

These issues are colossal, civilisation-threatening problems, that’s why they’re on my list of measuring President Trump’s efficacy - they’re not only hard things to deal with, they’re nigh impossible in today’s cynical post-modern climate.  America doesn't have to act to benefit the rest of the world, President Trump would be well within his rights to act only for America. So, to the naysayers out there (and they are plenteous in every country) who keep parroting that President Trump has achieved nothing in his first year just because he failed to repeal Obamacare, I say they need to lift their thinking a little higher than their backsides and stop sounding like a Monty Python comedy:

“What has President Trump ever done for us?! 
Okay, okay… but apart from crippling ISIS, stopping Syrian chemical weapons attacks, rebooting the economy, lowering unemployment levels, decertifying the shonky Iranian deal, decreasing illegal immigration and tackling the North Korean nuclear menace - what has President Trump ever done for us?!!”
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​If you enjoyed this article, please buy my book "Western Values Defended - a primer"


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