by WorldTribune Staff, December 31, 2017
Predictions of Donald Trump’s demise have reached a crescendo several times since the big man descended the Trump Tower staircase to announce his candidacy for president.
And we’re not just talking about political liberals.
“The National Review crowd can’t admit they were wrong, dead wrong, about Donald Trump,” Rick Manning, president of Americans for Limited Government said on the Dec. 29 edition of SiriusXM’s Breitbart News Tonight.
National Review’s 2016 “Against Trump” article called Trump a “philosophically unmoored political opportunist who would trash the broad conservative ideological consensus.”
“[Donald Trump] is the most conservative president in my lifetime, and I include Ronald Reagan,” said Manning.
Meanwhile, White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders mocked New York Times columnist Paul Krugman for predicting the U.S. economy would never recover from a Trump presidency.
Sanders referenced Krugman’s Nov 9, 2016 declaration that “if the question is when markets will recover, a first-pass answer is never.” Krugman continued “under any circumstances, putting an irresponsible, ignorant man who takes his advice from all the wrong people in charge of the nation with the world’s most important economy would be very bad news. What makes it especially bad right now, however, is the fundamentally fragile state much of the world is still in, eight years after the great financial crisis.”
Sanders on Dec. 29 tweeted: “Greatest story of the year: booming @realDonaldTrump economy. Worst prediction for the year:” with a screenshot of Krugman’s prediction.
Secretary of Labor Alexander Acosta recently told a roundtable attended by The Daily Caller that he expects nearly 2 million new jobs to have been created under Trump.
Acosta added that in September 2017 the U.S. “had the highest total employment level ever in the United States.”
Manning also reflected on National Review’s expressed contempt for “white working class” communities, recalling the magazine’s 2016 cover story by Kevin Williamson which described predominantly white and rural communities as “dysfunctional and downscale.”
“White working class” communities “deserve to die,” wrote National Review’s Williamson in that 2016 cover article about then-candidate Trump’s voters. When confronted by criticism for this stance, the magazine doubled down.
Manning said Williamson was “dead wrong” that we should “let rural America die.”
“Rural America is being murdered,” explained Manning. “They weren’t dying, they were being murdered by trade laws that sent out jobs overseas, by tax laws that made it too expensive to build stuff here, and by environmental laws that strangle the life out of anybody who wants to grow anything, extract anything, or build anything.”
“And that’s why Kevin Williamson was dead wrong in his arrogance in believing that free trade was everything, when in fact what’s really important is having trade based on a level playing field,” said Manning. “America tied both hands behind her back in a boxing match trying to use our forehead to fight with. We’ll never be able to win that boxing match. Donald Trump’s changed the game.”
Trump is increasing American global economic competitiveness, said Manning, with specific aim at China.
“He is creating an environment where America will have a chance to regain all the momentum of an economy that they had when I was a kid in the 1960s and 1970s,” said Manning. “We were the dominant economy in the world. We’re going to able to compete with the Chinese.”
“We’re going to compete,” Manning explained. “We’re going to fight for our market. We’re not just going to roll over on our backs and say, ‘Oh, it’s a new normal, and turn the world over to the Chinese.’ Donald Trump is getting rid of the obstacles that block those opportunities to expand our own individual lives. I’m just overwhelmed with joy, right now, that we have a world now where America will compete, and our people will be able to compete, as opposed to being shut out because their own government refuses to fight for them.”
“Ivy League prigs who sit there with their little theories not caring who gets harmed, hoping that they’ll be able to get a big screen TV for ten dollars less than they would’ve otherwise, in order to trade the jobs overseas,” said Manning. “That’s got to end, and Donald Trump’s ending it, and that’s what’s important. That’s his victory.”
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