Chattanooga Times Free Press

PRESIDENT TRUMP KEPT PROMISES

- Star Parker is president of the Center for Urban Renewal and Education. Creators.com

A retrospect­ive on President Donald Trump’s four years in office must be put in perspectiv­e of what he himself promised to accomplish when he ran: Make America Great Again.

To answer the question requires, of course, defining what makes America great and asking to what extent President Trump put the nation on course toward this goal.

If one believes, as I do, that what makes America great is that it must be a free nation under God, that this stands at the core of what makes the nation prosperous and moral, I think the president’s achievemen­ts have been significan­t.

Probably the greatest paradox of this election is the Gallup poll done in September asking whether registered voters were “better off now” than they were four years ago. The 56% who responded “yes” was the highest percent under any president running for re-election since the question was first asked, when Ronald Reagan ran for re-election in 1984. Based on this, we would have expected President Trump to be re-elected in a landslide.

I would list major achievemen­ts of the Trump presidency under three headlines: economic reform that restored robust economic growth; appointmen­t of federal judges across the nation, up to the Supreme Court, who will restore a federal judiciary guided by conservati­ve principles; and achievemen­t of a new peace in the Middle East that seemed beyond anyone’s reach.

Another point of critical importance is that Trump policies have been a boon to America’s minorities. Despite the success of left-wing demagogues in portraying the Trump presidency as racist, facts show truth to be the complete opposite.

The 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act fueled economic growth that the nation had not seen in years.

This was aided further by deregulati­on. Tax cuts and deregulati­on targeted at restoring the global competitiv­eness of American business and restoring conditions friendly to investment fueled job growth and an unemployme­nt rate of 3.5% that no one thought possible.

And, as reported by the Wall Street Journal: “Median weekly full-time earnings for Blacks increased 19% in Mr. Trump’s first three years, to $806. That followed a period of 11% growth during Mr. Obama’s seven post-recession years in office.”

According to the Federal Reserve’s 2019 Survey of Consumer Finances, the largest growth in household net worth from 2016 to 2019 occurred in households in the lowest 20% of income, 34.3%.

Black median household income increased 7.9% in 2019, the largest annual increase in history.

And, in 2019, for the first time ever, the percentage of Black households earning above $75,000, 29.4%, exceeded the percentage earning below $25,000, 28.7%.

With the confirmati­on of Trump’s last Supreme Court appointmen­t, Associate Justice Amy Coney Barrett, we now have a Supreme Court with a solid 6-3 conservati­ve majority.

This in the overall context of 220 federal judicial appointmen­ts made by the president, establishi­ng a powerful conservati­ve basis in law for our free nation under God. A conservati­ve court raises the possibilit­y of stopping the abortion carnage that is devastatin­g Black America.

The president’s courage in moving the American embassy in Israel to Jerusalem and recognizin­g Jerusalem as Israel’s capital shined light throughout the world. And now we are seeing new peace agreements between Israel and Arab and Muslim nations that no one ever thought possible.

This is called leadership. Despite the noise and distortion­s from the left, facts say that President Trump made major achievemen­ts in moving toward making America great again.

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Star Parker

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