Preserving history

President Donald Trump also used his appearance before the Heritage Foundation’s President’s Club to argue the U.S. should celebrate and preserve its history, “not tear it down.” He pointed to a movement to take down Confederate statues and other symbols of the country’s divisive past, which have sparked protests and backlash.

“Now they’re even trying to destroy statues of Christopher Columbus? What’s next? It has to be stopped,” he said.

economy’s “Trump bump.” The Dow was below 20,000 on the day Trump took the oath of office.

The tax plan

And, of course, Trump talked tax cuts. He said his package would reduce “our crushing business tax,” andhegotabiglaughwhenhe sighed, “It makes me want to go immediately back in business.”

Trump’s tax plan would lower the corporate rate from 35 percent to 20 percent, reduce the number of individual income tax brackets and double the standard deduction. But it would also remove the personal exemption and possibly much of the deduction for state and local taxes.

As he talked up the plan, Trump repeated his administration’s assertion that the corporate tax cut and other changes would lead to a $4,000 pay raise for the average American family — a claim that has been met with skepticism from tax experts and Democratic lawmakers.

“Love the proposed tax cuts,” said attendee Dave Williams of Lititz, Pennsylvania. “Money back in the pockets of middle America.”

“So many good things are happening under this administration (that) are simply unreported,” he added.

Martha Gasparovich of Livonia, Michigan, said she considered Trump’s appearance at the meeting “frosting on the cake.”

Democratic consultant Garry South was less complimentary. “It was typical Trump,” he said. “Meandering, lying, exaggerating, expectorating. The only tax speech I want to hear from Trump is the one in which he releases his own taxes.”

The event falls days after Bannon criticized the Heritage Foundation, a staunch advocate of free trade, for not appreciating “economic nationalism.”

“I understand all of us don’t agree upon everything,” Bannon said in his speech Saturday at the Values Voter Summit. “I understand that there’s plenty of folks over at Cato and AEI and Heritage that we have to convert.”

The Cato Institute is a libertarian-leaning public policy research organization, and the American Enterprise Institute is a conservative think tank.

Asked about Bannon’s comment, Heritage representatives had no comment.

Contact Debra J. Saunders at dsaunders@reviewjournal. com or 202-662-7391. Follow @ Debrajsaunders on Twitter.