I&I Editorial

The Democrats didn’t like President Donald Trump’s State of the Union address because he highlighted data, such as the strong economy and record employment under his watch, they’d rather voters didn’t know. But those points were just a start. There’s much more about Trump that his opponents want to hide from the public.

The Democrats have stayed true to their talking points, calling Trump a “monster,” a “white supremacist,” and a “dictator” at every opportunity. While campaigning in New Hampshire, Joe Biden said the president “doesn’t have a shred of decency in him.” Former South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg wants to convince voters “this election is a decency check on this president.” Tom Steyer, who apparently didn’t wish to strain his vocabulary’s limits, simply says Trump is “a bad man.”

None of those charges would stick, though, if the electorate knew that:

In 1986, Trump helped stop the foreclosure of Annabel Hill’s family farm in Georgia. He contributed $39,000 toward the money she needed to pay off the mortgage.

Two years later, Trump sent his personal jet to fly 3-year-old Andrew Ten across the country for critical medical care after commercial airlines refused to allow his life-support system on board.

In 2000, Trump gave a “generous” check to the family of a young girl named Megan, who was suffering from Brittle Bone Disease. He saw her on the Maury Povich show and was moved.

Trump not only allowed actress Jennifer Hudson, who is black, and her family to stay free at his Trump International Hotel & Tower in Chicago after her mother and brother were murdered in 2008, he apparently increased security for them.

Three years before winning the presidency, Trump gave a $10,000 check to bus driver Darnell Barton, who stopped a suicidal woman from jumping off an overpass in Buffalo.

A year later, Trump wrote a $25,000 check to retired Marine Sgt. Andrew Tahmooressi, who had been in a Mexican jail for seven months. While carrying loaded weapons, he had made a wrong turn on a California freeway that forced him into the Tijuana port of entry with no way to turn back. Trump sent the money to help Tahmooressi “get back on his feet.”

These examples, which have been independently verified, were first compiled along with others at Townhall by Liz Crokin. As an entertainment journalist, Crokin “had the opportunity to cover Trump for over a decade,” and in all of those years, she “never heard anything negative about the man until he announced he was running for president.”

“Trump’s kindness knows no bounds and his generosity has and continues to touch the lives of people from every sex, race and religion,” she wrote. “When Trump sees someone in need, he wants to help.”

Of course Trump’s acts of kindness, wildly inconsistent with his public persona, aren’t predictive of a successful presidency. But they don’t fit the outlandish caricatures sketched out by his opponents, and are therefore dangerous to their agenda.

Trump’s personal generosity is also the complete opposite of the Democratic Party’s campaign to replace private benevolence with government programs funded by collectivist methods. Any hint of wealthy Americans voluntarily helping others has to be buried, as they are the host organisms in a parasitic arrangement. The Democrats’ political future depends on keeping voters as far away from facts as possible.

When not waging personal attacks, the Democrats have tried to convince voters that the economy is shambles, and that as the rich grow richer, the suffering of the poor increases. But just as the facts reveal Trump to be much less than a demon, the data show them to be liars. Earnings of the bottom 10 percent have grown 4.9% under Trump while they rose a mere 1.9% during the Obama presidency. Under this “racist” president, black Americans have thrived, their earnings up 3.8%, a stark contrast to the 1.8% growth under President Barack Obama.

Trump laid out a long list of his economic achievements in his State of the Union address, yet there’s actually more. As we noted here Tuesday, four days after the speech the Bureau of Labor Statistics told us the economy created 225,000 more jobs than expected in January. The BLS also announced average hourly wages grew 3.1% over a year ago, another mark that beat expectations. It was also the 18th straight month in which wages increased by at least 3%.

These numbers are poison to Democrats’ efforts to beat Trump in November. And so is this non-economic data point:

“Nine in 10 Americans are satisfied with the way things are going in their personal life,” says the Gallup organization, hitting “a new high” over a four-decade trend.

Ideally, presidents should have little impact on our personal lives. But if the trend continues through the spring, into the summer, and lasts until fall, voters are not going to be in any mood to change presidents. If things are going well for them, why should they? History shows they took out their frustrations on President Jimmy Carter, who lost in a landslide to Ronald Reagan 16 months after he made his “malaise speech,” which didn’t leave Americans feeling good about themselves.

Democrats know that the more voters learn about Trump, the slimmer their chances are in 2020. There’s a reason they look so desperate.

— Written by J. Frank Bullitt

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