The China Virus 19 is not what should scare Americans. The terrifying thought is: What if, G-d forbid, Joe Biden now were president?

This is a moment in history that calls for a uniquely strong and singularly focused president who can manage crises effectively, demand results with appropriate speed, cut through malarkey mercilessly, fire and replace people who cannot meet the moment, and also energize an enormous economy. There could not be a better president for this time than Donald Trump.

We can debate for years to come whether this or that step would have been desirable or even called for in January or February 2020 in confronting China Virus 19. Clearly, its emergence did not merit any alarm in the “news” media in January, nor in Democrat circles. One would think this disease would have come to the attention of the House Intelligence Committee no less than to committees on health. Yet Adam Schiff was focused on Pelosi’s Stillborn Impeachment. The Corrupt Journalist Corps were focused on the same. To defend himself from the vicious onslaught, the president necessarily was compelled to huddle with his attorneys. There were further outside distractions. John Bolton and his manuscript. Marie Yovanovitch, whoever she is. Some American military officer who had been offered a position in the Ukrainian cabinet and who became a star for the Democrats for a few minutes because he did not like Trump. By the last third of January, Pelosi still had not walked the impeachment over to the Senate but instead was handing out souvenir pens. That was January.

As February rolled in, more information about China Virus 19 also rolled in. The world was at a loss because the Chinese Communists had kept facts and data hidden from outside. So two Chinese travelers went to Italy. Others traveled elsewhere. We know the results.

Again, we can engage in fair and respectful debates today about how seriously to take China Virus 19, how it compares to influenza, hepatitis B, standard pneumonia, malaria, yellow fever, H1N1, Ebola, and other communicable illnesses that have taken far more lives so far. Ultimately, though, the urgent focus now is where we go from here. The stock market has taken a pounding. Stores and corporations are closed or severely stripped down. Toilet paper is gone because of mass insanity.

If we end our public speeches and invocations with the words “… and may G-d bless the United States of America,” pause a moment and realize that indeed He has. Trump, warts and all, is exactly the president for this moment, regardless of whether hydroxychloroquine in tandem with azithromycin proves effective. Trump always will be blamed by half this country and by 95 percent of the media for everything. That is his destiny, and it is his fate. Reagan had to live with it. Lincoln had to live with it. That is how it goes when you have a strong leader on one hand, and freedom to express opinions on the other. Can you imagine what Lincoln went through, as one incompetent general after another failed to break the Confederacy? McClellan would not fight and was insubordinate. Hooker got out-hooked at Chancellorsville. Burnside got cratered. Meade let the defeated Southern army retreat safely back home after Pickett’s Charge at Gettysburg. What kind of commander-in-chief was this Lincoln? What a bum! Indeed, that was the theme when McClellan ran against Lincoln for the presidency in 1864. Lincoln trounced him by 55–45 percent, with an even broader win in the electoral college, 212-21. And that was that.

Part of Trump’s greatness is that he is not intimidated by anything. In this, he differs from virtually every previous potentially great conservative American leader. Sooner or later, each has buckled under unremitting pressure from the Democrats and their left-wing media. When Nixon’s first Supreme Court choices were beaten back by the Left, he capitulated and named terrible justices in their stead. Reagan, too, was so desperate to mollify the left media that he began by naming Sandra Day O’Connor so that he could prove to be the first to name a woman. After elevating William Rehnquist to Chief Justice and thereafter naming Justice Antonin Scalia, Reagan next tried to appoint Robert Bork. The Left defamed and destroyed Bork, and Reagan buckled and went with Anthony Kennedy. Those two justices, O’Connor and Kennedy, disastrously impacted aspects of American society’s subsequent evolution in areas ranging from admissions and employment quotas (affirmative action) to abortion to the classic American family unit. The Bushes likewise mixed good and bad. From the first we got Clarence Thomas but also David Souter, and the second gave us Samuel Alito but also John Roberts and almost Harriet Miers.

Reagan gave in to leftist pressure and conferred a mass amnesty on millions of illegal immigrants, planting the seeds for the mess that has turned conservative states, including his own California, into leftist People’s Democrat Republics. One Bush gave in on taxes despite an ironclad promise. Another Bush likewise failed to lead strongly on the economy or immigration. The turning-point moments in American history were lost and cannot be retrieved. Now we are stuck with the fruits of nearly a century of government by liberal Democrats alternating with Republicans who promised to govern from the right and soon moved to the center-left. And then came Trump.

If Gen. Thomas Jackson of Clarksburg, Virginia, had not already become identified with the “Stonewall” sobriquet, it could have fit Trump. He has been standing there like a stone wall. Yes, he has compromised, especially in his early months in office, as he sought to govern effectively across the board. He was persuaded that Paul Ryan could deliver, that Reince Priebus could handle his role, that Rex Tillerson could lead at State, that Jeff Sessions could navigate the attorney general job. Trump was new to Washington but now knows, three years later, where he was wrong to take others’ advice and recommendations. And through it all, he increasingly has governed like a stone wall.

When Trump was elected in November 2016, the Dow Jones index stood at 18,000. Look it up. It hit 20,000 in February 2017. It settled into 21,000 three months later in May. Four months later at 22,000 in September. The next month 23,000. Two months later, in December 2017 — 24,000. The following month 25,000. Three weeks later 26,000. Then came a year of modest pull-backs in 2018, as Trump’s economic war with China began, and as Democrats and their Corrupt Journalist Corps gleefully predicted and hoped for a recession because, as they daily reminded us, Trump is such an idiot, does not understand markets as well as Don Lemon and Rachel Maddow do, and tariffs never work. Yet by April 2019, the market was back at 26,000 — tariffs intact, American farmers fine, and China blinking. In July it hit 27,000, drew back, but settled in at 27,000 in September. It landed at 28,000 in December and 29,000 in February 2020. And then came China Virus 19.

Trump knows what he is doing. On economics, he has heard all the attacks from “experts” who have trophies like Paul Krugman at the New York Times. Krugman once upon a time got a Nobel Prize in economics, many years ago, much as Yasser Arafat once got a Nobel Prize in Peace. Obama also got a Nobel Prize in Peace. But Stonewall Trump stood unflinching. He knew that if he did not stare down the Chinese on the trade war, we would lose forever our hope to balance the playing field with that crooked and G-dless nation that steals our intellectual property, manipulates its currency, hacks into our national databases, and cheats in virtually every aspect of commerce. In staring down China, Trump took a terrible risk with his base. What if farmers would turn on him because of the tariffs? What if factory workers would turn on him? And yet Trump did not back down, even as his determination slowed down the incredible rise of the stock market for a year. He understood — as so many of us did — that mainland China is controlled by communists, tyrants, crooks and cheats, with a President for Life, and they know how to “play” American government leaders who always capitulate, fearing they will lose their base of support before the next election.

Trump did not back down. Maybe that cost a few borderline Republican House seats in 2018. By contrast, LeBron James was such a coward that he could not say in China that the people of Hong Kong deserve freedom. And how fitting that the China Virus 19 and that dictatorship’s refusal to acknowledge the truth has resulted both in the NBA having to close down its basketball season while Nike has lost over $17 billion! How fitting! Go ahead and sign Colin Kaepernick to a new endorsement with that.

But Trump does not get intimidated. As weak-kneed Republicans behind the scenes have begged him to change course — on immigration, on trade, on almost everything — he has remained a stone wall, and it is they who ultimately have been the ones to change course as his instincts repeatedly have proven correct.

At this moment in time, Trump is precisely the person we need to lead America through the present mess and to recharge the economy as a societal “new normal” unfolds.

He is strong. He also has a fabulous Vice President in Mike Pence. Pence is cut out of different cloth, to be sure, but also is a tremendous conservative leader. The man is a deeply religious Christian and does not apologize or back down. He is principled, and he is exceptionally competent. This is exactly the leadership we need now and for the next 13 years, at least.

We saw what happened when the second Bush ran the economy into the ground, as had his father, and he was succeeded by Obama. Through the Wasted Obama Decade we watched the economy sputter and barely move. Yes, some numbers got better under Obama, but anyone who understands anything about economics knows that, after a recession, there always is a recovery. It is basic. A country is in a recession, so everyone chooses not to buy a new car, a new laptop or smartphone, or new clothes at the moment. Then, after a few years, everyone’s car starts breaking down beyond repair, everyone’s technology is out of date, and everyone’s clothes wear out, so everyone has to start buying again. And that, in two sentences, is why there always is a recovery after a recession. But somehow Obama managed to put a damper on the recovery. With all his welfare and food stamps and other “entitlements” inducing people not to return to work, all his anti-business regulations crippling entrepreneurs, all his anti-energy actions forcing us to rely on foreign oil from Arab Muslim dictatorships, and all his trade deals driving American manufacturing out of business — while shoveling our tax dollars into sweetheart deals with losers like Solyndra and into “shovel-ready” jobs that were never going to materialize but only would enrich and line the pockets of Obama friends and supporters — the Wasted Obama Decade managed to emerge with a dead economy. And then came Trump.

Can you imagine if China Virus 19 had come under Obama–Biden? The economy now would look like a return to Fred and Wilma Flintstone with Barney and Betty Rubble. America really would have the Green New Deal, with cars running not on gasoline but on two feet pitter-pattering under every vehicle. If this China Virus 19 had started with the Dow Jones at 18,000 instead of 29,000, where would it be now under Biden–Obama? Again, just watch an episode of The Flintstones. Thanks to Trump, we had an economic cushion. Yabba-dabba-doo.

G-d forbid that we would have a Biden in the Oval Office at a time like this. Just imagine his press conference: “I have met with my experts, and we are prepared now to fight rubella — uh, small pox — until we defeat every pock, big or small. And that’s exactly what Barack and I did a few years ago when we fought the Black Death together. That’s when me and Barack coined the phrase ‘Black Death Matters.’ Remember?” Can you imagine Biden restoring the country, the economy when this China Virus 19 blows over?

The forthcoming course of China Virus 19 is hard to predict, and we cannot know now what will be in August and September, six months from now. Trump has assembled an excellent leadership team, and the country has excellent resources and world-class medical personnel to calm the national mood and pursue strategies. Instead of having Biden and Democrats in power beating up on the pharmaceutical companies, this is precisely the time for a pro-business president to be in the White House, encouraging businesses to take risks and to move quickly though responsibly. This is the time for a pro-business president to be at the helm, encouraging manufacturers like General Motors to retool as needed, to manufacture ventilators and whatever the CDC says we need, while we remove fear of litigation for the makers of protective masks.

For three years all the political experts on both sides have been jockeying and leveraging and investigating and impeaching, but the November 2020 election ultimately may turn not on whether you are better off today than you were four years ago — but on whether you want to return rapidly to the greatness you only recently experienced under a dynamic leader or to sputter backwards under a blowhard who talks a quasi-coherent talk and who has a documented record of voting the wrong way on major issues for decades. Biden has spent much of the past year apologizing for many of the most critical votes he ever cast. G-d forbid that we have a bumbler like him in power at a time like this.