This past week I asked a friend at the White House about how the president was holding up against the onslaught of media attacks. They didnt even deliver a glancing blow was the response. It wasnt for a lack of trying.
Has any president in modern times been the target of such a Blitzkrieg of orchestrated assaults -- from John McCains funeral turned anti-Trump scrum to Bob Woodwards discredited new book trashing the president to the media infatuation with the anonymous New York Times op-ed by a disgruntled federal employee who hates President Trump.
Here we go again. Trump is (for the umpteenth time) characterized as dangerous deranged delusional infantile racist and amoral. But Trump is like Muhammad Ali playing rope-a-dope while George Foreman (the media) is flailing away and punching himself out. The only people who pay attention to the anti-Trump screeds are already frothing at the mouth with Trump hatred. What is the point?
After all this time the resistance movement is still utterly clueless about Trump his followers and the appeal of his America First agenda. Just why is he deranged? Because he is overturning trade deals pulling the United States out of anti-America climate change treaties building a wall to keep out undesirables cutting taxes slashing regulation and insisting that Europe pay its fair share of NATOs costs.
Well yes. Guilty as charged. When dismayed reporters ask me why he is doing all these things that are so offensive to the chattering class my response is almost always the same: Um because this is what he promised voters he was going to do. Werent you paying attention?
Voters sure were. It turns out Americans outside the beltway werent so enthralled with the New World Order or the anemic Obama economic program that is being dismantled.
And what is the result of all this chaos and mayhem in the White House that the media is in such a frenzy about? Well as we learned last week we now have the lowest number of American workers on unemployment insurance since Neil Armstrong walked on the moon the biggest manufacturing boom in 14 years the lowest black unemployment rate ever recorded and an economy that is growing at 4.4 percent this quarter on top of 4.2 percent growth last quarter.
The surging Trump economy is arguably the news story of the decade and yet it is covered if at all as a ho-hum yawner.
The first rule of journalism is: Never bury the lead. The media does this every day.
Perhaps that is because the press corps and their economist sources are having a devil of a time explaining how a deranged president has been able to turbocharge the economy so decisively.
The only story line that The New York Times could conjure up -- and Im not making this up -- is that Trump is riding an Obama wave. Sure. And Tony Eason is responsible for Tom Bradys Hall of Fame performances. This Obama effect might be semi-plausible except for the fact that every policy Trump implements reverses President Obamas policy.
It is a virtual guarantee that when the economy does start to slow down (alas booms dont last forever) The New York Times will gleefully shout: Aha Donald Trumps economic policies are a failure!
Yes there is a bit of chaos and disorder at the White House. Yes some of the characters that Trump has hired had no business being anywhere near 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. By contrast Obama had an orderly and statesmanlike White House and he hired a cadre of highly respected and well-intended people. Yet all of this still produced the worst recovery from a recession since the Great Depression.
The other day I was on a panel with media reporters and I suggested in all seriousness that Donald Trump deserves the 2018 Nobel Prize in Economics. My fellow panelists almost visibly popped a vein in their heads. They ranted and raved about how stupid and dangerous Trumps policies are. Just who is deranged in this picture?
