Booming economy, kept promises, making America great — again

The president is popular despite the 24/7 attacks by talking heads on cable networks, eager for ratings. According to CNN, “President Trump’s approval rating outpaces former presidents Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton and Ronald Reagan at the same point in their presidencies.” That news was glossed over by the mainstream media so they could move right back to name-calling and an obsession with Trump’s Twitter feed.

The polls indicate that President Trump is hitting remarkable highs in popularity. Rasmussen has him at a historic high 50 percent approval rating. The Washington Post reports that he is the most popular president in the modern era among Republicans, with the only exception being President George W. Bush immediately after the 9/11 attacks. A booming economy is a big reason.

{mosads}Other reasons for the president’s popularity in the face of a media conspiracy to beat him down (see the Boston Globe’s call for hundreds of Trump-bashing op-eds last Thursday) are his accomplishments on foreign policy and dismantling the Obama regulatory anchor that once slowed economic growth. The White House put out a list of Trump’s 500 days of greatness on June 4; this comprehensive list of kept promises includes “the American economy is stronger, American workers are experiencing more opportunities, confidence is soaring, and business is booming.” On foreign policy, President Trump has used the Reagan mantra of “Peace Through Strength” to leverage diplomatic talks with North Korea and Russia; on Iran, the president tossed aside Obama’s bad nuclear deal and offered direct talks with Iranian leaders with no pre-conditions to commence negotiations.

One underreported aspect of the supercharging of the American economy is the result of President Trump’s push to dismantle harmful, unnecessary regulations. In 2017, he kept his promise to eliminate regulations by a two-to-one ratio, including regulations harming farmers, energy producers, and the elements of Dodd-Frank that hurt regional banks and credit unions.  The repeal of the Obama individual health-insurance mandate, which taxed Americans who could not afford skyrocketing prices for health care, also provided relief to middle- and low-income Americans.

Yet another element of the economic revival was the passage of President Trump’s tax cuts. That legislation provided $3.2 trillion in gross tax cuts and a doubling of the child tax credit. The top tax rate was lowered from 35 percent to 21 percent, to help make American businesses more competitive and to put Americans back to work. Democrats are against more tax cuts for middle Americans that would take even more money out of the hands of Washington and put it into the hands of working, middle-class voters.

As much as Democrats like to trash the Trump economy — exemplified by the new leader of the Democratic lurch to the left, soon-to-be U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (R-N.Y.) — they have not been successful in gaslighting the American people into believing that current economic growth is bad for America. Nearly three million jobs have been created since President Trump took office, including 304,000 manufacturing jobs and 337,000 construction jobs, and the unemployment rate has dropped to 3.8 percent, the lowest rate since April 2000. Job openings have reached 6.6 million, the highest level recorded. Gallup polled and found that 67 percent of Americans believe it is a good time to find a quality job – the highest number since Gallup started asking the question. When Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) was confronted with a question about consumer confidence hitting an 18-year high, she lied by claiming that consumer confidence has not been restored.

It is clear that the Democratic Party and many in the media can’t accept the fact that President Trump is popular, in part because the economy is booming. Many seem to be rooting for a recession for purely partisan reasons, and some are even trying to trick the American people into believing the Democratic Socialist argument that capitalism is bad and all these economic indicators are meaningless. For them, more jobs, higher consumer confidence and a growing economy is bad.

Americans know better, so expect the predicted “Democratic wave” this fall to be a small ripple, one in which voters send a message to Washington — it’s “the economy, stupid.”

Corey R. Lewandowski (@CLewandowski_) served as a campaign manager to Donald J. Trump, the 45th president of the United States. He is co-author of “Let Trump Be Trump: The Inside Story of his Rise to the Presidency,” and senior adviser to the Great America Committee, Vice President Mike Pence‘s political action committee.