The Case for Trump and a Look at 2020

The Case for Trump by the political and military scholar Victor Davis Hanson is a book dedicated to the "Deplorables." It is a fact-based analysis of why Donald Trump was able to win the presidency in 2016. Beyond that, Hanson sat down with American Thinker and discussed the presidential election in 2020.

Donald Trump ran against both political parties and the East Coast establishment in the 2016 presidential election. He was the first man ever elected to the nation's highest office without prior experience in government, politics, or the military. In a nutshell, Trump appealed to a forgotten but sizable portion of the population: the working and middle classes most negatively impacted by decades of globalism. Through direct quotes from various individuals on both sides, Hanson makes a powerful case that the elite of both parties hold immense disdain for these middle Americans.

Hanson told American Thinker, "He was not supposed to win. With the victory, he interrupted sixteen years of a planned progressive agenda. This election was a referendum on prior credibility. His victory meant all those who were consulted in the past would be isolated because Trump was not necessarily going to listen to those in the World Bank, the Brookings Institution, Hoover Institution where I work, and the Council on Foreign Affairs, nor was he going to call past presidents for advice. This was an affront to the entire political establishment."

Before Trump, Republicans and conservatives usually did not take the initiative, nor did they go on the offense. "Trump did just the opposite. His aggression was very popular among the frustrated Republican voters. They did not want a John McCain or a Mitt Romney whose often passive attitude they saw as a cancer. McCain had ignored attacking Reverend Wright and his outrageous comments, while Romney never really objected to what 'moderator' Candy Crowley did in the second debate. Conservative voters were ready for someone who fights back. They might not like all Trump's wild comments and tweeting, but they thought Trump's combative attitude was worth it."

Hanson went on to explain that many voters saw Trump as authentic. Regardless of what audience he was speaking to, he always wore a suit and a tie. "He never adopted a southern accent when speaking to voters in that region as Hillary Clinton did, or changed his tone when speaking to the inner city as Barack Obama had, or wore jeans and a flannel shirt at state fairs as Joe Biden did. Even though he is a multibillionaire, people found Trump more authentic and empathetic. For example, after Hillary Clinton said she wanted to shut down the coal industry, he went into West Virginia and said he loved the 'big and beautiful coal.' He also gives straight answers, not the 50-50 type, such as 'on the one hand, in theory, maybe we will take a look at that, that is a good question to explore.'"

Fast-forwarding to 2020, Hanson believes that Trump's track record is pretty good. He is creating economic opportunity through growth, redressing longstanding trade inequities, reducing costly and poorly conceived overseas entanglements, cutting red tape that restricts business activity, and restricting illegal immigration that threatens...



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