Welp, let’s take your reasons in order.
“His” economy? I suggest you put GDP on a line graph and get back to me on that. I think you’ll find the line under Obama kept going at the same angle and then leveled out. And you probably ought not to compare the GDP growth rate to what Mr. Trump promised — it will depress you.
You’d think I would be very happy with the all time highs in the stock market. You had no way of knowing that stock picking was my retirement hobby. Was? Yeah, I’ve had to take my money and run because the Trumpian twitter feed has made the VIX go crazy. My wife said — and I agreed — that Trump could destroy the value of our stock much easier than the value of our home. So I sold out and paid the mortgage. I understand that if I had faith I could have stayed in and, so far, I’d be OK — but at my age you can’t ignore the VIX.
“Fixed the border issue?” Yeah, it only required locking up a few kids, I guess. There was no border issue. Illegal entries were at all time lows. Then came the alleged caravans of alleged invaders in such numbers as to require active duty military deployments here on the border. Amazing how the caravans disappeared right after the election, wot? https://www.factcheck.org/2019/07/trumps-numbers-july-2019-update/
Wiped out to Caliphate? My book on the subject, World War Isis, is out of date, but the part about Obama’s strategy was correct. What is out of date is the rise of MBS, although he is in it. Trump gets props for having the good sense to originate the mission to take out al-Baghdadi from Iraq even though Incirlik would have been much more convenient. His Turkish pal — to whom he would later feed our Kurdish allies — was not to be trusted.
Between trashing the Kurds and the clownshow he just put on in Iraq, leading to Iraq wanting us out (I can’t imagine why — doesn’t everybody violate the Status of Forces Agreement?) I expect we’ve not heard the last of the alleged Caliphate….but I doubt they’ll attempt to govern real estate again anytime soon. As I said in my book, they had a theological reason for trying to govern from Dabiq. That reason predicted Obama would send ground forces into Dabiq, but he had better sense even if it did cost extra time to train up the Kurds.
China as superpower? Well, you could mean that in a military or an economic sense.
In the military sense, the primary method of projecting power is the carrier battle group. The US has more of those than the rest of the world combined and most of the others are supported by our allies.
When Mr. Trump was elected, China had one, built around a refurbished Soviet carrier. But the keel had been laid for one of their very own and it’s now on duty, so you might say China’s ability to project power has doubled under Trump…and they’ve laid a keel for a third.
If you mean economic, the follow-on negotiations to Bretton Woods were done some time ago but the new basket of reserve currencies can’t be put together until China floats the Renminbi, which luckily for us they are in no hurry to do.
Why lucky for us? Because what Mr. Trump has done to the national debt with his tax cut means that when the US dollar is no longer the sole reserve currency, we are screwed. If we increased taxes to pay down debt, we might avoid the worst of it, but what the hell — it can’t happen while Trump is POTUS, so who cares?
Thanks to Mr. Trump, both Iran and North Korea are closer to being able to threaten this country with nuclear weapons. Iranian missiles are not scuds.
Of course, we have those love letters from Mr. Kim, and he never wrote Obama any love letters. I do hope Mr. Trump complied with the law and put them in the National Archives but I got a six pack of Lone Star that says he will not comply.
Last I looked, the increase in manufacturing jobs was marginal and every specific plant he promised has not happened. The Carrier plant in Indiana. The new plants by Toyota and Honda. And that was before the tariffs hit the fan…a fan made in China, no doubt. https://markets.businessinsider.com/news/stocks/trump-trade-war-loss-of-manufacturing-jobs-contradicts-purpose-tariffs-2019-10-1028577666
Oh, and don’t forget all those coal mining jobs he promised the miners would be coming back as quickly as he could get rid of those pesky carbon pollution rules. Well, he got rid of the carbon pollution rules and all the coal miners have to show for it is an all time high suicide rate.
I admit my first career was in government, so I guess that makes me part of the deep state. And I’m well aware that Mr. Trump said the Bureau of Labor Standards stats were not to be trusted…until they showed employment figures he liked.
Mr. Trump has, at various times, proven he did not know:
the constituent parts of the United Kingdome
the funding mechanism for NATO
the difference between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland
the difference between the Republic of China and the People’s Republic of China
how a balance of trade is calculated
who carries the burden of a tariff
the effect of different kinds of tax cuts on marginal propensity to consume
Oh, and he thinks Finland avoids wild fires by raking the understory, climate change is a Chinese plot, and windmills cause cancer.
Do you know who is considered the worst POTUS in history by consensus of academic historians?
That would be James Buchanan.
I bet you thought I was going to say that Trump will take the title from Buchanan. Nope. There’s no way that could happen, because Article Two of the Constitution says Mr. Trump can do anything he wants to do and therefore he will not let that happen.
