Thank you, President Trump!

The list of reasons that half the country owes a huge “Thank you!” to the 45th President of the United States, Donald J. Trump, is indeed a long one.

President Trump was possibly the least likely person ever elected to the highest office in the land. A true outsider, he had never previously served in public office. Not a Governor, Senator, Congressman. Nothing. This was a massive help to the President, as he was beholden to few special interests.

His detractors were many and virulent, building off a partisanship that began with the impeachment of President Bill Clinton. The Democratic Party leadership and their supporters, particularly an increasingly leftist American media, responded to the Clinton treatment by fiercely attacking President George W. Bush for eight years. That venom increased to an even more poisonous level when President Trump took office.

Those detractors should know a few things about we Trump voters. We didn’t vote for him because we thought he was some great communicator on social media. We didn’t vote for him because when he was younger he supposedly liked to, in his recorded words, “grab ’em by the pussy” and was a wealthy, white, privileged womanizer. We didn’t even vote for him solely because he wasn’t Hillary Clinton, the only other real option the nation was given back in November 2016.

The overwhelming majority of us voted for Donald J. Trump to become the President of the United States because he was an outsider. Because we were tired of politics as usual. We were tired of politicians – on both sides of the aisle – making campaign promises and then bargaining them away once in office. And we voted for him because he promised to get things done that we wanted done.

President Trump was able to put together an impressive list of accomplishments during his four-year term in office. Over his first three years, the rebirth and strengthening of the American economy to never before seen levels was perhaps the greatest, having the most impact on the widest swath of the populace.

The President led efforts to see passed some $3.2 trillion in historic tax relief while also reforming the U.S. tax code to benefit all Americans and put an end to the regulatory assault on American businesses and workers. Prior to the virus striking the unemployment rate had reached 3.5 percent, the lowest in a half-century. Unemployment rates for African Americans, Hispanic Americans, Asian Americans, Native Americans, veterans, individuals with disabilities, and citizens without a high school diploma all reached record lows, and unemployment for women hit its lowest rate in nearly 70 years.

His final year in office was dominated by the unleashing of the COVID-19 coronavirus on the world. While the pandemic put a major damper on his prior economic accomplishments, it was the President’s leadership in forming and supporting ‘Operation Warp Speed‘ that has allowed us to develop viable, safe vaccines more quickly than ever previously imagined. These vaccines will end the pandemic and return us to normalcy far more quickly than would have been possible under less forceful and decisive leadership. For the likely millions of lives saved, we will always be thankful to President Trump.

Besides the enormous economic benefits already mentioned and his strong response to the pandemic, here is just a partial list of President Trump’s accomplishments while in office. It was his promises to attack these problems for which we really voted for him, in both 2016 and 2020. How many will survive the change to a leftist American government under President Joe Biden is yet to be seen.

Three Supreme Court Justices who appear to favor an originalist interpretation of the United States Constitution: Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett. These three, for now, give SCOTUS a 6-3 majority of Republican appointees. Those six do not always vote lock-step in favor of conservative positions. But their overall thinking leans in that direction. This will help balance out attempts by leftist politicians to drag America towards socialism.

Almost as importantly, President Trump appointed judges at all federal levels of the United States court system during his term. Those include 54 to the U.S. courts of appeals and 174 to the U.S. district courts.

Though not a publicly religious man himself, President Trump repeatedly championed the ideals of religious freedom during his term. This was particularly so in his actions regarding right to life issues. On January 24, 2020, President Trump became the first sitting president to deliver remarks in person at the annual Washington, D.C. March for Life, stating “Every child is a sacred gift from God.” Perhaps no American president in history so forcefully battled to protect the lives of unborn children.

Under President Trump’s aggressive leadership we built over 400 miles of, as the administration calls it, “the world’s most robust and advanced border wall.” Illegal crossings of America’s Southern border plummeted over 87 percent where the wall was constructed. The President deployed nearly 5,000 troops to the Southern border. Further, he ended the practice of ‘Catch-and-Release’. Instead of aliens getting released into the United States pending future hearings, which they would rarely attend and instead would disappear into our country, never to be seen again, they were detained pending removal, and then ultimately returned to their home countries.

Under the President’s leadership the United States military was rebuilt with over $2.2 trillion in defense spending, including $738 billion for 2020. He secured three pay raises for our service members and their families, including the largest raise in a decade. In looking to the future, the President established the Space Force, the first new branch of the United States Armed Forces since 1947.

For his critics on the left who decry in knee-jerk fashion that he was anti-environment, racist, and didn’t care about the poor, that is simply a denial of the facts and a giving in to the constant negative rhetoric of the media and leftist politicians. Any who care about truth rather than propaganda need only examine the actual record, which can be found here: Trump administration list of accomplishments.

I often cringed when reading one of the many – far too many in fact – social media posts that came out from President Trump during his term, particularly on Twitter. Same for some of his statements during one of his many political rallies. He would have been far more effective as a leader, and possibly even had a better chance of being re-elected, had he simply allowed his actions to speak for him. Alas, that just wasn’t his style.

It is important to remember that more than 74.1 million American citizens voted for President Trump to be re-elected in November 2020. That total is nearly five million more than any other candidate for President has ever received in the history of our nation with the exception of Joe Biden. It is something that his detractors would do well to remember.

Supporters of President Trump are not all, or even mostly white, homophobic, racist, sexist, right-wing religious zealots. In fact, those fitting such a description are a distinct minority among our ranks. And despite losing one election, Democrats should also understand, we aren’t going away. We’ll be coming for the Senate and House majorities in two years.

While I don’t count myself among the “election was stolen by cheating” conspiracy theorists, my common sense and intelligence tells me that there were at least plenty of irregularities that need addressing before we hold another in four years. I won’t allow myself to believe the presidency was stolen, unless someone comes up with concrete proof that it happened.

What I will do is remember and acknowledge the accomplishments of the 45th President of the United States, Donald J. Trump. While his words were not always something that I could support, his actions on behalf of our nation while in office were almost always those that had my full and complete support. For those actions in office, I say a final “thank you, Mr. President”, and God bless you and your family.