Trump Will Likely Lose, But he Doesn't Deserve to

By Henry Srebrnik, [Moncton, NB] Times &Transcript

Donald Trump will most likely go down to defeat on Nov. 3 — and most Canadians will breathe a sigh of relief.

They could no more conceive of voting for him than of casting their ballot for Benito Mussolini or Francisco Franco. But was there anything at all positive in Trump’s four years as president?

First, let’s take one thing off the table right away: Trump is not a “fascist.” Fascists like Franco and Mussolini were warmongers and controlled private armies or were themselves officers. They took power through coups d'état or street violence. 

Even if coming to power through legal means, fascists quickly suspended constitutions and assumed dictatorial powers.

They didn’t wait four years and face defeat in a subsequent election, with most of the media and civil society vociferously opposed to them.

Actually, Trump is a right-wing nationalist and isolationist. Even his impeachment earlier this year relating to a phone call to a Ukrainian president was nothing but political theatre on the part of the Democrats.

Now, let’s look at Trump’s actual record, as opposed to his undeniably terrible persona. In terms of the economy, unemployment in the United States had fallen to its lowest level in 50 years. The rate was only 3.5 per cent this past February, and for Black workers, it fell to an all-time low.

As a result of the Coronavirus pandemic the unemployment rate did rise to almost 15 per cent in April but had fallen back to 7.9 per cent by October.

In 2019, median household income shot up 6.8 per cent. To understand how impressive this is, consider that from 1967 to 2018, the average annual increase was a mere 0.6 per cent. The bottom fifth of households saw their incomes climb 10 per cent while the top five per cent saw their share of total income drop.

Trump pledged when elected to reduce illegal immigration and has done so. The closing of the last gaps in the border fortifications between Mexico and the United States is progressing. Trump also ordered the recruitment of some 10,000 new immigration and customs officers and 5,000 border guards as soon as he took office

He concluded agreements with Mexico, Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador stipulating that migrants should apply for asylum in the respective Central American countries when they enter them on their way to the U.S.

Mexico also committed to limiting migration from central America to the United States by deploying its National Guard and improving its own protective fences and walls. By 2017, the number of illegal border crossings in the south of the U.S. had sunk to its lowest level in 17 years, and it dropped by 84 per cent between May 2019 and May 2020.

As for foreign policy, Trump brokered the treaties between Israel and the Gulf states of Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates, with perhaps more countries soon to sign on. He also virtually eliminated the Islamic State as a force in the Arab world. And the withdrawal of troops from Syria, Afghanistan, and Iraq were positive steps.

Michael Doran, a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute in Washington, in a Sept. 22 article on the Tablet website, wrote that “Trump’s masterstroke came by breaking the hold of the Washington foreign policy establishment on the Middle East peacemaking business. In denigrating his accomplishment, the leading lights of American foreign policy have also conveniently erased from memory their unblemished record of outrageously bad predictions.”

But just as important, perhaps more so, has been Trump’s pressure on Iran, the world’s foremost enabler of instability in the Middle East and elsewhere.

He withdrew in 2018 from the flawed Iran nuclear deal negotiated in 2015 under President Barack Obama, and he has imposed several rounds of American sanctions on Iran.

In January, Trump ordered the killing of Iranian Major General Qasem Soleiman, head of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Quds Force, and a major perpetrator of terrorism in the region.

Finally, he strengthened Washington’s relationship with Taiwan in the face of Chinese threats.

But Trump may soon be replaced by a career politician who has little to show for his 48 years in federal politics. Truly, no good deeds go unpunished.