In two weeks, President Donald Trump pulled off a miraculous series of upset victories, beat down his opponents’ attacks on him, and stabilized a White House that was always doing pretty well but wasn’t letting people know how well it was doing. Trump is clearly back in control of the narrative and stronger than ever.
His speech in Nashville Wednesday night railed against the corruption of the Ninth Circuit Court and the rogue judge in Hawaii trying to block his immigration order. But the biggest applause break of the night was his jab at Hillary Clinton. The crowd interrupted Trump for an extended period of time to chant “Lock Her Up.” This was the kind of moment in a Trump rally where the crowd is telling him to do something. This is the moment that never existed in Obama rallies — the moment where populism gets reciprocated. Earlier in the night, President Trump did an interview with Fox primetime star Tucker Carlson in industrial Detroit. Carlson offered a thoughtful line of commentary. Trump refused to confirm his opposition to Muslim migration to the United States, but he said that he thinks it’s had a bad track record on assimilation.
Furthermore, Rachel Maddow is utterly humiliated for running a big scoop about Trump’s tax returns, which showed him paying $38 million to the government, in addition to the fact that Trump hotel profits are now going to the U.S. Treasury, an institution that his predecessor embezzled from. Rachel Maddow is a terrible broadcaster who orates as though everything she says is important (playing the emotion and not the beat). Her entire career has consisted of tiny fake scoops propped up by the fact that no one who watches her has any news judgment.
This is a comeback for Donald Trump’s America.
Let’s go back to March 2, exactly two weeks ago. Trump was trying to get a comeback going after his big speech to the Joint Session of Congress. His speech was amazing so his establishment Deep State enemies, aligned with Barack Obama, went after Jeff Sessions. They pulled up an Al Franken quote and accused Sessions of meeting with the Russian ambassador. Sessions met with the Russian ambassador at the convention in Cleveland at an event co-sponsored by the Heritage Foundation and set up by the Obama State Department. Sessions recused himself from potential “Russia” investigations. CNN trained a camera on the Oval Office window through the blinds and said that Trump’s advisers were yelling at each other. The president was getting drowned in the fishbowl.
So he took to Twitter. His tweets about the Russian ambassador situation were gold. He called for investigations into Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer for eating donuts with Putin. It sparked the headline “From old photo to right-wing meme to Trump’s Twitter.” Then Trump revealed that the Obama administration was surveilling Trump Tower during the campaign, pointing to a FISA request granted by the FBI. Rush Limbaugh delivered arguably his best monologue of the Trump era that afternoon. “Obamagate” was born.
Julian Assange seized the opportunity to release his “Vault 7” files showing that the CIA spies on the American people through many of their electrical devices. The Begin-Sadat Center did a report showing how the Russians helped Democrats in elections for decades, culminating in a major behind-the-scenes battle over General Flynn’s role as National Security Adviser. CNN ran a hit piece about how Steve Bannon said Joe McCarthy’s anti-Communist motives were basically just, but they got their wires crossed because that was a narrative-killing thing for them to do. The whole Russia story started to die.
Trump is playing at a pretty high level right now, as evidenced by his ability to formally endorse the House Obamacare replacement bill while his supporters agitate against it. His supporters are not holding him responsible because they think he’s playing a long game that involves Rand Paul coming in and re-writing it. Details were not forthcoming in Nashville.
Trump tweeted respectfully on International Women’s Day, met with Elijah Cummings of the House Democratic caucus, and invited Washington D.C. mayor Muriel Bowser for an emergency meeting on snow preparations.
His administration seems like it is doing well.