President Donald Trump has dominated this era in American history because, unlike nearly all other politicians, he always speaks truthfully.
That does not mean, of course, that he never mixes up facts, or that he never conceals strategy, or even that he never takes a stance at variance with evidence and with which most of his Make America Great Again (MAGA) supporters vehemently disagree (see: COVID vaccines).
But it does mean that he shows courage by saying what he believes, regardless of his audience.
For instance, during a Sunday interview with Norah O’Donnell on CBS’s “60 Minutes,” Trump repeatedly delivered strong and truthful answers about deportation and illegal immigration despite O’Donnell’s attempts to gaslight the audience while shaming the president about tactics employed by agents of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
“More recently,” O’Donnell said in a clip posted to the social media platform X, “Americans have been watching videos of ICE tackling a young mother, tear gas being used in a Chicago residential neighborhood, and the smashing of car windows. Have some of these raids gone too far?”
The president did not blink.
“No, I think they haven’t gone far enough,” Trump boldly replied.
Liberal judges, he correctly noted, have worked to undermine the administration’s deportation efforts.
“You’re OK with those tactics?” O’Donnell asked.
“Yeah, because you have to get the people out,” the president replied. “You have to look at the people. Many of them are murderers. Many of them are people that were thrown out of their countries because they were criminals.”
Establishment journalists hate Trump in part because they don’t understand him.
Normally, their shaming methods — “you’re OK with those tactics?” — produce some kind of mealy-mouthed equivocation from politicians desperate for affirmation. But not Trump. He does not care about such nonsense, and his supporters love him for it.
“Well, you promised in your campaign that you were going to deport the worst of the worst — violent criminals, rapists,” O’Donnell continued. “But a lot of the people that your administration has arrested and deported aren’t violent criminals — landscapers, nannies, construction workers.”
“Landscapers who are criminals, yeah,” the president beautifully replied.
Finally, O’Donnell came to the heart of the matter.
“Is it your intent to deport people who do not have a criminal record?” she asked.
Trump gave what sounded like an equivocating answer, but really amounted to the best and most truthful one.
“We have to start off with a policy,” he replied. “And the policy has to be [that] you came into the country illegally [so] you’re gonna go out. However, you’ve also seen, you’re gonna go out, we’re gonna work with you, and you’re gonna come back into our country legally.”
President Trump responded to concerns that ICE raids—with smashed windows, tear gas, and protesters shoved to the ground—have gone “too far” by stating that “they haven’t gone far enough.”
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O’Donnell tried to shame Trump over ICE. That failed. Then, she adopted the establishment media’s subtle and insidious tactic of conflating legal and illegal immigration. That also failed.
Meanwhile, the president never skipped a beat.
Did Trump give the right answer – should ICE be going farther?
He defended ICE, declared that he wants more deportations, and rightly labeled even non-violent illegal immigrants “criminals” — all while defending an immigration policy that blends justice and compassion.
Few Republican leaders in our lifetimes would have delivered such a bravado performance. (Never mind Democrats, who lie as easily as they breathe.)
Former President Ronald Reagan, of course, had the same truth-telling quality that Trump does.
One thinks, for instance, of Reagan’s celebrated “Tear Down This Wall” speech in Berlin in June 1987, when he defied his closest advisors and delivered a direct challenge to the Soviet Union.
No doubt many of us remember it well. In the 1980s, the establishment media engaged in hand-wringing over such language.
Democrats and left-leaning journalists accused Reagan of reckless warmongering. The Norah O’Donnells of the day pompously leaned forward in their proverbial chairs and asked, effectively, “Are you worried that your rhetoric will start a war?”
But Reagan didn’t care. He did something the leftists of his day also hated: he told the truth.
Thank goodness we finally have another president willing to do the same.
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