Trumpism Can Make America Great Again

Michael Johns

Cornell University

February 14, 2017

Thanks very much.

We have quite a full room, which makes me wonder: Dont you guys have dates? Its

Valentines Day! If you are here with a date, I hope it wont be your last one.

Well, in the spirit of Valentines Day, I am here with love and affection tooand

even pulled out one of my pink ties. Hey, its Valentines Day.

My own love tonight is this:

Last time I was here was over a year ago when my son Michael was looking at

Cornell. He loves this school and this organizationand anything he loves, I do too. So

thanks to all of you for the work you do, the discussion you facilitate, and the important

contribution you make to this great institution. Cornell is one of the worlds premier

universities, and your intellectual curiosity and search for answers to our world and

nations problems are a big contribution to that greatness.

On the drive up here tonight, I happened to see how this university describes itself

on its Twitter feed. Its a great description: Teach tomorrows thought leaders to think

otherwise and create knowledge with a public purpose. Tonight Im going to do exactly
that: Im going to try to get you to think a little differentlyto see what over 60 million

voting Americans saw when they voted for Trump, and well do all of this with the spirit

that well use this knowledge to serve the higher purpose of enhancing the greatness of our

nation, which relies on each subsequent generation to defend this nation and to continually

improve it for all Americans.

We have just undergone the closest thing to a revolution in American politics as one

can have in our Constitutional Republic, and tonight I will attempt to explain it objectively.

I will speak tonight not to the few of you here who may already support Trump, or those

who consider yourselves conservatives or Republicans, but to the vast majority here tonight

Im sure do not. These are the facts and sentiments that led to an electoral outcome you no

doubt did not want and did not predictbut Im convinced need to understand. I come

tonight not to defend Trumpism, even though you will find no more passionate advocate for

it. Literally since his announcement on June 16, 2015, I defended him consistently on

television, radio and in many forumsand I sought to defend or at least explain him to

those prone not to hear or process his important message.

So I come to Cornell not to defend Trumpism but to explain it.

For eight years and maybe longerfor most of your adult lives in fact, this nation

was headed in a decidedly left of center and globalist direction. Under this recent

administration, we saw the problems of other countries as inherently ones we were

obligated to solve. In many cases, we even wrongly blamed ourselves for these problems.

We entered into trade agreements that worked well for other nations but failed the
American worker. We opened our nation to legal and illegal immigrantsand bent over

backwards to accommodate their needs, desires and cultures but never considered the

impact we were having on our citizens.

This created what Trump correctly labeled in his Republican Convention

acceptance speech the forgotten man and womanthe working American whose

economic plight worsened on the watch of Obama and whose country became less

identifiable to him and her. And this past November 8, the forgotten man and woman

had seen enoughand their voice was heard loudly.

What inspired all this passion in these forgotten men and women. Let me deal

tonight with facts:

**Employment: All of you have probably heard and followed the employment

trends announced each quarter by the Department of Labors Bureau of Labor Statistics.

You heard, for instance, that unemployment under Obama seemed to be stagnant, or even

reduced. And it was always reported in single digits. In the final month of Obamas

presidencyDecember 2016it was reportedly 4.9 percent, which seems not unreasonable.

But these numbers excluded the biggest story of American unemploymentthe long-term

unemployed and those whod simply given up looking for work. While the short-term

unemployment came down, it was only because many of those short-term unemployed

Americans moved into the long-term category and ceased being reported in the primary

BLS monthly number.

 The reality was very different. In fact, there has really been essentially zero job

creation for native American citizens since 2000. The number of Americans holding a job

increased 5.7 percent from 2000 to 2014. But if you back out jobs taken by legal and illegal

immigrants, the number of Americans holding jobs actually decreased 17 million between

2000 and 2014. On Obamas watch, a bad employment situation got even worse. And

when the longer-term unemployed are included, the number of jobless Americans is not 4.9

percent. Its at least almost twice that9.5 percent, and some believe considerably higher

than even that.

**Economic growth: We first began formally recording the most important

economic growth metricgross domestic product growthin the early 1930s. In the time

since, every president until Obama had at least one year under their leadership where the

countrys GDP grew by at least three percent. But in eight fiscal years under his

management, Obama was the first president since GDP was recorded to not have even one

year of three percent growth or higher. On economic growth, Obama failed the forgotten

man and woman.

**Debt: On Obamas watch, our national debt doubled from $10 trillion to $20

trillion. This incremental, additional $10 trillion in debt that Obama added literally

exceeds the cumulative debt total of every U.S. President from Washington through George

W. Bush. When he was in the Senate, Obama said that George W. Bushs contribution to

the public debt was literally unpatriotic in his words. He then went on to exceed it by
many multiplesall without ever retracting his unpatriotic comment about Bush or

questioning his own patriotism.

**Taxes: Under Obama, our corporate tax rate wasand still is--the highest in the

developed world, which made the U.S. a hugely uncompetitive location to do businessand

it showed as company after company left during his and previous administrations. And

despite Obamas promises that he would only raise taxes on the rich, he increased them

substantially on working Americans tooand especially with the taxes associated with

Obamacare and the penalty for non-enrollment. In fact, despite his campaign promises,

Obama increased over 20 different taxes that specifically penalized and harmed the poor

and working class American. On taxes too the forgotten man and woman was very much

forgotten.

**Poverty: Obama ran for election in 2008 promising to lift up the nations poor,

and thats a goal we conservatives share too. It was a centerpiece of his campaign. Yet he

failed by every significant metric. The nations poverty rate was higher on Obamas

departure than it was upon his arrival, increasing roughly 3.5 percent on his watch. Real

household income decreased 2.3 percent on his watch. Under Obama, Americans

dependence of food stamp rose considerablyto an all-time high of 47 million Americans,

or 13 million more than before Obama took office. Great lip service was paid to addressing

poverty, but here too the forgotten man and woman was left worse off.

**Regulatory costs: Regulations too were no friend to the forgotten man and

woman. Obama launched over 20,000 new regulations on the American economymany
of them offering negligible value and all of them weighing heavily on working Americans,

whose employers were forced to absorb over an astounding $700 billion in costs associated

with these regulations, which harmed employment, harmed wages and ultimately harmed

the forgotten man and woman.

**Home ownership: Home ownership admittedly might be exaggerated as an

indicator of a nations economic healthiness but its certainly a metric that most want to see

increasing. But like just about every other indicator under Obama, it moved in the wrong

direction on his watch, falling 5.6 percent during his eight years in the White House.

**Wages: One of the most important metrics to the forgotten man and woman,

wages did not come even close to keeping pace with inflation under Obama, especially in

such important sectors such as housing, food and tuition. In fact, for roughly 35 years, as

we ignored the forgotten man and woman, wages in this nation were outpaced by

inflation, creating economic despair and anxieties for many working Americans.

**Healthcare: When Obama ran for president in 2008, he told us over and over

again about the 42 million Americans without health insuranceand also about how he

would fix this problem. And dont worry, he famously promised, if you like your doctor,

you can keep your doctor. And if you like your insurance, you can keep your insurance.

But eight years later, there are still tens of millions of Americans without any health

insuranceand for those who enrolled in the Obamacare plan, which had to be passed,

Nancy Pelosi said, so we could know what was in it. Well what turned out to be in it was a

vast expansion of federal intrusion into Americans healthcare and a program that offered
little real value to most since both its premiums and deductibles were cost prohibitive. If

Obamacare costs you roughly $5,000 a year and the deductible is that or even more, can

you really say youre insured? For most Americans, Obamacare has proven a very costly

catastrophic care plan that was nothing as advertised. And contrary to what Obama

promised, millions more lost their health insurance and lost their doctors as the new

coverage mandates forced employers to drop plans and physicians left insurance plans that

were paying lower allowables or proving unduly bureaucratic and time-consuming from a

claim filing perspective. Again, the forgotten man and woman was betrayed.

**Legal and illegal immigration: This is a sensitive topic because we are all correctly

taught that we should be inclusive to people, religions and cultures that are different than

our own. And I agree that we should. But its also true that the mass legal and illegal

immigration of the past few decades has shaken the fabric of many communities. Where

English was once spoken universally, it is now spoken less so. I saw one public high school

recently where 22 languages were spoken. Accommodating these students who were not

fluent in English had become the preoccupation of the schooland at the expense of basic

learning.

And of course we have all read of the other changes that have shaken the foundation

of traditional American society. The Christmas tree that once stood every December in the

public square and was a source of community pride is not deemed offensive to some

immigrants who reject Christianity and want its symbolism removed these communities

where is has long stood. Christmas break is now winter break. And the forgotten
man and woman is deemed insensitive if he or she is not welcoming to all aspects of

foreign cultures, sometimes up to and including Sharia law that violates the very

foundation of the American Constitution.

As millions of Americans entered the U.S. from seemingly every Third World nation

of the world, no one paused to ask the forgotten man and woman how they felt about it,

or whether it was strengthening or dividing their communities and nation. The reality is

that this mass immigration has driven up unemployment, driven down wages as the labor

pool has expanded, burdened public resources that were already heavily burderned, and

been at the core of several brutal terrorist incidents and many, many criminal incidents.

To the forgotten man and woman, its difficult to understand why we need more

people in this nation when we have nearly 100 million Americans not in the labor force, our

schools, highways, hospitals and other public resources are increasingly overcrowded, and

when the many immigrants have arrived in the U.S. wholly unprepared and sometimes

unwilling to integrate into our nation. And there has been a substantial cost to taxpayers in

terms of public welfare from this immigration. As of 2010, the cost per illegal immigrant to

American taxpayers was nearly $25,000 per illegal immigrant, including child welfare,

education, and public infrastructure costs.

And then theres the crime. I often hear that not all illegal immigrants are

criminals, which of course is untrue. The first thing they did upon entering our nation

was break our federal and state laws. But many have gone on to commit still more crimes,

and many very serious felonies. A few years ago, I was of the first to write of the case of
Josh Wilkerson, who was beaten to death, strangled and set on fire by an illegal immigrant

who had many times before been deported. When Joshs mother Laura buried her son, the

mass immigration advocates were nowhere to be found. She received no letter or

condolences from Obama. She was, in so many ways, the quintessential forgotten

American.

Nor are these one-off cases. In 2014, illegal immigrants comprised an estimated 3.5

percent of the U.S. population but comprised 36.7 percent of all federal criminal sentences.

Thats an astonishing and alarming statisticand one again the victim is almost entirely

the forgotten man and woman. The forgotten man and woman was victimized by the

crime in most cases. The forgotten man and woman is left with the burden of paying to

incarcerate an illegal immigrant who never should have been here in the first place.

And then there is drugs. The porous southern border has become a primary entry

point for some of the countrys most harmful drugs, including heroin, Fentanyl and a wide

range of opiods. As the children of the forgotten man and woman fell victim to addiction

and overdoses, not one singular national political leader took action on the obvious first

step in solving the crisis: Closing the open southern border through which most of these

illegal drugs entered our nation. In fact, for thirty years at least, both parties in

Washington have talked about securing our southern border, but they never did. It took

Trump to answer this call from the forgotten man and woman to take the hugely

reasonable step of securing it.

 Trade: In the early 1990s, as a foreign policy analyst at The Heritage Foundation in

Washington, D.C., I championed the North American Free Agreement, or NAFTA, as a

trade agreement that would prove positive for both Mexico and the United States. We got

it at least half right. It clearly benefited Mexico, as our trade deficit with Mexico expanded

and whole companies picked up and moved there. But the benefit to Americans was not a

net positive. And this has been the case with American trade with just about every one of

our largest trading partners the past few decades. We have shipped jobs and cash to

nations of the world; and they have shipped us goods somewhat cheaper than we may have

produced them ourselves. Its not an entirely black and white issue all the time, and its

also true that trade does also create American jobs. But on the whole, because our trading

partners manipulate their currencies, fail to meet the regulatory standards and costs

incurred in the U.S., and pay their workers substantially less, these trade agreements have

largely been rigged against the forgotten man and woman.

Consider the statistics of trade deficits with our largest trading partners:

China: $579 billion trade deficit.

Japan: $69 billion trade deficit.

Mexico: $63 billion trade deficit.

And as companies and manufacturers have left communities across this nation

and this is especially true in rust belt states like Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania and others

they left emptiness, hopeless and desperation in their wake. Laid off by the departure of
these companies, the forgotten man and woman and their entire communities have never

quite again the same. Drive through the rural areas of these states, and this fact is self-

evidentand the forgotten man and woman will be more than happy to tell you all about

it if you ask.

American strength in world: Most Americans have grown up in a nation where we

have been seen globally as the worlds leader. Most saw us win the Cold War without firing

a shot. They heard Reagan say tear down this wall, and then watched it fall just a few

years later. Most Americans know well of how our engagement in World War II essentially

saved the world. It is the view of most Americans that America should not be illogically

engaged around the world. Nor can or should we seek to solve every problem of the world.

But American strength until these past few years have never been much in question.

But over last eight years, the forgotten man and woman watched as our military

was decimated and dismantled. We saw Obama label ISIS a JV team, only to see ISIS go

on to expand its reach throughout Iraq, Syria andthrough terrorist attacksinto the EU

and U.S. itself. We saw Obama declare a red line in Syria designed to halt the

humanitarian suffering in that region only to do nothing after it was violated. We saw

several thousand great Americans come home from Iraq in body bagssometimes only

because their military equipment and manpower was deficient for the battlefield. We saw

our enemiesIran, North Korea, and to some extent Russiamove aggressively to expand

their own military might and global reach.

 In fact, on Obamas watch, the American military fell to its weakest state of

readiness at any time in history since World War II. Our aircraft are the oldest and

smallest in a long period of time. For the first time since World War II, there was a period

of time under Obama when we literally had not one naval carrier at sea anywhere in the

world. Our ship strength also fell on his watch. And our ability to confront a major threat

to American security from a formidable enemymuch less our ability (should the need

arise) to fight two conflicts at oncefell to its weakest point since World War II. These

were not oversights by Obama; they were part of a calculated policy of weakening America

and thus leaving it more vulnerable than ever to aggression, terrorism and other security

threats to our nation and people. Instead of building a military force that was best suited

to fight and win wars if necessary to defend American security and interests, the forgotten

man and woman watched on as the singular focus seemed to be turning the American

military into a politically correct social experiment.

**Energy: At a time when we could and should have substantially decreased our

dependence on foreign oil we purchasemuch of it from nations that dont particularly

like usObama refused to develop the Keystone Pipeline, to expand drilling in the U.S.

and its waters, and to substantially increase our development of petroleum, natural gas,

clean coal and other energy sources in our nation. In the meantime, we crippled the

American energy sector with extensive and prohibitive regulations that only deepened our

reliance on energy resources from countries not so burdened. The forgotten man and

woman looked on as American energy workers needlessly lost their jobs from these
policies and as the inability to utilize our domestic energy resources contributed to ever

higher energy prices.

**Infrastructure: And finally, on the issue of our national infrastructureour

airports, train systems, interstate highwaysObama talked a big game about shovel-

ready jobs and allocated a lot toward these ends. But he has left office with our air, train,

highway and other transportation systems in a state of utter disrepair and certainly not

competitive with other developed nations of the world. Meanwhile, many American

conservatives and Republicansskeptical of governments ability to do much of anything

welloffered no real solution to the problem. Trump, of course, arose with a $1 trillion

infrastructure plan and promised to make our infrastructure cutting edge again and do so

in a timely and cost-efficient fashion. It was a promise the forgotten man and woman

were waiting to hear.

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All of this was the background and environment in which the 2016 presidential

election took place. One candidate, Hillary Clinton, ran openly as a third term extension of

these negative trends. She refused to acknowledge almost any of these as major problems.

In fact, she wanted more of itmore refugees, more illegal immigrants, more regulations in

our economy, more government intrusion into health care, even higher taxes, more

government, and a continuation of a failed national security and foreign policy agenda that

emboldened enemies, alienated allies and timidly refused to even utter the name of radical

Islamic terror.
 Additionally, at a moment when Americans were seeking more harmonious identity

as Americans, Clinton instead continued the Obama agenda of identity politics. In

seemingly every speech, she spoke of the womens vote. She spoke of the Hispanic vote. She

spoke of the African-American vote. And she spoke of the gay vote. But at almost no time

did she recognize what the forgotten man and woman believethat the aspirations of

Americans really do not vary by gender or ethnicity. We want economic growth, job

creation, peace and security, good schools, safe communities. At a moment when the

American people wanted a unifying message, Clinton could not bring herself to break with

the identity politics on which her Democratic Party increasingly rests.

Trump was much more astute. He saw that the typical American voter had seen

enough of business as usual in Washington, D.C. He called out and offered solutions to the

trade, immigration and fiscal policies that were harming the forgotten man and woman.

He promised a rebuilding of American defenses, support for American law enforcement,

tax and regulatory cuts to stimulate our economy, the repeal and replacement of

Obamacare, renegotiation of trade agreements in terms that would be fairer to American

workers, and a commitment to protecting an American identity that ultimately defines all

of us as Americans.

Some final comments on the significance of all of this: I believe Trumps election is

precisely the sort of historic shift that the Republican Party needed if it were to survive as a

national political force. If you look at 2008 and 2012, it was clear that neither the McCain

nor Romney, or the messages they communicated, spoke to what the forgotten man and
woman wanted to hear. But with Trumpism, the Republican Party can once again say

that it is in fact the party of working Americans.

And this, I believe, is ultimately the legacy of Obamanot just that he left the

nation worse than he founded it, but that on his watch the Democratic Party was reduced

to a minor political party with narrow appeal geographically and demographically. The

ultimate metric of Obamas legacy is the number 1,030. Thats the number of state

government, gubernatorial and Congressional seats the Democrats lost on Obamas watch

as he ignored and argued with the forgotten man and woman.

Its true that Trumpism is shunned and misunderstood by mainstream media and at

prestigious universities like the one at which we gather tonight. Ultimately these

institutions too need to decide whether they wish to participate in the mainstream of

American political discourse, or, as was just the case with the Democratic Party, be reduced

to a minor sideshow.

Whats not misunderstood, however, is that the forgotten man and woman has

been heard loud and clear. And should Trump execute on the promises and commitments

hes made, the Republican Party and indeed this nation are going to be vastly better for it.