Trump: Most Honest President Ever?

There are hundreds of articles that have been written and published illustrating just how big a liar is this President. In fact, national periodicals like Newsweek and USA Today have published lists of Donald Trump’s lies. In fact, doing so has become something of a cottage industry. People just want to prove just how evil this guy is and in doing so prove to Americans that no guy like this should be in the White House. After all, America is better than that and therefore is better than Donald Trump. Take a look/listen to several examples:

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t like lies of any kind. After all, a lie is a lie. There’s no such thing as “a little white lie.” A lie is as much an absolute as is a truth. It’s simple: a woman can’t be “kind of” pregnant. Pregnancy like truth and lies is absolute.

But in the understanding of the current White House resident, it is important to know that while Donald Trump stretches the truth and may even as his opponents shout, tell an occasional lie. But here’s something that two years into his first term in office has become fairly clear: Donald Trump may be remembered as the most honest president in modern American history. That seems like a direct conflict with info in the previous paragraph. But there’s more than just what’s in the headlines.

It is true: Trump lies quite a bit. He said that he “enacted the biggest tax cuts and reforms in American history” (actually they are the eighth largest) and that “our economy is the strongest it’s ever been in the history of our country” (which may one day be true, but not yet). In part, it’s a New York thing — everything is the biggest and the best.

But when it comes to the real measure of presidential truthfulness — keeping his promises — Trump is a paragon of honesty. For better or worse, since taking office Trump has done exactly what he promised he would.

• Trump kept his promise to move the U.S. Embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, something his three immediate predecessors also promised yet failed to do. He promised to “crush and destroy ISIS,” and two years later he is on the verge of eliminating the Islamic State’s physical caliphate. He promised to impose a travel ban on countries that he saw as posing a terrorist threat, and after several false starts, the final version of his ban was upheld by the Supreme Court. He promised to punish Syria if it used chemical weapons on its people, and, unlike his immediate predecessor, he followed through — not once but twice.
• Trump pledged to nominate Supreme Court justices “in the mold of Justice [Antonin] Scalia,” and now Neil M. Gorsuch and Brett M. Kavanaugh sit on the high court. Trump also pledged to fill the federal courts with young, conservative judges, and so far the Senate has confirmed 146 — more than any recent president at this point in his administration.
• Trump vowed to pass historic tax reforms and signed the first major overhaul of the tax code in three decades. He vowed an unprecedented regulatory rollback, with a strict policy to eliminate two existing regulations for every new regulation. In his first year, he achieved $8.1 billion in lifetime regulatory savings and achieved an additional $9.8 billion in his second year.
• During the campaign, he told African American voters, “What do you have to lose? . . . I will straighten it out. I’ll bring jobs back. We’ll bring spirit back.” On his watch, African American unemployment reached the lowest level ever recorded, and his tax reform included a little-noticed provision creating “Opportunity Zones” to try to revitalize struggling towns and inner-city communities.
• Trump promised to cancel President Barack Obama’s Clean Power Plan, withdraw from the Paris climate accord, approve the Keystone XL and Dakota Access pipelines, and open the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil exploration. He fulfilled all of those pledges.
• On trade, he kept his promise to withdraw from the Trans-Pacific Partnership and impose tariffs on steel and aluminum.
• He also committed to renegotiating NAFTA and the U.S.-Korea Free Trade Agreement — and recently signed new deals with Mexico, Canada, and South Korea.
• He committed to imposing tariffs on China to force it to open its markets and stop its theft of intellectual property — and is following through on that pledge. Whatever one thinks of Trump’s trade policies, he is doing exactly what he said.
• The president pledged historic increases in defense spending and delivered.
• He pledged to bring back manufacturing jobs, and manufacturing jobs are growing at the fastest pace in more than two decades.
• He pledged to sign “Right to Try” legislation to give dying Americans access to experimental treatments, and did.
• He pledged to take on the opioid epidemic and  signed a sweeping bipartisan opioids package into law.

Where Trump has failed to keep promises, such as building the wall or repealing Obamacare, it has not been for a lack of trying. Only in a few rare instances has he backtracked on a campaign pledge — such as when he admitted that he was wrong to promise a complete withdrawal of U.S. forces from Afghanistan and reversed course. I’m glad he did.

But whether one agrees or disagrees is not the point. When Trump says he will do something, you can take it to the bank. Yes, he takes liberties with the truth. But unlike his predecessor, he did not pass his signature legislative achievement on the basis of a lie (“If you like your health care plan, you can keep it ”) — which is clearly worse than falsely bragging that your tax cut is the biggest ever.

The fact is, in his first two years, Trump compiled a remarkable record of presidential promise-keeping. He’d probably say it’s the best in history — which may or may not end up being true. It’s too soon to tell.

Summary

I haven’t kept a scorecard and I don’t have a “Trump-o-meter” to record any Trump untruths. Does he lie? I’m sure he does. Does he “embellish?” Absolutely. But one thing you need to consider: sometimes (and pretty often) he says things to simply drive the Media nuts! As you know, he cannot stand the mainstream media and the way they operate. He knows that no matter what he says they will demonize him for not being truthful. He loves to divert them by “throwing them a bone” every now and then to simply keep them lathered in their certain daily nastiness toward him and all those in his life. Why would he do that? He knows that if he keeps their attention, they will spend time and newspaper ink assaulting him and not others in his administration and his family. Besides that, he certainly gets a regular chuckle at their expense knowing that he got ‘em!

Try as they have and will, they have been unsuccessful in bringing him down! How is that? These — who are representatives of the elitists in every sector of American life — have not succeeded in even scratching his crusty exterior. And every time they attack him, he lobs a grenade right back at them. And his doing that further enrages them.

Will he be remembered in history as “the most President ever?” Who knows. Often in politics truth is NOT an absolute. Even saying that is preposterous. Believing it as I do is unfathomable.

While Donald Trump may not be the most truthful American president, there’s a really good shot at his American presidential legacy may be that of the most successful American president.

I can hear them gnashing their teeth. After all, it’s not fair: the Media hold an exclusive on making any president successful. The Donald is NOT their choice.