(Editor's Note: The following opinion column does not represent an endorsement of any political party or candidate on the part of Newsmax.)
We are witness to a different, more seasoned Donald Trump than the man of eight short years ago.
At that time, he didn’t need be on his A game to beat sad-sack Hillary Clinton.
Her description of Trump supporters as "a basket of deplorables" did nothing to help her very much flawed campaign.
Mr. Trump held a press conference recently with U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson.
Following that performance, liberals can only come away from it very scared.
Our nation's 45th president was calm, reasonable, detailed, and assured.
In short, he was presidential.
Liberal media outlets like The Washington Post are fond for sowing the message that Trump has not "grown."
Perhaps the truly accurate assessment is Trump is not a pseudo-intellectual like the scribes at the shallow Post.
Actually, adversity has created a more sure-footed Trump.
Joe Biden was counting on using corrupt leftist governments to shake Trump but actually the opposite has taken place.
Now it's Biden who appears shaken, tentative, not sure of himself; a frail and weak, elderly man.
His recent performance in front of the elites of Washington, D.C., at the correspondent’s dinner, was pitiful.
Additionally, in the background, constantly, if not the foreground, is the fact that he and his administration won't even back our old ally, Israel, against terrorism exporting Iran.
Just who, or what, does Biden support?
He's certainly not standing up to Hamas, even on American college campuses.
Who would have thought that left-wing antisemitism would exist in the 21st century?.
I recall that during the 1980 presidential election campaign, an astonishing role reversal took place between Ronald Reagan and Jimmy Carter.
- Reagan was in command of the facts.
- Reagan had concrete solutions.
- Reagan was the calm leader.
- Reagan would stand up to the "Godless communists."
Meanwhile, Carter was beginning to appear as faltering, nervous, and unsure.
He seemed to shrink before our very eyes. As evidenced by his faltering badly in a jogging marathon and the hysterical "killer rabbit" episode during which a rabbit swam towards Carter’s boat while he was fishing, seemingly frightening Carter.
These things would ultimately show themselves in the polls.
Carter’s once commanding lead was melting away, as Americans were deciding the peanut farmer from Plains, Georgia was not up to the job.
Carter was "lost in power" as Bill Buckley once told me.
Reagan, the antiestablishment revolutionary conservative, won in a historic landslide.
Just as in 1980, another role reversal has taken place.
Joseph Robinette Biden is being hurried out of office and Trump is walking in.
More people seem more interested in Trump’s opinions than in Biden’s.
Trump hasn't been fazed in the least by the several fraudulent left wing lawfare government actions Biden has brought against him.
If anything, they've made him stronger, proving philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche’s maxim true: "What doesn’t kill you, makes you stronger."
On the issue of abortion, Trump needs to tighten his answers .
In 2022 the U.S. Supreme Court made the correct decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization, reversing Roe v. Wade.
Abortion should never have been a federal issue.
It belongs with the states, just as other social issues and actions are.
Marriages, divorce, adoption, children’s education are all determined by the states and localities, just as they should be.
Napoleon once said, "A leader is the one who knows the way, who leads the way, who shows the way."
Biden has never known the way, not meaningfully at least.
He's too weak and enfeebled to know the way or show the way.
Meanwhile, Trump is a lion leading a flock.
As Alexander the Great said, "I am not afraid of an army of lions led by sheep, I am afraid of an army of sheep led by a lion."
Craig Shirley is the Chairman of Citizens for the Republic, as well as a Ronald Reagan biographer and presidential historian having written six books on Reagan. He's also written The New York Times bestseller, "December, 1941" and also published the companion book, "April, 1945." He's also the author of the book "Mary Ball Washington," which won the People’s Choice Award from the Library of Virginia. His book on the 1980 presidential campaign, "Rendezvous with Destiny" was named by The Wall Street Journal as one of the five best campaign books of all time. Shirley is also the author of the newly released bestseller, "The Search for Reagan" and is now writing a book about the 2024 Trump campaign tentatively entitled, "Comeback." Read Craig Shirley's Reports — More Here.