President-elect Donald Trump is starting this presidency without the obstruction and baggage of the 2017 first term, according to Victor Davis Hanson.
In an opinion piece published in the New York Post, Hanson argues that, because Trump is seen as a "welcome relief" from current President Joe Biden, who will leave office with a 36% approval rating, and from the left's "cultural revolution" and "fringe policies."
Trump was polling between 35-40% before he won in 2016, and would average approximately a 41% approval rating throughout his first term, Hanson notes. However, now, "Trump already polls well over 50% approval."
Before Trump's first inauguration, Democrat interests ran ads to urge electors to elect Hillary Clinton. In addition, massive demonstrations occurred on Inauguration Day. The Russia collusion hoax was being spread around that time, ultimately leading to special counsel Robert Mueller derailing the Trump presidency's first two years. The subsequent phony impeachments, the laptop hoax, the COVID-19 lockdowns, and the George Floyd riots occurred as well during Trump's first term.
However, the 2024-25 Trump transition has "all but assumed the presidency," Hanson states.
Why? Because "[T]he prior Biden years are now seen as abnormal."
"The left's cultural revolution championed fringe policies never quite seen before: destroying the border, welcoming in 12 million illegal aliens, nihilist critical race and legal theories, institutionalizing a third sex and mandating woke/DEI quotas and indoctrination sessions.
"Yet Biden had inherited from Trump a secure border, an economy rebounding after the COVID quarantines, 1.23% inflation, no wars abroad and cheap energy," Hanson writes.
In reaction to Biden's policies being extremely unpopular, Trump processes to both restore and expand his first-term success.
In addition, Trump's energy and enthusiasm is a major contrast to Biden's "four years of presidential stumbling, wandering, incoherence, mind-freezes and angry, 'get-off-my-grass' aged fragility."
Other reasons include what Trump has endured in the last few years, his major expanding of the MAGA base, and his showing to be "more experienced, and more measured and reflective than in 2016," and that "[H]is team too was more disciplined and street-smart, led by savvy Susan Wiles."
Jeremy Frankel ✉
Jeremy Frankel is a Newsmax writer reporting on news and politics.
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