Trump buy American
Fair warning: I'll squarely defend Trump in this article. I'll hone in on the good things he has done. Lo' and behold: there are many. With Trump's press coverage being 95% negative, I think that approach is needed, necessary and long-overdue.

I tried to make each section readable in and by itself. So skim over the headlines, pick a topic, read a bit, get upset (because "I defend the orange monster") and think: what if?

There's plenty of topics. I selected the following (and might address others if there's enough interest).
  • Medical Care
  • Foreign Interventions
  • Tax Cuts
  • Lobbying
  • "Fake News"
  • Immigration
  • BLM
  • Deportations
  • Border Wall
  • Trade Wars
  • Misogyny
  • Environment
  • Conceding Elections 2020
"I've been studying the news media and elections for more than 35 years. Trust me — there's never been anything like it." Rich Noyes, research director for a (Conservative) press watchdog.
The Bulleted List of Trump's Good Side

Medical care

"Obamacare", the Affordable Care Act or ACA is often featured in the press as if it were in any way the kind of "universal healthcare" most of Europe has. Yet Trump is right to insist on changes to it. ACA has been a boon to insurance companies and the pharmaceutical companies. Not so much to the average American.

ACA 'offered' the obligation for each and every American to get health insurance with private companies. It is not in any way 'affordable' to the average family, with charges up to $1,500 a MONTH for quite basic insurance. A single person easily pays $400-$500 for that same Bronze tier coverage that doesn't include a lot of common ailments. You can ramp up to Silver, Gold and Platinum tiers, eventually paying, as a single person, above $800 a month. As a result, it has brought many Americans to the brink of bankruptcy and homelessness.

If you forego enrollment in Obamacare, you pay an additional 2.5% income tax or an amount which "can't be more than the price of the bronze plan". In other words, you would pay either way. Trump abolished this additional tax in the Tax Cut and Jobs Act. Which is to say that Trump didn't change Obamacare at all, he merely got rid of the fine people would pay if they were not able or willing to subscribe to the health care plan.

Trump didn't stop with trying to address this wrong. He took further action with the aim of reducing health care costs and drug prices. He signed two Executive Orders to that effect in the past two months alone. Apparently, the second one was needed because the first one had loopholes which were easily found and exploited by big pharma.

Foreign Interventions

Reluctance to Start New Wars

The MSM has spun this positive into a negative by claiming that "he started an internal ("BLM") war", but let's get back to that later. This is about international military interventions. The fact is, Trump didn't start any. None. Not a single one. Research it and you'll find that this is the first president to have done so since at least World War II. Full stop. End of story and let it sink in. How can you spin this as negative? Unless you are a mainstream presstitude? You might think about Carter, but he oversaw the destabilization of the entire Middle-East by supporting the removal of the Shah. Gerald Ford might be the other exception. Still, what Trump is doing here is pretty exceptional and I can't but think that this refusal to start new wars is praiseworthy.

But how is Trump's war record covered by the mainstream? Let's use CNN, which is very, very anti-Trump, as the reference here. The only praise Trump received for his foreign policy was from veteran reporter Fareed Zakharia when he boasted that "Trump just became president of the United States" because he launched 59 Tomahawks on Syria, each costing $1.8 million. That should tell you a lot about CNN and the left-wing media.

Or remember the backlash when Trump announced that he'll pull out the troops from Northern Syria. The press was up in arms, writing one story after another how the Kurds would be massacred. Did it happen? No. Northern Syria is more peaceful now than it has been in the last 9 years of CIA-backed civil war. Go read the section "In it for the oil" a bit further down the page for more information.

In all, it looks like the mainstream media likes perpetual war and Trump doesn't give it. I think we should all appreciate that.

North-Korea

Kim Yong-Un experiments with nuclear weapons, but what choice does he really have? Iraq didn't have them. Libya didn't. Syria does not. Afghanistan, Somalia, Yemen, Venezuela... They all do not. But by now you know what happens to countries that don't have WMDs when the CIA claims they do.

Trump's rhetoric toward N. Korea was strong-worded and strange, but he also was the first president since 1953 to set a foot in the mysterious North-Asian country, and relations turned better.

What's the.alternative? I wonder.

Russia

Surely a contentious topic. Since Trump's first campaign he's been saying he'd mend ties with Russia. Again one wonders what the alternative would be. Increasing tensions to the point of war, and a very destructive one at that?

The DNC has been touting "Russian Collusion" ever since Trump was elected (before in fact). We should remember that the Obama administration started the public anti-Russian vibe at the end of 2013. It jacked up the feigned outrage in 2014 over Ukraine. Never mind that Hunter Biden was involved with Burisma and was being investigated for corruption by the Ukrainian prosecutor's office. Never mind his father, presidential hopeful Joe Biden, demanded from the newly instated president Poroshenko that he fire the prosecutor general "before he boarded the plane". That's not Fake News of course: Joe Biden is on record saying so during a panel discussion at the Council of Foreign Relations.

If the media's job was to objectively inform the population, they would be applauding Trump's attempts at a reproachment with Russia. But they do not. Instead, they've been demonizing Trump because of it. When the White House and the Kremlin issued only their second joint statement back in early May, the media imposed a virtual blackout on the story, despite the fact (or because of the fact) that the message was one of hope, as I noted in this article.

I'll write it again: what's the alternative to mending ties with Russia? I don't see a good one.

China

Trump has gone all-in on renegotiating China-US trade. He's right to do so. China's production prowess at such low cost undermines the United States. It undermines domestic jobs. In fact, Europe should really follow what Trump does against the Eastern mastodon. European workers would be delighted. The international companies, on the other hand, wouuld not be, because they don't want to see cheap production replaced with the obligation to invest massively into more expensive local production.

In it "For the Oil"

When Trump announced he'd pull back all troops from Syria, he was lambasted for it. Remember that the US, according to ALL international laws, has no legal ground to be there. So Trump said he'd pull out. After the media backlash, he announced he would keep a few battalions. The media were sounding the alarm about the threat to the Kurdish "Rojava"movement. They stupidly predicted a massacre, despite the fact that it was in no one's interest to attack the Kurds (except maybe Turkey).

After the backlash against his decision to leave Syria, Trump changed course slightly and became the first president to admit exactly why US troops were in a foreign country. In his own inimitable style, Trump said words to the effect of: "Look. We like oil. The US likes oil. I like oil. Oil's the best." Do you remember any US president being this honest about foreign policy? Weren't we led to believe that the US "exports democracy" and fights for "freedom" and against "tyrants"? A US president being frank, direct and honest is not praised by journalists these days; they attack him for it. En masse.

Tax Cuts

Regularly repeated in the mainstream is the myth that Trump's tax cuts benefit the rich. They do not. They benefit the working class who have seen their tax bill decrease by thousands of dollars a year since 2017. In all reality, it was the DNC who insisted that tax deduction should have a steeper threshold benefiting the already rich. Not the other way around. Furthermore, they want to abolish Trump's tax relief which, as linked above, would result in the average American losing $26,000 an estimated in a decade.

The DNC, backed by its supporting media, have claimed that Trump's tax cuts on corporate profits are evidence of him favoring the huge conglomerates, but they fail to mention that the reduction from 35% to a one-time rate of 15.5% on cash and 8% on other assets made companies like Apple bring that cash "back home", half of the $250 billion parked overseas in Apple's case! Here's another take.

Lobbying

One of the first Executive Orders Trump signed was about lobbying. He outlawed it and had all members of his administration sign a pledge that they would not join a lobbying firm for five years after finishing their government job. Since lobbyists largely work for big, multinational companies (or their "think tank" groups), lobbying can easily creat an imbalance to governmental regulation in favor of these huge companies. This goes against what "democracy" stands for because government officials are, or should be, representatives of the people.

In other words, creating regulations making it more difficult to lobby is a good thing for the average American. Did you read this take anywhere in mainstream news media? I doubt it.

"Fake News"

Almost literally the moment Trump got elected, the term "fake news" become a household term as Trump took aim at the leftist media. Both 'sides' use it now, including the DNC backed by their corporate mouthpieces, the mainstream media.
Fake news
At the same time, and as if out of nowhere, "fact checkers" galore rose to prominence. They are now seen by many as the guardians of objective truth when in reality most of them "fact check" only in the interests of the democrat party; they favor, nay, uniquely select the mainstream narrative as "true" although plenty of questions are left open and unanswered. The topic is well explained in this article.

Trump still uses the term; he does so to address mainstream bias. Given that coverage about him is around 95% negative (which is absurd if you ask me), doesn't he at least have a point? If the claim that he used the term "shithole countries" is based on a WaPo article citing "sources who knew persons who attended a meeting where the president allegedly said..." and that is unmistakable proof he did say so, doesn't Trump have a point about 'fake news'?.

Or take the recent "bleach injection" as another example. The media wrote that Trump called for people to inject themselves with bleach. But it you run through the complete footage, you realize that he really never said anything of the kind. The same is true of the whole "Russian Collusion" story, which prompted a 3 year long Mueller investigation that turned up precisely nothing against Trump. Still, the media, to this day, write about it as if Trump was found guilty. The list of questionable claims in mainstream media is endless. You can wonder about the Skripals, about Navalny, about the White Helmets, about Maidan, about Belarus, about North-Korea and so on.

By repeating "you're fake news" Trump is warning people that claims made by the mainstream media should be taken with a large grain of salt. Anyone with any sense cannot disagree with him. Mainstream media coverage is polarizing the entire Western hemisphere to a dangerous extent. It should stop. The media needs to act like the fourth pillar of democracy they are supposed to be.

But, it might all be too late. Back in the 19th century, Mark Twain warned us already about media bias. Gramsci and Freud did so again in the early 20th century. Orwell was also very vocal about it. And of course, Hitler wrote a field manual promoting its use.

The question thus becomes: do you think that bias, that use of propagandist language to move public opinion in a certain direction, has been reduced? Has it stayed the same? Or has it been tweaked to perfection? My opinion is the latter.

Immigration and "Illegal Aliens"

BLM

Although African-Americans have (mostly) been in a difficult situation ever since they were "imported" to the States (pardon the language but bear with me), I wonder why BLM became so prominent almost overnight. George Floyd wasn't an exception. That kind of abuse by the police force has been going on for decades and (mostly) nobody cared, until now.

So, with BLM, I started wondering why a "standard" (but no less despicable) abuse of force suddenly became the focus of attention for months. Why did the mainstream media continue to report about "peaceful protests" while they literally aired footage of burning buildings at exactly the same time? Looting and arson is not defined as "peaceful" in any of my dictionaries.

Why did the (Democratic) mayors not react in time? Why did they allow a continuation until Trump put a stop to it? Why did Twitter label a Trump tweet as "inciting violence" while tweets many times more inflammatory (but "pro-BLM") were left unchecked?

Trump didn't start BLM; it was started by way of a media campaign and, no doubt, some well-heeled donations from left-leaning political groups. Trump wasn't being racist or defending "white supremacy". He merely did what any president would do: stop the riots! Reflect on how the Yellow Vests were disparagingly addressed by French President Macron for example, or how the media portrayed those protesting against the murderous covid-measures as "covidiots" and "right-wing conspiracy theorists". Both the Yellow Vests as well as the anti-lockdown "covidiots" were a lot more peaceful than BLM, but did not receive the kind of praise given to BLM. Why is that?

Trump has done more to try to unite Americans than his predecessors. He did more for the African-American (and Asian, and Hispanic...) communities than most other Presidents. I believe BLM is being exploited to portray Trump as a racist and to stoke social divisions so that, when he responds to further rioting, he can also be portrayed as a tyrant. The fanatical campaign to demonize Trump in the minds of a section of the US population ultimately seeks to divide, and thereby conquer, all Americans.

Deportations

Much brouhaha has been made of Trump's approach to immigrants. The reality is that he didn't change much of the legislation from previous administrations. The reality is that he deported less "illegal aliens" than his predecessor did. This might come as a surprise to many who saw Barack as a representative of minorities, although he certainly was not. Despite his attempt to present himself as a man of the people, Obama was (and is) much more a "part of the establishment" than Trump is.

Europeans often are confused with the "illegal alien" moniker. Some might think this is a derogatory term but it has been used, at least, since Bill Clinton's presidency.

Immigration and Walls

Trump has been targeted for the wall he's building and his claim that he'd "make Mexico pay for it". The fact of the matter is that it wasn't Trump that started building the wall but Clinton back in the nineties. Both Bush and Obama continued the effort, so Trump is just continuing the massive project.

What Trump-haters also seem to turn a blind eye to (helped by mainstream media hardly addressing it) is that walls are built in many places. Turkey has a huge one over 764km long. Even the EU has fenced of their outside borders from "illegal aliens" (the EU calling them "immigrants" of course). In other words, why is there such an outrage against Trump doing so when half of the Western world is doing exactly the same thing? Doesn't that reek of double standards and hypocrisy?

Trade Wars (China)

The Trump's administration is taking a tough stand on China and the Western press does not know how to react to it. It can't defend China too much, but it does not want to support Trump (on anything).

Now here's the deal. China has been used for the last couple of decades as one big factory by companies both big and small. Doing so, it has been undermining local production and local employment. China's rise on the back of this outsourcing has been astounding, while the Western world has been left in the dust. Furthermore, a lot of production know-how has been lost to the Eastern giant and production secrets have been willfully handed over to Chinese tech corps. It's now clear that the Western world in and of itself is unable to manufacture many of the goods that have been built in China for decades. It has become wholly dependent on Chinese acumen.

In a way, Trump is right to address that imbalance as much as he does. When he got elected on the campaign promise to "Make America Great Again", it's the efforts to bring manufacturing jobs back home that helps him do so. When domestic production is up and running again, he'll also have done a lot environment-wise. Hundreds of thousands of tons of cargo will not need to be shipped anymore from the other side of the world.

The initiative is praiseworthy and the EU would do well to follow Trump's lead taking a more aggressive stance on Chinese goods flooding its markets.

Misogyny

When I discuss Trump with women and "defend" him more than they expect, one of the first topics they bring up is his "grab them by the pussy" comment. Missing from reporting on that story was the context in which it was said. Back in 2005, Trump was tailed by a reporter during an evening out. One of his stops was a reception. While leaving, and getting into a limo, the reporter, Billy Bush, asked Trump: "Incredible. The moment you arrived the prettiest of ladies flocked to you. How do you do it?" Trump's answer was in line with: "You can not imagine what money and power do to some women. They offer themselves almost completely. It's as if you can just 'grab them by the pussy'".

That is not a motto he broadcast like mainstream would have us believe; it's a reflection of our world. Some women are willing to give up their bodies in return for wealth. If that were not so, then the concept of "gold diggers" and "sugar daddies" would not exist.

Trump is not a misogynist. He's a man of the world. You could argue that his words were ill-chosen for a president but that would be to ignore the fact that they were said in a one-on-one between two adults, as an answer to a direct question and, obviously, years before he thought about running for president or at least, a decade before he did so. I'll allow you all to imagine the words that surely have been spoken in private by former presidents or VPs such as Bill Clinton, George W Bush, Dick Cheney, or Joe Biden.

Environment

Much has been said about Trump's alleged anti-environmental stance. Often, it is immediately followed by the reference to his withdrawal from the Paris Accord of 2016. In reality, the Paris Accord was an empty vessel. The US staying or not staying in it will not make a difference. The complete accord, hailed as being a huge step forward by all mainstream outlets, is worth as much as the paper it's printed on.

There's more to Trump's environmentalism than an accord that no government actually adheres to anyway. Remember how he wants to "make America great again"? In part he's doing so by getting multinationals to invest in production factories back in America. GM invests $1 billion for example. So does Apple. Toyota goes in for $13 billion. Foxconn, a Chinese company, is building a display manufacturing plant and will pay $10 billion for it. Taiwan's TMSC $12 billion, and so on. All of that is a boon for America's employment and know-how of course, but I am writing this under the "environment" topic. The logic is as follows: with all these corporations bringing manufacturing back to the US, a lot of current container ship traffic will (eventually) be taken out of the equation. Trump does so by deploying the trade war with China which leaves these multinational companies without any excuse.

Trump's latest initiative is to enroll in the World Economic Forum's "One Trillion Trees" initiative. He signed the Executive Order a few weeks ago.

Election 2020 and Conceding It

The mainstream media has been rife with stories about how Trump will not concede the election. In reality, it's the Democrats who have explicitly made this statement. Trump, when he approaches the subject, does so because he believes the mail-in ballots are prone to fraud. He's right. Both Pennsylvannia and Ohio are already reporting issues with it.

Then we have Hillary Clinton - who never really conceded losing the election in the last four years! - stating that Biden "should not concede election under any circumstance", that he [Biden] "should not give in an inch". That comes after Harris, the nominated VP under candidate Biden, is on record supporting (often violent) protests and saying they should "not stop, not now, not even after election day".

Other Topics Left Unaddressed

Other topics which I could address are his response to Covid, to Venezuela, to Ukraine, Iran, to his tax returns, to his position on Ukraine, the UK, the EU, his nomination for the Supreme Court etc but the article is long already as it is. Given enough feedback I'll certainly consider it. Hit the comments!