The president wasn't presidential in honoring John McCain. That's precisely his strength

The recent furor over President Donald Trump’s muted response to the death of John McCain last weekend offers renewed insight into the mind of Trump, as well as evidence as to why, despite nearly universally negative coverage by the press, Trump remains as popular as ever with his base. Moreover, he’s gaining support among independents and even blacks.

Donald Trump was not elected to be presidential. America elected the real-estate tycoon/reality-TV star not because they expected the niceties, decorum, and political correctness that are the stock-in-trade of the DC establishment. He was elected to be a political neutron bomb detonated in the heart of the Swamp.

Rhetorically and stylistically, Trump is the anti-Reagan. Whereas Ronald Reagan was gracious even to his harshest critics, using a folksy humor to counter their attacks, Trump is a street-brawler with a sledge hammer who leaves no attack unanswered.

This blue-collar-billionaire style infuriates the political and Hollywood elites, but endears him to the millions of Americans in “flyover country” who are routinely mocked and dismissed by elites — which is why no scandal, real or imagined, has been able to dent his core support.

With McCain’s passing, Trump did the bare minimum to recognize the event. That’s because McCain, the epitome of the Washington establishment, loathed Trump, and the feeling was mutual.

Trump received enormous criticism for his initial response to the senator’s passing. Instead of an official statement, he merely tweeted, “My deepest sympathies and respect go out to the family of Senator John McCain. Our hearts and prayers are with you!” Respectful, not effusive, but with the history of feuding between the two, everyone read between the lines. Trump reportedly told advisers he did not want to lavish praise on McCain because everyone would recognize it was not genuine.

After all, it was McCain who infamously and spitefully to Trump cast the deciding (and promise-breaking) vote against the Republican effort to repeal ObamaCare — an effort McCain himself campaigned on. It was also McCain who said of a 2016 Trump rally in Phoenix that Trump had “fired up the crazies.” It was in response to that jab that Trump commented about liking people who “weren’t captured.”

The fires were stoked when the White House returned its flag to full staff after only a day and a half at half-mast (as per official protocol). Enormous pressure to re-lower the flag came from Republicans, veterans groups, and even Democrats like Rep. John Lewis (who now says McCain was a “warrior for peace,” a stark reversal of his 2008 comments about then-Republican presidential nominee McCain, who Lewis claimed was fostering an “atmosphere of hate” and “hostility” like the one that led to a 1963 black church bombing by white supremacists). Soon, Trump issued a proclamation re-lowering the flag to half-staff, stating, “Despite our differences on policy and politics, I respect Senator John McCain’s service to our country and, in his honor, have signed a proclamation to fly the flag of the United States at half-staff until the day of his interment.”

This is the essence of Trump: He heaps superlatives on his friends (or those he is trying to win over), while firing rhetorically brutal and often just plain nasty rebukes to his opponents.

This shunning of cultural norms and presidential courtesies has made him an easy target for his critics. Trump often creates public relations problems for himself with his relentless attacks when a kind word or an ignored slight would win points.

But Trump revels in the role of outcast and pariah. His supporters see every attack on him by the elites as evidence that he is their champion. And if they have to choose between a nice guy who gets steamrolled by the Left and a bare-knuckles brawler who conquers the deep state, well, that’s not even a close call.

After all, the media and Democrats have, since the nomination of Trump, lamented the “good old days” when Republicans nominated nice, respectable men like Bob Dole, John McCain, and Mitt Romney (who couldn’t be more bland and inoffensive if he was a vanilla bean). Yet when these men ran for president, Democrats still accused them of being racist, sexist, xenophobic, homophobic, rich (and for the rich) white guys.

At 72 years old, it is highly unlikely Trump will change. His relentless, bombastic, hard-charging personality made him one of the world’s richest and most famous men. It helped him dispatch 16 highly qualified candidates in the 2016 Republican presidential field. And it helped him achieve one of the most shocking upsets in American political history when he destroyed the Clinton political machine and won an election that, even on Election Day, many pundits and pollsters gave him less than a 10% chance of winning.

In the end, despite his abrasive style and often uncouth rhetoric, Trump has had a remarkable record of success in his first year and a half as president. So we can be appalled at his demeanor or we can accept him for what he is — a street fighter doing whatever it takes to restore American greatness.

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Elizabeth Warren’s latest attempt to end capitalism

Senator Elizabeth Warren likes to paint herself as a warrior for the little guy and for those that don’t have the money to hire lobbyists in Washington D.C. That may be the image she wishes to portray to the voters ahead of the 2020 election, but her actions scream Stalinist.

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) was created by the 2010 Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act. The agency has jurisdiction over banks, credit unions, securities firms, payday lenders, and other financial companies in the U.S. The agency is considered “off-budget” and therefore does not answer to Congress. The agency gets its funding directly from the Federal Reserve System. The only requirement of the CFPB is to appear and report twice annually before the House Financial Services and Senate Banking committee.

Current CFPB Director Mick Mulvaney appeared before the Senate Banking Committee earlier this year lambasting the fact that there is no oversight by Congress of the agency. Mulvaney stated, “while I have to be here by statute, I don’t think I have to answer your questions.” Mulvaney then went on to beg Congress to pass legislation to rein in the unaccountable agency. Mulvaney knows he will not be the director forever and does not want unelected bureaucrats having power that elected representatives can’t even check.

Make no mistake about it, the CFPB and the lack of accountability is the brainchild of Warren. It begs the question, why would a person elected to represent the people be in favor of an agency that has no oversight?

The citizens may have gotten their answer with another piece of legislation the Senator introduced earlier this month. On August 15, Warren introduced S. 3348, the Accountable Capitalism Act.

The bill is an abomination to the word capitalism. The act will create the Office of United States Corporations within the Department of Commerce. It would be the job of this office to decide what is capitalism.

One of Warren’s principal complaints about capitalism is the return on investment. Senior officials in many companies are partially compensated with stock. For this reason, if the company does well, the stock does well, thereby ensuring officials would do what is best for the company. The Senator doesn’t like this and believes it perverts the system. The bill would incentivize officials to ignore stock prices.

What the Senator is forgetting are the profits she decries are also returned to millions of teachers, firefighters, and police officers in the form of dividends into their pensions and 401Ks. In fact, over half of America’s private sector workers are invested in the stock market through retirement plans. Is Warren trying to sabotage the private retirement market with this bill?

One of the more asinine sections of the legislation would require U.S. corporations to have the purpose of “creating a general public benefit.” Unfortunately, no one can define what general public benefit means. Because there is no definition, it would mean unelected bureaucrats would have the ability to direct whether or not a corporation could form. This would put government bureaucrats in charge of the open market. If some GS-15 doesn’t believe Product A from Company B provides a good enough public benefit, it doesn’t happen. Sounds a lot like command-and-control communism.

Senator Warren is revealing who she really is. Between the CFPB and her latest Stalinesque idea, the Senator from Massachusetts is a totalitarian that wants people to have no control over themselves. She wants government bureaucrats controlling the economy and what people do with their lives. It is a good thing Sen. Warren is trying to appeal to the communist base in the Democrat Party; this gives the people plenty of time to see what she is really about: unelected bureaucrats controlling their lives.

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An excellent speech

Rapper and fashion mogul Kanye West made brand news comments about President Donald Trump on Wednesday, and the media is not going to like them it all.

During an interview with WGCI 107.5 Radio, West boldly predicted that Trump will do whatever it takes to “do the work” to be a great president for black voters.

“I know black people that voted for Trump that were scared to say out loud. Now that’s some 1984 thought-control programming shi*,” West said when asked about his support for Trump not being popular in Hollywood.

The rapper said he understands people who “would rather have a female president” and supported Hillary Clinton in the 2016 presidential election, but added, “I just don’t agree with it.”

When asked about Trump putting illegal alien children “in cages” and separating them from their families at the U.S. border, West reminded everyone that the president was following the same immigration practices as previous administrations.

 “That was something that was happening through a lot of different president eras — but now we’re seeing it.”

West was then asked about the historic violence in Chicago, where he is from. The rapper said former President Barack Obama had eight years to do something, and never did.

He said Trump winning the election gave black Americans the opportunity “as an entire community to see things that we weren’t seeing when Obama was in office. We as a collective wasn’t woke. Now everybody is woke.”

When asked on Wednesday if he believes Trump cares about black people, West paused and then dropped a bomb:

“I feel that he cares about the way black people feel about him, and he would like for black people to like him like they did when he was cool in the rap songs and all this. And he will do the things that are necessary to make that happen because he’s got an ego like all the rest of us, and he wants to be the greatest president, and he knows that he can’t be the greatest president without the acceptance of the black community. So it’s something he’s gonna work towards, but we’re gonna have to speak to him.”

“I got a direct line to ADIDAS. I got a direct line to the President. So, let’s see what happen with it and how I apply that to the city [of Chicago], because I’m going to apply it.”

His comments on Wednesday are eerily similar to what he said in April, when he boldly stated that “Obama was in office for eight years and nothing in Chicago changed,” adding, “Obama was our opioids. It made us feel like everything was good.”

Earlier this month, he also made headlines during an interview with ABC late night host Jimmy Kimmel.

When Kimmel asked about his support for the president, West stared down the liberal host and said he wasn’t going to change his opinion on something because extreme leftists tried to bully him.

“Liberals can’t bully me,” West said, noting that he is tired of leftists like Kimmel always trying to shame and pressure him every time he voices support for Trump.

West has refused to back down for showing his support for Trump, and the rapper claiming that Trump can be the greatest president for black Americans will undoubtedly trigger the liberal media.

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Trump threatens to intervene in the Justice Department: 'People are angry'

President Trump threatened Thursday night to intervene in the Justice Department if the agency fails to take action against corrupt Democrats, saying “the whole world is watching.”

Speaking at a campaign rally in Evansville, Indiana, the president told thousands of supporters that the heads of the Justice Department and FBI “have to start doing their job.” He mentioned former Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton, who was investigated but not charged for having a private email server as secretary of State.

“Look at what she’s getting away with,” Mr. Trump said. “But let’s see if she gets away with it. Let’s see. Our Justice Department and our FBI have to start doing their job and doing it right, and doing it now. People are angry.”

He added, “At some point… I will get involved and I’ll get in there if I have to. The whole world is watching, and the whole world understands exactly what is going on.”

Mr. Trump has a running feud with Attorney General Jeff Sessions, and has called on him to investigate Mrs. Clinton and others.

The president has hinted strongly that he might fire Mr. Sessions after the mid-term elections.

During the event for GOP Senate candidate Mike Braun, Mr. Trump said Democrats in Washington who are resisting his agenda “are trying to undermine the verdict of our democracy.”

“The most remarkable thing about the modern Democrat Party is how truly undemocratic they really have become,” he said. “The so-called resistance is mad because their ideas have been rejected by the American people. They’re the old and corrupt globalist ruling class that squandered trillions of dollars on foreign adventures.”

He criticized previous trade deals, saying they have led to “the greatest transfer of wealth in the history of the world” out of the U.S.

“What we did to our companies and our jobs, we should be ashamed of our leadership,” Mr. Trump said. “When we pledge to work over the corruption in Washington, these are the people we’re talking about. In this election, we can’t let up. We’re going to drain the swamp. We’ve replaced failed Democrat lawmakers with America-first Republicans, and it’s happening.”

The president also pledged to crack down on social media companies that he said are censoring conservative viewpoints.

“My administration is standing up for the free speech rights of all Americans,” he said. “Look at Google, Facebook, Twitter and other social media giants. I’ve made it clear that we as a country cannot tolerate political censorship, blacklisting and rigged search results. You know it can go the other way, also. We will not let large corporations silence conservative voices. It can go the other way too someday. We’re not going let them control what we can and cannot see, read and learn from.”

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Blue-Collar Optimism Soars

The economy continues to boom as Americans see their wages rise under Trump's leadership.

A new Harris Poll finds that a whopping 85% of blue-collar workers say that their lives are headed “in the right direction.” The high optimism level may have much to do with the booming economy. The latest economic numbers indicate that the surging economy shows no signs of slowing down. On Wednesday, the Commerce Department raised its estimate for second-quarter GDP growth to 4.2%, which means that annual growth for the first half of the year now is above 3%. And with all indications pointing up, it has become increasingly likely that growth for the entire year will be at 3% or better. The country hasn’t seen a year like that since 2005.

On top of the good GDP numbers is news on median household income, which is now up more than 4%. As Investor’s Business Daily reports, “Inflation-adjusted median household incomes in July hit $62,450 according to the latest release from Sentier Research. That’s the highest level since Sentier started tracking this more than 18 years ago. And if you combine Sentier’s numbers with annual Census data, median household income is at all-time highs.”

IBD continues, “More interesting is the fact that median household income has shot up more than 4% in the 19 months since Trump took office. It had been flat over the previous year and a half. Over the course of President Obama’s entire eight years in office, median household income climbed a mere 0.3%, Sentier data show.” Is it any wonder optimism is so high?

Harris also noted that 51% of blue-collar workers believe that the country as a whole is headed in the right direction, and 80% said that they are “very optimistic” about the future. 88% believed that their children would likely attain a better future than they. Needless to say, the large swaths of the country that Hillary Clinton and Democrats maligned and ignored — and then lost in 2016 — are clearly reaping the benefits of their vote. Go ahead and try convincing them that they voted for the wrong candidate.

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