Text:
Americans Elected ‘A Choice, Not An Echo’
In the final days of the presidential campaign, Hillary
Clinton and Donald Trump held a series of last-minute
rallies in the battleground states. The huge differences
between those events revealed stark differences between
the two candidates for our nation’s highest office.
Since Hillary couldn’t draw a large crowd on her own,
she depended on appearances by famous entertainment
personalities such as Lady Gaga, Bruce Springsteen, Jon
Bon Jovi, Katy Perry, Beyonce and Jay-Z. Despite the free
tickets given away by her campaign, many in the audience
left before Hillary even took the stage.
Some of those entertainers include vulgar and obscene
lyrics as part of their act, but that didn’t stop Hillary from
hypocritically hugging them on stage. Besides embracing
the worst elements of the entertainment industry, Hillary’s
own use of coarse language has been widely reported by the
Secret Service and military aides assigned to protect her.
Following the vulgar entertainment, Hillary’s brief
remarks consisted mostly of politically correct platitudes,
such as claiming to be “inclusive” while attacking her
opponent as “divisive.” Of course, the real Hillary was
when she said “you could put half of Trump’s supporters
into what I call the basket of deplorables – the racist, sexist,
homophobic, xenophobic, Islamophobic, you name it.”
Donald Trump has proved that those epithets just don’t
work anymore. Most Americans are tired of being told that
common-sense, traditional views are outside the bounds of
acceptable conversation.
Trump had been doing 2 or 3 rallies per day, but he
stepped up the pace to 4 or 5 per day during the week before
the election. His 7-day schedule included several stops
each in the states o f Florida, Pennsylvania, North Carolina
and Michigan, plus visits to Iowa, Colorado, Ohio, New
Hampshire, and Minnesota.
There’s no need for extra entertainment at a Trump
rally, because Donald Trump himself is who the people
came to see and hear. Most of Trump’s rallies drew crowds
o f5,000 to 25,000 people, often with thousands more lined
up outside waiting to get in.
Unlike Hillary’s substance-free remarks to people who
mainly came for a free concert, Trump gave a full-length
speech at each of his rallies. Unlike Hillary, Trump never
lost his voice, his energy and incredible stamina, his humor,
or his authenticity.
At every stop, Trump reinforced the signature issues
of his campaign: build a wall on the southern border, stop
illegal immigration and sanctuary cities, stop the influx of
refugees and Muslims (unless they can survive “extreme
vetting”), repair trade agreements that encourage companies
to shift jobs overseas, rebuild our badly depleted military
while staying out of unwinnable wars in the Middle East,
repeal and replace Obamacare, end Common Core and
restore local control of education.
Each of these issues is linked to the corrupt bipartisan
cartel that has run our national government since Ronald
Reagan left office in 1988. Imagine if this election had come
down to Clinton versus Bush, as many predicted last year.
The Clinton and Bush families agree on most issues, so it’s
no surprise that several Bushes publicly supported Hillary.
The theme that runs through any Donald Trump
speech is his instinctive desire for Americans to start
winning again, after decades of losing to foreign rivals.
Trump understands that the world is filled with enemies,
adversaries and competitors, not friends, allies and partners.
The stakes in this election were illustrated by an article
the Wall Street Journal chose to publish the Friday before
the election. Entitled “A President Clinton Would Be Good
for India,” the article by someone named Sadanand Dhume
endorsed Hillary because Trump’s “antitrade tirades are
dangerously kooky.”
It’s sad that the traditional voice of American business
apparently wants the next President to be “good for India”
instead of good for Americans. Too many of the Journal’s
readers profit from the global trading system that has
outsourced millions of American jobs to India, China and
Mexico, allowing those countries to grow rapidly while
America stagnates.
Americans left behind by the global economy were
attracted by Trump’s promise to return our country to
world dominance in every field of human activity. That
means employing our own citizens to help make America
strong again, safe again, rich again, and great again.
To give Hillary Clinton her due, she made one statement
with which all Americans could agree: “I believe this may
be the most important election of our lifetimes.” But the
real credit should go to Donald J. Trump, for framing
the issues of this election, standing up for America, and
providing voters with a real choice, not an echo.
Trump Takes on the Global Elite
A candidate’s closing argument, or last speech before
the election, can be revealing. Who can forget Obama’s
ringing declaration that his victory in 2008 would be “the
moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our
planet began to heal”?
The speech that Donald Trump delivered on October 13
in West Palm Beach will be studied for years by political
scientists trying to understand the Trump phenomenon. There
has never been a speech like it in American political history.
Appearing before thousands of cheering supporters
at the South Florida Fairgrounds, Trump began his
address by defining his campaign as a movement: “Our
movement is about replacing a failed and corrupt political
establishment, with a new government controlled by you,
the American people.”
With the understanding that his movement is on the
verge of becoming a new party in America, Trump then
unloaded a fierce attack on the corrupt leadership of both
political parties. “The Washington establishment, and the
financial and media corporations that fund it, exist for only
one reason: to protect and enrich itself. The establishment
has trillions of dollars at stake in this election.”
“As an example, just one single trade deal they’d like
to pass involves trillions of dollars, controlled by many
countries, corporations and lobbyists.” We saw how that
worked after then-Senator Obama promised in 2008 that
he would “renegotiate NAFTA,” then renounced that
pledge as soon as he moved into the White House.
“The political establishment that is trying to stop us,”
Trump continued, “is the same group responsible for our
disastrous trade deals, massive illegal immigration and
economic and foreign policies that have bled our country
dry. It’s a global power structure that is responsible for the
economic decisions that have robbed our working class,
stripped our country of its wealth and put that money into
the pockets of a handful of large corporations and political
entities. The political establishment has brought about the
destruction of our factories, and our jobs, as they flee to
Mexico, China and other countries all around the world.”
By an ironic coincidence, a few days before Trump’s
speech, Britain’s Financial Times newspaper reported,
“The world’s economic elite spent this week invoking fears
of the existential crisis facing globalization while avoiding
any mention of Donald Trump by name.” Bloomberg
followed with a similar story that “The emergence of
Donald Trump as a political force reflects a mood of
growing discontent about immigration and globalization.”
“The Clinton machine is at the center of this power
structure. We’ve seen this first hand in the WikiLeaks
documents, in which Hillary Clinton meets in secret
with international banks to plot the destruction of U.S.
sovereignty in order to enrich these global financial
powers, her special interest friends and her donors.”
That was a reference to Hillary’s $225,000 speech to
South American bankers on May 16, 2013. Hillary told
her appreciative audience that her “dream” was to have
completely “open trade and open borders” throughout the
entire Western hemisphere.
Hillary’s anti-Americanism includes her record of
favors for the outsourcing firm Tata, which exploited
the H-1B visa system to replace tens of thousands of
Americans with guest workers from India. Tata gave
money to the Clinton Foundation, participated in the
Clinton Global Initiative, and Hillary declared “I am
delighted to be the Senator from Punjab as well as from
New York.”
Trump then turned his attention to “the most powerful
weapon deployed by the Clintons,” namely the press.
“Let’s be clear on one thing,” Trump continued, “the
corporate media in our country is a political special
interest no different than any lobbyist or other financial
entity with a political agenda, and their agenda is to elect
crooked Hillary Clinton.”
Trump reminded his supporters that they are part of
a worldwide uprising against the globalist elite. “We’ve
seen it in the United Kingdom, where they voted to liberate
themselves from global government, global trade deals,
and global immigration deals that have destroyed their
sovereignty and have destroyed many of those nations.”
“But the central base of world political power,” Trump
said, “is right here in America, and it is our corrupt political
establishment that is the greatest power behind the efforts
at radical globalization and the disenfranchisement of
working people. This is our moment of reckoning as a
society and as a civilization itself.”
“The corrupt establishment knows that we are a great
threat to their criminal enterprise,” Trump concluded. “They
know that if we win their power is gone. But, it all depends
on whether we let the corrupt media decide our future, or
whether we let the American people decide our future.”
Trump Takes Charge
The town hall telecast from Washington University
in St. Louis on Sunday, October 9, was a reminder
of why Donald Trump dominated the field of 17
candidates who tried out for the Republican presidential
nomination. Trump’s compelling performance in the
second presidential debate was one that none of the other
Republican hopefuls could have given.
As if in response to the pundits who demanded that
he be more disciplined and “presidential” in the debates,
Trump gave what amounted to a master class in those
skills. Without yielding his steady command of the
evening, Trump was quick on his feet and several of his
retorts seemed to unnerve Hillary as she pursued her
strategy of relentless put-downs.
For example, when Hillary pontificated why she
considered Donald unfit to be in charge of the laws of
our country, Trump responded by telling Hillary that
the real reason is “because you’d be in jail” if Trump
were administering the laws. People have had their lives
destroyed based on a fraction of the legal violations that
Hillary has perpetrated.
Hillary switched back and forth on camera from her
phony smile and her mean-spirited real self, which the
split screen on television captured for tens of millions of
viewers to see. Trump, in contrast, came across as honest
and far more believable.
Perhaps the most telling moment in the debate was
when Hillary was asked about the long-delayed release
of excerpts from her highly paid speeches to Wall Street
bankers. She had concealed those sentiments during her
campaign for the Democratic nomination, despite Bemie
Sanders’ taunt that her paid speeches were more important
to the voters than Donald Trump’s tax returns.
In one of those secret speeches, she told her exclusive
audience that “you need both a public and a private
position” on the issues facing America. When Martha
Raddatz asked her about that two-faced admission, Hillary
stammered and compared herself to Abraham Lincoln as
portrayed in the Steven Spielberg movie based on a book
by Doris Kearns Goodwin.
Trump looked directly into the camera in disbelief at
Hillary’s ridiculous answer and retorted, “Honest Abe
never lied. That’s the big difference between Abraham
Lincoln and you.”
In another 2013 speech, given in New York to
executives of a Brazilian bank that paid her $225,000,
Hillary said: “My dream is a hemispheric common market,
with open trade and open borders.” That was what her
well-heeled Wall Street audience wanted to hear, but it’s
the opposite of what Trump and Sanders voters support.
Of the handful of Republicans who have turned
against Trump, many, like Hillary, are themselves staunch
supporters of “open trade and open borders.” Hillary’s
“dream” of a “hemispheric common market” has been
a longstanding project of the Bush family, including
President George W. and his brother Jeb.
Hillary’s “private position” for “open borders” echoes
what her husband, former president Bill Clinton, said to
business leaders in Melbourne, Australia on September
10,2001. As the host of that private meeting told the local
newspaper, “The (former) president believes the world
will be a better place if all borders are eliminated.”
Less than 24 hours after his Melbourne speech, 19
Muslims from the Middle East exploited our open borders
to launch the 9/11 attacks against America.
Two years later at Yale University, Bill declared: “I
think the great mission of the 21st century is to create a
genuine global community” with an “over-arching system”
of global governance. And in 2007 Bill Clinton praised
the benefits of “open borders” and “easy immigration”
while delivering the keynote address to a conference of
14,000 Indian Americans.
Eliminating national borders is the ultimate goal of
globalists in both parties, who now say we must open
America’s doors to thousands of Muslims posing as
refugees from the civil war in Syria. Hillary would not
deny or disavow Trump’s charge that she plans to increase
by 550 percent the number of Syrian refugees that Obama
has allowed to resettle here.
In a 2013 speech in Chicago, just released by
WikiLeaks, Hillary admitted that Syrian refugees pose a
real threat because Syria’s immediate neighbors, Jordan
and Turkey, “can’t possibly vet all those refugees. So they
don’t know if, you know, jihadists are coming in along
with legitimate refugees.”
Trump also effectively blamed Hillary for the thousands
of criminal aliens, including murderers, who are set free
and allowed to remain here because their home countries
won’t take them back. As secretary of state, Hillary failed
to use her leverage to pressure countries to take back their
own citizens.
Trump’s strong performance in the second debate
should silence his critics and energize his immense base
that cuts across the entire political spectrum. Projecting
a calm authority while staying relentlessly on message,
Trump reset his campaign on a path toward victory over
the establishment and the media.
Trump in Mexico Recalls Reagan in Geneva
Donald Trump’s surprise visit to Mexico on August
31, where he met the Mexican president and discussed
the many contentious issues between our two countries,
reminds me of President Reagan’s important trip to
Geneva in 1985. Reagan was more than willing to sit
down with the Communist leader in an effort to build
a personal connection between the two men without
sacrificing America’s vital interests in the Cold War.
The 1985 Geneva summit was highly advertised as
a potential showdown between Reagan and Gorbachev,
the supposedly reasonable new Soviet leader. When it
was over, Americans realized that behind Reagan’s genial
affability was a steely determination to protect our country
against the threat from Soviet nuclear missiles
Just as today’s mainstream media is bent on
undermining Trump’s call to put Americans first in our
dealings with Mexico, the media of the 1980s (led by
ABC’s Sam Donaldson and CBS’s Dan Rather) were
overwhelmingly pro-Gorbachev and anti-Reagan in their
daily coverage.
Left-wing celebrities from around the world converged
on Geneva to support the media narrative that a stubborn
President Reagan was refusing to consider Gorbachev’s
reasonable proposals for world peace. Congresswoman
Bella Abzug, actress Jane Alexander and the inevitable
Jesse Jackson were giving daily interviews.
I led a delegation of 25 distinguished women leaders
to Geneva to support Reagan and American nuclear
superiority. The media didn’t give us much coverage,
but President Reagan telephoned me afterward from the
White House to thank me for our support.
Reagan had been elected on a promise to “win” the
Cold War against the Communist forces arrayed against
America. Before Reagan, our country’s foreign policy
was controlled by men like Henry Kissinger, who thought
victory was impossible and that his job, as he famously
told Admiral Zumwalt, was “to negotiate the most
acceptable second-best position” for the United States.
After three decades of steady deterioration of America’s
place in the world, Trump is the first candidate since
Reagan who is comfortable using Reagan’s vocabulary
of winning. Trump has pledged to make America “win”
again, instead of being cheated and outmaneuvered by our
adversaries and even our so-called allies.
Trump’s visit to Mexico recalls Reagan’s trip to Geneva
in other ways, too. At both meetings, there was one signature
position on which the American refused to budge.
Reagan’s no-surrender pledge was his unwavering
commitment to the Strategic Defense Initiative, that is, to
build and deploy a system to shoot down Soviet nuclear
missiles headed for our cities. With Trump, it’s his rocksolid
promise to build “an impenetrable physical wall” on
our southern border.
Both Reagan’s and Trump’s signature ideas were
purely defensive weapons to which no country could
have any legitimate complaint. Reagan’s SDI was a nonnuclear
weapon whose only function was to destroy or
deflect incoming nuclear missiles.
Reagan stuck to that non-negotiable position at the
summit with Gorbachev the following year in Reykjavik,
Iceland. As we now know, that’s when Gorby realized
he could never win an open competition with the United
States, so that his “acceptable second-best position” was
the dissolution of the USSR over the next five years.
Likewise, Donald Trump’s wall is not a provocative,
but a neighborly idea to stop the rampant illegality that
harms both nations along the U.S.-Mexico border. With
no legitimate objection to erecting a fence, wall or other
physical barrier between our two countries, Mexico
should be grateful for Trump’s leadership and even agree
to help pay for it.
The value of a wall begins with stopping “murderers”
and “rapists” from freely entering and re-entering our
country with impunity, as Trump mentioned when he
announced the start of his campaign last year, but it
doesn’t stop there. Felony assault by motor vehicle is
another deadly crime that seems to be rampant by illegal
aliens driving recklessly without the licenses or insurance
that law-abiding Americans take for granted.
The wall would also stop the plague of heroin that
has exploded during the last few years of the Obama
administration. Deaths from heroin overdoses surpassed
deaths from car crashes last year and will hit a new record
this year. Most U.S. heroin is delivered by Mexicans
working for the drug cartels.
Of course, most Mexican immigrants are not murderers,
rapists, drunk drivers or drug dealers. But even the good,
hard-working people who come here from south of the
border, both legally and illegally, have such low education
and skills that they can’t survive economically without
massive public subsidies to provide for the care, food,
shelter, health care, education and welfare of their children.
Voters finally have the opportunity to choose a
president who will make America first by securing our
border and ending one-sided trade deals that favor foreign
workers rather than our own. Trump’s strong stance in his
meeting with the Mexican president demonstrates that
Donald Trump is the “choice, not an echo.”
This was the final article completed by Phyllis Schlafly
before her death on September 5, 2016.
