We examine Trump’s first term job performance divided into the good and the bad, the bad first.

Trump’s bad actions include:

•  First on the list is a kind of vacancy when it comes to immigration restriction. Practically everything Trump said he would do in that line hasn’t been done, mostly through his own inaction or his failure to fight with the ferociousness and tenacity we expected of him.

From “The American Spirit” written when Trump had just won the election in 2016:  “I’m prepared to be disappointed in Trump but it is flamingly obvious he will be orders of magnitude better than Clinton would have been.”  Certainly the second part has been true but I didn’t expect Trump to be such a disappointment in some areas, foremost being immigration restriction. There he has been a milquetoast, more a wimp than a fighter. Today even his promises for the future have gone limp, dropping deportation of illegal aliens and focusing solely on border control. Success in only the latter will be too little too late.

“The Wall” should be understood as a metaphor for all methods of preventing migrants from entering the country illegally from anywhere by any means, not just migrants walking in across the Mexican border. “The Wall” includes an actual wall along the Mexican border, one that works, like Israel’s. Much has been done but it’s slow in coming to completion. There is no compulsory E-verify, mass deportation, the end of birthright citizenship, punishing governors of sanctuary cities, and many of the other immigration policy promises that helped get Trump elected.

•  Pandering to blacks and hispanics.

It’s the way politics has been since non-whites became a political force in the Sixties (and the left got rid of voting requirements – the 1965 Voting Rights Act) but we expected something better from Trump.

•  Trump surrounds himself with corrupt men, even his own enemies. A prime example is William Barr. Earlier in Barr’s career he was involved in the Ruby Ridge attack and later went out of his way to defend Lon Horiuchi, an FBI hired killer (both Waco and Ruby Ridge). [1]  It’s difficult to drain the swamp when you keep flooding it.

The people didn’t elect Jared Kushner yet they got him anyway.

•  Invading Syria in March 2017, then bombing in April 2018 under false pretenses, contradicting his campaign rhetoric. [2]

•  Ramping up the Afghanistan War in August 2017, baldly contradicting his campaign rhetoric. [3]

•  While denouncing socialism in words, he and Congress engage in massive spending. Regarding government spending Trump is worse than Reagan.

•  Taking advice about covid from Anthony Fauci.

•  What is Trump’s position on Julian Assange?  It isn’t clear.

The kangaroo court extradition hearing of Assange in the UK recently concluded and the foregone decision is set for January 4th. The prosecutors represented the U.S. but it isn’t clear who the people are behind them. When the farce runs its course Assange will be extradited and face a show trial in the U.S. If Trump thinks about it at all, he might be planning to pardon Assange but is keeping it to himself until after the election so the pardon doesn’t become an issue. (The MSM has been silent about the UK hearing.) Or he might be waiting until Assange is in the U.S. to protect Assange from a prison assassination in the UK.

One of Assange’s long time lawyers, Jennifer Robinson, has said that Congressman Dana Rohrabacher and Trump associate Charles Johnson, claiming to speak on Trump’s behalf, told Assange before the 2016 election that he could avoid extradition by revealing the source of the leak of emails from the Democratic National Committee. She says that Assange refused because it would violate Wikileaks’ editorial policy. If true (Rohrabacher denies it, which means little) and Trump has such power, it’s a black mark against him that he doesn’t do now what he could do then. [4]

Trump is finally reconsidering the case of Edward Snowden, whom shortly after his whistleblowing leaks Trump denounced as “a spy who should be executed” and now (11 April 2020) says that he will “look ... very strongly” into granting him a pardon. (Snowden has never asked for a pardon, only a fair trial.) Can we expect a similar reevaluation in the case of Assange? (After Trump’s remarks about Snowden, William Barr, the Attorney General, said publicly that he vehemently opposed a pardon.)

Trump’s good actions include:

•  Being so repellent to the Deep State that it has made its existence widely known through brazen attacks on him. You can read Rodney Stich for its earlier history. [5]

•  Bringing up the immigration issue. Were it not for Trump the mainstream media would not be talking about immigration.

•  Pointing out the endemic bias in the news – “fake news.”

•   Ending an Obama regulation that forced low-income housing onto suburbs.

•  Appointing Tom Fitton, president of Judicial Watch (founded by Larry Klayman), to a court oversight commission that has the power to remove judges for misconduct.

•  Appointing three not-so-bad Supreme Court justices. The last, Amy Coney Barrett, is said to have an originalist view of the Constitution. [6]

•  Aggressively prosecuting elite pedophile rings when Jeff Sessions was Attorney General (I don’t know about now with William Barr). [7]

•  At least trying to prosecute those responsible for the Russiagate hoax (Trump is being stymied by William Barr, which is his own fault, see above). [8]

•  Withdrawing the U.S. from the Paris Climate Accord.

•  Banning the indoctrination of employees of the federal government and its contractors with critical race theory.

•  Taking the U.S. out the World Health Organization (WHO).

All in all, in his first term Trump has been better, or in a few cases no worse, than Hillary would have been.  The 2020 election is 2016 over again, and ARI recycles its earlier “Trump is Hitler” arguments to get you to vote against Trump. However after Trump’s four year record as president their arguments are even more specious this time around. Then look at Trump’s opponent. I think Rand would have hated Biden far more than ever she did McGovern. (McGovern’s politics may have been abysmal but at least personally he was a decent man.)

In his podcast of 22 July 2019 [9]  Yaron Brook said (emphasis his, on top of a strident delivery throughout):

As Ed Mazlish says, “Every accusation the left makes is a confession.” The people at the misnamed Ayn Rand Institute are the real sell-outs and fifth columnists. They prefer criminally corrupt Biden [10]  (and the extreme leftists backing him) to Trump because Trump at least to some degree is working to restrict immigration and to return manufacturing to the U.S. His supporters do not apologize for him, they are proud of the positive things he has done and lament the negative.