President Donald Trump’s 2024 run featured 3 successful platform issues that saw him regain the presidency. They include the economy and inflation, border security and immigration, and law and order, especially violent crime and public safety.
The economy under Trump seem to be getting better until he decided on celebrating a day of “liberation” by announcing new tariffs on goods coming from across the world. When questioned about the effect it would have on the American consumer, Trump failed to acknowledge that tariffs are in fact a “tax” on everyone that buys things at a store or business.
The foolish and unnecessary actions received negative responses from many of our trading partners and the President took them personally. He then started playing dangerous international commercial games by raising and lowering tariff rates at a whim.
Also, fresh from a successful law enforcement operation in Venezuela, the President again decided to use the military power of the United States to play at war in the same way that Putin of Russia started out doing in Ukraine only, again like Putin, to find out that he got himself into an intractable mess and can not get out of it with dignity. Now, the resulting Middle East oil crisis that the President started is deeply affecting the world and particularly the American economy that has seen raised prices of historic proportions and so bad that his own appointed Federal Reserve Board has voted unanimously (against his wishes) to raise the basic interest rate to combat the inflation it is creating.
His most visible and popular policy was on border security which was lumped in with violent crime and public safety to create a powerful initiative that, in the minds of many, vindicated their political support that helped elect the President. Kristi Noem, the Secretary of Homeland Security (DHS) at the time, and thousands of new US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) recruits combed the streets of America hunting the undocumented for arrest and deportation.
Then came Minneapolis and ICE operations that appeared to deliberately kill American citizens. Scrutiny revealed that ICE had generally become a poorly selected and trained recruit army of masked shock troops thinking of themselves as being above the law.
Furthermore, the Trump 2024 campaign promise to go after criminal aliens first went by the wayside as almost half of those arrested so far are American citizens, legal residents or people with no criminal record. The constant demonstration of unprofessional, unconstitutional and corrupt practices has soured a vast number of Americans to the point that support for immigration and border security has gone down from 55% to 35% or less.
The issue has become so unpopular with Latino voters that Elvira Salazar, Republican Representative from Florida’s 27th District that includes Miami, is feeling the heat. Salazar, a staunch Trump advocate, recently came out with a campaign video addressed directly to the President that states that his immigration initiatives have gone too far and should be scaled back to the arrest of criminal aliens.
President Trump’s foreign and domestic policy blunders have left a diminished America, as he spends his time quarreling with our neighbors and allies, is unable to solve his war with Iran that created the massive economic crisis at home and abroad, is relegated to making dangerous self-serving threats and finds himself more focused on vanity project, especially if he is able to get his name on buildings and monuments. Given his blunders and the results of his conduct, his leadership looks bad.
The views expressed by David Conde are not necessarily the views of LaVozColorado. Comments and responses may be directed to News@lavozcolorado.com.
