This Week’s Good, Bad and Ugly

The Good

(1) This past week, in a move contrary to Candidate Donald Trump’s clear support of the homosexual/transgender agenda, President Donald Trump’s Department of Justice threw former President Barack Obama’s mandate to allow males into female restrooms (at least in public schools) under the bus.  Conservatives, we have to love these “Easter egg” surprises like this one, because it protects public safety and restores a measure of sanity to our insane culture.

(2) This is good, bad and ugly at the same time–but I’ll put it down under “good” because we identified and rounded up this many bad apples in our country…that never should have been here in the first place. Last weekend, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) conducted nationwide raids for illegal aliens and netted some 700 violators of our nation’s immigration laws. If we did this day in and day out (i.e. behaved as if we really cared about the rule of law in our own country), a lot of illegal aliens would self-deport, and a lot more would decide not to violate our borders and our laws in the first place. The best way to stop people from breaking our laws is to enforce our laws.  By the way, in one area, 94 percent of those rounded up (151 people) had prior criminal convictions. By definition, when you violate our borders and immigration laws, you’re a criminal. It makes it even worse when these lawbreakers are serial lawbreakers. Foreigners who show contempt for our nation’s laws have no business staying in our country.

The Bad

President Trump’s National Security Advisor Michael Flynne’s “From Russia With Love” resignation after it came out that he had lied about his contacts with Russia, contacts which could leave him open to blackmail. This was bad, especially after Trump’s history of Putin fanboy love, as well as Secretary of State Rex Tillerson’s award-winning Russiaphelia.  There was a time when people on the Right pretty much universally understood that even though we defeated Russia’s Soviet Union, that country is still far from a bastion of freedom, and they are still not our friends. I guess those days are no more, ground to powder under the wheel of relativism.

The Ugly

Last weekend, Senior White House policy adviser Stephen Miller went on television and made an arrogant jerk of himself, asserting that Trump’s national security decisions “will not be questioned.” That sure sounded a whole lot like a servant of the American people and the U.S. Constitution, didn’t it?

It sounded a whole lot like that guy in the original 1977 Star Wars movie who sat in the Death Star conference room and lectured: “This station is now the ultimate power in the universe.” Trump has had overweening authoritarian tendencies, exposed en masse during the election, that only some of his most dedicated Trump humpers could ignore. Trump doesn’t need a guy like this running around adding to that persona. As Steve Deace pointed out this past week, a narcissistic billionaire managed to pass himself off as a “man of the people” by talking in language that somehow appealed to average Americans. That plan-spoken manner (crass and vulgar as it was, in this reality TV culture) overcame what otherwise should have been an image of a suit-wearing rich guy who fires people, and made many low-information voters think Trump was “one of us.” If Trump has any sense, and really wants to capitalize on that to use as a weapon against the Left, he and his surrogates should instead say things like “The will of the American people will not be questioned” or “The commitment of the American people to preserve this country will not be questioned.” If he had done that, he would have put the focus where it belongs in a country of “We the people,” not on a guy who already has authoritarian issues. It would also put the Leftist press (rightly) at odds with the American people rather than against a political figure who already has historic unfavorable numbers.

As it was, it came out ugly.

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Bob Ellis has been the owner of media company Dakota Voice, LLC since 2005. He is a 10-year U.S. Air Force veteran, a political reporter and commentator for the past decade, and has been involved in numerous election and public policy campaigns for over 20 years. He was a founding member and board member of the Tea Party groups Citizens for Liberty and the South Dakota Tea Party Alliance. He lives in Rapid City, South Dakota with his wife and two children.

Bob Ellis

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