PUBLISHED: May 22, 2022 at 7:00 a.m. | UPDATED: May 23, 2022 at 9:34 a.m.
If you think Donald Trump colluded with Russia, you have been played.
The nation is still in the grip of a deadly news blackout, so you probably haven’t heard that Special Counsel John Durham’s investigation has uncovered the now uncontested fact that the Hillary Clinton campaign invented the entire story of Russian collusion. A law firm working for the Clinton campaign contracted with political dirt-diggers and coordinated with tech experts to cook up phony reports of internet traffic that were falsely said to prove that the Trump campaign had a secret communications channel through a server it shared with Alfa Bank, a financial institution in Russia.
Then the Clinton lawyers shopped the fictional material to major news outlets and to the FBI. The evidence of the scheme was revealed in the billing records — the lawyers billed the Clinton campaign for their media and FBI pitch meetings.
The Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee have already agreed to pay fines to the Federal Election Commission for falsely reporting the political dirt-digging bills as legal expenses.
You probably didn’t hear about that, either.
Be patient. Just this week, NBC News finally got around to reporting that Hunter Biden’s laptop contains authentic records showing that he collected about $11 million for deals with shady outfits in Ukraine and China while his father was vice president. You may remember that the New York Post reported the story of the laptop before the 2020 election, and when then-President Donald Trump raised the issue during a presidential debate, now-President Joe Biden thundered, “There are 50 former national intelligence folks who said that what he’s accusing me of is a Russian plant.”
If you believed that, you have been played.
Before President Trump was elected, a lot of people said he was unqualified and unsuited to the job and would be an unmitigated disaster in the Oval Office, and that was just the Republicans. Over on the Democratic side, one online publication kept a weekly watch on the likelihood of Trump’s election by measuring it on a scale of one to four horsemen of the Apocalypse, with four being the total obliteration of life on Earth.
Russia did put its nuclear forces on high alert, but not until Trump had been out of office for 14 months.
Do you miss him yet?
Let me take you back to March 2019, two years and two months into the Trump administration, when the Wall Street Journal reported, “The job market doesn’t get much better than this,” and “unemployment recently touched its lowest level in 49 years,” and “the unemployment rate for high-school dropouts fell to 5% last year” while “median weekly wages for the group rose more than 6%.”
Around the same time, CNN reported the Department of Energy’s projection that in 2020, the U.S. would export more energy than it imports for the first time since 1953, explaining that this “has important national security implications,” as the U.S. is “no longer as beholden to foreign oil as it once was.”
And Reuters reported that the Islamic State faced “imminent defeat in its last populated territory in eastern Syria,” after it once “boasted of victories in taking over around a third of Syria and Iraq at its height in 2014.”
In February 2020, Gallup’s “Mood of the Nation” poll reported that “Nine in 10 Americans are satisfied with the way things are going in their personal life, a new high in Gallup’s four-decade trend,” beating the previous high of 88%, recorded in 2003. The poll also found a 20-year high in Americans’ confidence in the U.S. economy.
That was then. This is now: one year and four months into Joe Biden’s administration, a new Quinnipiac University poll reports that 85% of Americans believe an economic recession in the next year is somewhat likely (40%) or very likely (45%).
Here’s another finding from the Quinnipiac pollsters: 75% of Americans are “very” or “somewhat” concerned that “Russia’s invasion of Ukraine will escalate into a wider war directly involving the United States.”
You probably don’t remember this, because it didn’t get much press coverage, but President Trump negotiated three peace agreements between Israel and the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Sudan. Remember when Middle East peace was impossible?
Do you miss him yet?
In January 2017, when Trump took office, the nation’s unemployment rate was 4.7%. Three years later, it was down to 3.5%.
When Trump left office in January 2021, the inflation rate was 1.4%. One year later, it was 6.0%.
On May 5, 30-year fixed-rate mortgages hit their highest level since 2009, averaging 5.27%, an increase of two percentage points in one year. And this week, a gallon of regular gasoline cost a nationwide average of $4.59, up from $2.38 the week President Trump left office.
Now do you miss him?
Quinnipiac’s pollsters asked people if they think Donald Trump should continue to be banned from Twitter or if he should be allowed back on Twitter. “Be allowed back,” said 54% of Americans.
“Do you approve or disapprove of the way Joe Biden is handling the economy?” Quinnipiac asked. “Disapprove,” said 63% of Americans, including 21% of Democrats and 68% of independents.
“In general, how satisfied are you with the way things are going in the nation today?” the pollsters inquired. “Very dissatisfied,” said 56% of Americans, including 27% of Democrats and 59% of independents.
Quinnipiac didn’t ask Americans if they’d vote for President Trump again, and Trump hasn’t quite said he’s going to run. But there are strong indications that he has not retired. Here’s one of the most obvious: Not a word has been said about a Trump presidential library.
At this rate, the “Trump was Right” exhibit is going to need its own building.
Write Susan at Susan@SusanShelley.com and follow her on Twitter @Susan_Shelley.
SOURCE LINK: The Orange County Register