Donald Trump’s acceptance speech last night at the Republican National Convention must have been easy to write. Anyone with a modicum of communication skills who had been paying attention the past eight years and isn’t either in denial or thoroughly corrupted could have written it. I could have written it. President Obama and Hillary Clinton, as well as their supporters, have provided so much material, or, if you like, ammunition. No wonder the speech was so long: it was the longest acceptance speech since 1972. It easily could have been longer.

There is no honest or reasonable argument to be made against Trump’s recitation of what is wrong in America. Escalating class, racial, gender and ethnic divisions, uncontrolled illegal immigration, handicapped law enforcement, sluggish economic growth, over-regulation, dangerous debt, incompetent foreign policy, weak national leadership, corruption, attacks on individual rights, and more…the speech hit a lot (not all, because there are so many) of the obvious failures of the Obama presidency, one of the most disappointing and disastrous in U.S. history. Most astute of all, the speech correctly painted Hillary Clinton as a candidate pledged to continue disastrous policies and anti-American philosophies. Read the text here.

The criticism of the speech from the left and mainstream media journalists (all together now: “But I repeat myself!”) was both predictable and telling. “Trump delivered a deeply negative speech that described a darkening America,” wrote Politico.” He spoke of spiking crime, “third-world” airports, growing trade deficits, “chaos in our communities,” and terrorism on the home front. Abroad, he said, the situation was “worse than it has ever been before.” On CNN, former Obama “czar” Van Jones said that “What Donald Trump did tonight was a disgrace. That was a relentlessly… dark speech. He was describing some Mad Max America.” Jones continued: Continue reading →