“Therefore behold, I am going to make them know—this time I will make them know My power and My might; and they shall know that My Name is Yahweh.” (Jeremiah 16: 21)
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Donald Trump is the New Ronald Reagan
I have reached the conclusion that Donald Trump is the new Ronald Reagan.
People my age should have no problem remembering the GOP race for the White House in 1976. Richard Nixon chose Gerald Ford to become his vice president following Spiro Agnew’s unceremonious resignation under fire in 1973. In 1974, Nixon resigned rather than face an impeachment trial in the Senate. In 1976, Ford was seeking the GOP nomination in his own right. His closest competitor was Ronald Reagan.
The groups that lined up against Reagan then are the same groups that are lining up against Donald Trump now:
- The mainstream media is against Donald Trump. They are doing everything they can think of to sabotage his campaign. He’s eating their lunch.
- Many if not most Wall Street investors are against Trump because he threatens to upset their applecart. Healthcare is a perfect example. No informed person can deny that our healthcare system is a mess. Obamacare made it much worse. Politicians, insurance companies, pharmaceutical companies, hospitals, and doctors have made deals that enrich them at the expense of U.S. taxpayers and sick people. Trump can take on the healthcare establishment because he’s not indebted to them in any way. The same is true for education, veterans’ affairs, and every other area in which the federal government operates. In a nutshell, Trump can lead us through a process of rethinking the role of the federal government in our lives. That is sorely needed. No other candidate can do that.
- The GOP establishment is against Donald Trump. They can see their power slipping away now. If Trump is elected, many of them will lose any semblance of influence politically. They are less against Trump than they are for themselves. I’ve said a lot of negative things about the Democrat Party. I call it the Party of Perversity, but the Republican Party isn’t far behind. It needs a makeover. Trump can do that. No other candidate can, not even Ted Cruz. In my opinion, he’s the second best choice, but the more I watch, read, and listen, the more I think Cruz is not the right guy to lead this nation at the present time.
- Leaders of nations that have been taking the U.S. to the cleaners are against Trump, especially European leaders. Europe has been sucking the U.S. teat for about 100 years. They are afraid that they might have to assume responsibility for some of the atrocious decisions they have made. Chinese leaders aren’t talking, but you can bet that they know a President Trump will necessitate a change in their behavior. They are smarter than European leaders, so they know that things have to change.
Gerald Ford won the GOP nomination in 1976 and was defeated in the general election by an unremarkable governor from Georgia—Jimmy Carter. Until Barack Obama, Carter was the worst president in U.S. history. If the GOP had nominated Reagan in 1976, things would have been much different.
The things that Reagan’s foes feared would happen in 1976 actually did happen in 1980 when Reagan won the GOP nomination and the White House. Today, we refer to it as “the Reagan Revolution”. It’s time for another GOP revolution. Trump can make it happen.
Right now, the difference between establishment Democrats and establishment Republicans is miniscule. That has to change. The only people who benefit from the political system we have in place are the politicians running it and fat cat donors who pay them to support programs that cost taxpayers a fortune and put our nation deeper into debt.
On Thursday night, I watched the GOP debate. It was the last debate before voters go to the polls in Ohio and Florida, so it was important. John Kasich should have dropped out of the race already, but after March 15, he will have no excuse for continuing to run. The same is true for Marco Rubio. Following the Florida primary he needs to contain his ego and drop out.
If Kasich and Rubio don’t drop out, they will only hurt themselves politically because they don’t have a chance of winning the GOP nomination. After March 15, failing to do the right thing will raise serious questions about their political judgment and their maturity.
That leaves Trump and Cruz. I used to think that Cruz would be a better president than Trump, but not anymore. Trump has set the agenda and Cruz has followed. That’s what leaders do. Trump is a leader.
The media’s take on Thursday’s debate is interesting if not informative for the most part:
- See “Analysis: Rivals still searching for formula to stop Trump”. Trump’s rivals for the nomination are trying to figure out how to stop him. It’s time for them to accept the fact that they can’t stop him and get on board with him as the GOP candidate for president.
- See “Anti-Trump Conservatives: Support Cruz & Swallow Pride”. Much of Trump’s support is coming from people who don’t think of themselves as Republicans. Nothing Cruz does and nothing members of the GOP establishment do can change that. Trump will win the GOP nomination with or without their support. That means they should throw in the towel and get behind Trump.
- See “At GOP debate, Trump flounders, out of his depth”. This article makes me think that the people at CNN didn’t see the same debate that I watched. Trump took Rubio, Cruz, and Kasich to the cleaners, but he did it in a reserved, shall I say presidential, way. I suspect that the folks at CNN today are very much like the folks at the New York Times in 1980. They can’t believe that they have no influence in this campaign. That’s what voters are telling them but they don’t want to hear it. They will get the message loud and clear in November.
- See “Donald Trump Will Probably Win Illinois—and Demonstrate His Path to the Nomination”. I think that’s correct.
- See “Cruz says Trump backers have ‘relatively low information,’ not very ‘engaged’”. That’s probably the most sophomoric thing Cruz has said during this campaign, and it’s far from the truth. I support Trump. I’m not “low information”, and I’m not unengaged. I know lots of informed and engaged people like me who support Trump.
I watch CNBC in the background between 6:00 A.M. and 9:30 A.M. while I work on SnyderTalk. It’s my go-to channel because it focuses on business news. This morning, Friday, a member of the GOP establishment was on CNBC telling viewers like me that she could not vote for Donald Trump. In 1976, someone like her would have been telling viewers that she couldn’t vote for Ronald Reagan.
CNBC didn’t exist in 1976, but that’s what someone from the GOP establishment would have said because it’s an attention grabber: “Top Republican says She Can’t Vote for Donald Trump”.
Michelle Caruso-Cabrera was conducting the interview, and she asked the obvious question: “If you can’t vote for Trump, who will you vote for?”
If Trump wins the GOP nomination, she will have to vote for someone else or not vote at all. Hillary Clinton is the odds-on favorite to capture the Democrat nomination. Would she vote for Clinton over Trump?
The look on the woman’s face following that question was the same look that I saw on Ted Kennedy’s face in 1979 when Roger Mudd asked him why he wanted to be president. See the video below:
Kennedy’s incoherent, rambling response was telling. He wanted to be president because he believed the American people owed him the highest office in the land. That was the beginning of Kennedy’s undoing as a candidate for president.
See “Ted Kennedy: The Day the Presidency Was Lost”.
Hillary Clinton wants to be president for the same reason. She thinks we owe it to her. Personally, I think she should be in jail. I hope that’s where she ends up, but I’m just dreaming. That won’t happen. It should, but it won’t.
This is the bottom line: members of the GOP establishment will vote for Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton, a write-in candidate who has no chance of winning, or no one. Those are their only options. If they reject their party’s nominee, they will be revealing their true colors.
Mitt Romney was defeated in 2012 because conservative Republicans refused to vote for him. Didn’t members of the GOP establishment learn anything? I hope they did, but maybe they didn’t. We’ll see.
This question came up during Thursday night’s debate: what about Trump’s suggestion that we impose a 45% tariff on goods imported into the U.S. from nations that fail to comply with trade agreements?
Cruz’s comments revealed how ill-prepared he is for the top job at the present time. He said that American consumers would end up paying higher prices if we impose that tariff. That’s not the case at all.
Trump’s explanation was stunningly clear. He said, “It was a threat.”
If Trump is elected President of the United States, all he will need to do is threaten. That will solve the problem because exporting nations know that he means business. They will straighten up and fly right, because they need us more than we need them.
This is Economics 101. Cruz should have understood it, but he didn’t. Neither does Obama or Clinton (Hillary).
That issue reminds me of Ronald Reagan, too. The Iranians released the U.S. hostages that were taken while Jimmy Carter was president just minutes before Reagan was sworn into office. Iran wasn’t prepared for war with the U.S. Jimmy Carter was a wimp. Reagan wasn’t. The Iranian’s knew it, so they released the hostages.
I am now an unapologetic Trump supporter. I still have some concerns about him, so I’m praying for him. That’s what all of us should do because he is going to be the next president. Trump will make mincemeat of Hillary Clinton during the general election.
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His Name is Yahweh, the website, is a companion of the book His Name is Yahweh.
To see videos that explain the importance of God’s Name, click here.
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SnyderTalk Comment: All the evidence supports exactly what we read in the Bible. Jerusalem became Israel’s capital in the 900s B.C. and Yahweh’s Temple sat on top of the Temple Mount. Palestinian lies can’t change that.
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1: Adam Eliyahu Berkowitz—In Birthplace of Jesus, Evangelicals gather to reject Israel, embrace Palestinian cause:
Evangelicals are the strongest supporters of Israel, so it is particularly disturbing when a group from within their midst aligns with the Palestinians – even going so far as to support acts of violence against Jews while accusing Israel of violent crimes. Yesterday, while the conference was at its peak, five terror attacks were perpetrated against Israelis.
This was precisely what happened this week at the fourth biennial Christ at the Checkpoint Conference in Bethlehem, in which over 300 attendees gathered from all over the world in an Evangelical-led hate-fest against Israel and the Jews.
The organization’s website states the purpose of the four-day gathering is to “challenge Evangelicals to take responsibility to help resolve the conflicts in Israel/Palestine by engaging with the teaching of Jesus on the Kingdom of God”. This claim is deceptive since there were no representatives of Israel to engage in dialogue. Israeli Messianic leaders were also notably absent. However, the conference was attended by Palestinian Authority (PA) leaders, who were free to make spurious charges against Israel unopposed.
SnyderTalk Comment: Shame on them. May they get what they deserve. They are modern-day Balaams.
2: Caroline Glick—The Subversion of American Evangelicals:
Monday, the Bethlehem Bible College, an Evangelical Christian college in Jesus’s hometown, opened its fourth biennial Christ at the Checkpoint conference. The conference, which is directed specifically toward US Evangelicals, will run through the week.
Today, Evangelical communities in the US number anywhere between 60 and 150 million people, depending on who is counting. They form the backbone of American support for the Jewish state. It is the support of the Evangelical community, rather than the Jewish community in the US that ensures that come hell or high water, no matter how Israel is demonized in the media and in academia, the majority of Americans continue to support Israel.
But will this support last? One of the more surprising aspects of the 2016 elections is Evangelical support for businessman Donald Trump. Trump in many ways personifies everything that people who take the Bible seriously are supposed to oppose. He owns casinos. He curses and uses profanity in his public appearances. He has donated to Planned Parenthood and forcefully supported abortions on demand.
Trump has also insisted repeatedly that he will be neutral toward Israel.
Perhaps the most extraordinary aspect of Evangelical support for Trump is that he takes these positions as he runs against primary opponents who all wear their faith on their sleeves. All of his opponents have records of standing with the Evangelicals on social and other salient issues – including support for Israel.
What are we to make of this seemingly inexplicable phenomenon? At least as far as Israel is concerned, the readiness of Evangelicals to support the most anti-Israel candidate running for the Republican presidential nomination is no surprise.
SnyderTalk Comment: As I said, Donald Trump needs our prayers. I think that our nation’s support for Israel is the only thing that has kept us from experiencing Yahweh’s judgment. If we remove that support, I think we will get what we deserve quickly.
3: Shoshana Bryen—Will Obama Try to Blackmail Israel?:
Why and why now? Because President Obama is looking at the fires he lit in the Middle East and North Africa, and desperately hoping to salvage something, anything, from the conflagration before he leaves office and needs another job. Israel will be pushed to provide at least one “victory.” Consider the list of Administration failures right now and the terrible destruction they have entailed:
In his first foreign visit, President Obama opened the door in Egypt to an uprising not only of “Google people” in Tahrir Square, but also to the Muslim Brotherhood. Brotherhood representatives were front and center at the President’s speech in Cairo’s Al-Azhar University, to the dismay of longtime ally Hosni Mubarak. After Mubarak’s overthrow, the White House pressed for the inclusion of the Brotherhood in Egyptian elections despite its history of terrorism. Since then, the U.S. and Egypt have been unable to find a way to communicate constructively, despite Egypt’s increasing closeness to Israel and their joint interest in controlling the terrorist Hamas and Iranian-sponsored jihadis in Sinai.
The Muslim Brotherhood was emboldened in Syria by its successes in Egypt.
The Syrian civil war and the rise of ISIS — both in some measure precipitated by the U.S. withdrawal from Iraq – have killed upwards of 350,000 people (more than 55,000 in 2015) and displaced nearly 4 million more. Chemical weapons, starvation, beheadings and aerial bombing are weapons of choice by various sides. Russia is calling the shots (literally) in Syria, while Turkey, Qatar and Saudi Arabia continue to fund various jihadi groups, and Iran operates freely in both Iraq and Syria. Hezbollah, despite taking enormous casualties in Syria, continues to add to its missile arsenal in Lebanon.
This is a far cry from 2011, when President Obama announced the U.S. was leaving a “sovereign, stable and self-reliant Iraq.” An Iraqi non-governmental organization estimated that more than 17,000 civilians were killed there in 2014, double the number from the previous year and four times as many as 2012, after the U.S. withdrew its combat forces.
SnyderTalk Comment: Obama has been trying to blackmail Israel since Day One of his presidency. He is beneath contempt.
4: Caroline Glick—Governing your enemies is the price you pay to be free:
This week we learned that Lebanon is no more. It has been replaced by Hezbollah’s Iranian colony in Lebanon.
Two weeks ago, Saudi Arabia listed Hezbollah as a terrorist organization and canceled its $3 billion aid package to the Lebanese military. The Gulf Cooperation Council followed suit. Rather than support the move by his sponsors and allies, Saad Hariri, the head of the anti-Hezbollah March 14 movement, flew to Syria to meet with Hezbollah leaders.
Saudi Arabia’s decision to end its support for the Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF) doesn’t mean that Saudi Arabia is making peace with Hezbollah.
It means that the Saudis are no longer willing to maintain the fiction that with enough support, the LAF will one day challenge Hezbollah’s effective control of Lebanon.
Hezbollah and its bosses in Tehran don’t seem too upset about the Sunnis’ decision to acknowledge that Hezbollah is a terrorist group. And they are right not to care. In essence, the Saudi move is simply an admission that they have won. Lebanon is theirs.
Hezbollah’s isn’t the dominant force in Lebanon because it has better weapons than the LAF.
Unlike the LAF, Hezbollah has no air force. It has no armored divisions.
SnyderTalk Comment: Caroline Glick has a habit of telling the truth. I wish more people had that habit. It’s s good one.
5: Douglas Murray—Iran’s Cash for Murder: Why is the UK Silent?:
Last year, when America, Britain and four other countries (the P5+1) signed their joint plan of action with Iran there was no shortage of people who warned of the consequences. They warned that the deal would merely delay rather than prevent Iran from becoming a nuclear-armed power. They warned of the increased grip the mullahs would have on the country they purport to govern. And in particular, those not caught up in the P5+1 jubilation warned of what Iran would do with the tens of billions of dollars’ cash bonanza it would receive once the deal was done. Would Iran use this windfall solely to improve the lives of its people? Or might it spend at least a portion of this cash doing what it has been doing for nearly four decades: that is, spreading terror?
There have already been some signs that the ill-judged deal is embedding Iran’s worst behaviour rather than elevating the regime to any higher behavioral level.
In recent days we have learned that Iran is already planning to use its windfall to encourage Palestinian terror against the State of Israel. Speaking at the end of last month, the Iranian Ambassador to Lebanon used a press conference with a number of Palestinian factions to announce a new bounty-scheme to be sponsored by Iran. This scheme promises to reward financially those who carry out terror against Israel. The reward includes — according to the Iranian ambassador — a payment of $7,000 to the families of suicide bombers and other terrorists who die in the process of attacking any Israeli. And it also includes a promised payment of $30,000 to any terrorists’ families whose homes are destroyed by the Israel Defense Forces. The demolition of the home of a terrorist’s family house is one of the only disincentives that Israel or any other country could think of to dissuade people intent on suicide attacks. Now the Iranian government is trying to re-incentivise anyone who might wish to commit such an attack.
SnyderTalk Comment: Silence in the face of anti-Semitism is anti-Semitism.
6: Burak Bekdil—Turkey’s Runaway Anti-Semitism:
The 74th anniversary of an embarrassing tragedy took place in Turkey on February 24, 2016.
The MV Struma was a small iron-hulled ship built in 1867 as a steam-powered schooner, but was later re-engined with an unreliable second-hand diesel engine. In 1941, it was tasked with safely transporting an estimated 781 Jewish refugees from Axis-allied Romania to Britain’s Mandatory Palestine. Between its departure from Constanta on the Black Sea on Dec. 12, 1941 and arrival in Istanbul on Dec. 15, the vessel’s engine failed several times. On Feb. 23, 1942 with her engine still not running but the refugees aboard, Turkish authorities towed the Struma from Istanbul through the Bosporus out to the Black Sea. On the morning of Feb. 24, the Soviet submarine Shch-213 torpedoed the Struma, killing all but one of the refugees and 10 crew aboard.
Until this year Turkey, one of the main culprits, had only once commemorated the victims. This year, official Turkey decided, should be the second time. A wreath and carnations were hurled at the sea in the shadow of the horrible event that took place decades ago.
At the commemoration ceremony at Sarayburnu harbor on the Bosporus were the head of Turkey’s Jewish community, Ishak Ibrahimzadeh, Chief Rabbi Isak Haleva and Istanbul’s governor, Vasip Sahin. In his speech, Sahin said: “We observe that the necessary lessons were not drawn from such tragedies.” He was right, at least from a Turkish point of view.
When it comes to diplomatic conflict between Turkey and Israel or Turkish anti-Semitism, there is always an unusual optimism in the official language chosen by Israeli officials or Jewish community leaders.
SnyderTalk Comment: What’s the difference between Barack Obama and Recep Tayyip Erdogan?
Answer: Erdogan is an unapologetic Islamist tyrant. Obama won’t admit that he is, too.
Erdogan is more transparent than Obama, if that tells you anything.
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“The glory which You have given Me I have given to them, that they may be one, just as We are one; I in them and You in Me, that they may be perfected in unity, so that the world may know that You sent Me, and loved them, even as You have loved Me. Father, I desire that they also, whom You have given Me, be with Me where I am, so that they may see My glory which You have given Me, for You loved Me before the foundation of the world.” (John 17: 22-24)
See “His Name is Yahweh”.
