One early summer day in 1959, when I was about 14, I was working on my cousin’s farm in Kansas, loading hay bales.
After maybe two hours of heaving 60-pound alfalfa bales onto a flatbed trailer as it was pulled along by a Farmall IH tractor, we took a break. I was already 6 feet tall and in great shape, so chucking dozens of hay bales onto a flatbed was relatively effortless for me. Today, my back aches just thinking about it.
But I digress. As we rested in the shade of an ancient oak tree on the edge of the alfalfa field, the conversation was mostly typical farm talk: Would the root worm corn beetle be nasty this year? Should we buy fifty more head of Angus cattle, and what weight and age should they be? After a while, however, the conversation turned to politics and the presidency of Dwight D. Eisenhower.
Members of my family in those days were mostly Democrats, and even though Eisenhower, a Republican, was a legendary figure because he had led the allied forces against Hitler and the Nazis in Europe, they were troubled by some of his conservative policies.
As history has shown, the presidency of Dwight D. Eisenhower, which ran from 1953 to 1961, marked a pivotal era in American history. As the nation emerged from the darkness of World War II and faced the escalating challenges of the Cold War, Eisenhower’s policies reflected a prudent balance between progressive innovation and traditional values. A commitment to economic stability, infrastructure development, and a relatively restrained commitment to the civil rights movement characterized his approach.
His cautious attitude toward foreign policy was also disconcerting to members of my family. For example, Democrats like my cousin, Gary, were especially upset when Eisenhower refused to assist Hungary when that nation attempted to break away from Soviet domination in 1956. The result was a swift and bloody Soviet beatdown of Hungarian freedom fighters.
Eisenhower also refused to get involved when Great Britain, France, and Israel invaded the Suez Canal Zone following pro-USSR Egypt’s nationalization of the canal in 1956. Eventually, Eisenhower, wishing to avoid conflict with the Soviet Union, threatened to impose economic sanctions on the invading countries if they did not withdraw. Not the way to treat our allies, many Democrats contended. My Democratic relatives were also disappointed with Eisenhower’s reluctance to address the spread of communism and the lethargic pace of civil rights reform.
“I can’t support him anymore; he needs to go,” my cousin, who was about five years older than I, said as we drank ice-cold lemonade my aunt brought out to us.
“Yes, but he’s our president,” I countered. “Shouldn’t we get behind him?”
“Why? He’s weak and failing.”
At that point, my uncle joined the tête-à-tête.
“So you want the president to fail?” he asked my cousin.
“Yes. Why not?”
My uncle cast my cousin a disapproving look.
“You know, when you say you want the president to fail, what you are really saying is that you want the country to fail,” my uncle said. “Is that what you want? Because if the president fails, how does that make our country stronger or better?”
“I don’t know. I guess I never thought of it that way,” my cousin replied.
“There’s a big difference between being a politician and being a patriot; between being political and being patriotic,” said my uncle, who was a navigator on a B-24 bomber during the war. “A patriot will always want our president to succeed, no matter if he’s a Democrat or a Republican. If, on the other hand, a politician roots for our president to fail, it means his loyalty to his political party is greater than his loyalty to our country. If someday that ever becomes the rule, then I think our country will be in big trouble.”
My uncle passed away in 1990, so he will never know how prescient his words were to a couple of teenage boys in 1959.
The fact is, America today has attained the kind of political division my uncle warned us about. We have one party (Democrats) praying for President Trump to fail at everything he does. Some Democrat members of Congress have called him evil, Hitler, and an existential threat to democracy. Some, including Joe Biden, have even called for his death.
“It’s time to put Trump in the bullseye,” Biden said in a speech, several months before the 2024 election. “He’s a threat to Democracy.”
Biden got his wish on July 13, 2024, when an assassin’s bullet came within a millimeter of killing Trump during a rally in Butler, Pa. Instead, Thomas Matthew Crooks killed one person in the audience and wounded three others before he was shot and killed by a Secret Service sniper.
The violent rhetoric didn’t stop even after that unsuccessful assassination attempt.
Rep. Dan Goldman (D-NY) said late last year that Trump is so “dangerous” to Democracy that he “has to be eliminated.”
Is it any wonder that an assassination ethos seems to have gained a disturbing hold on the nation?
A few months ago, the Network Contagion Research Institute (NCRI) conducted a national survey of U.S. adults, weighted to reflect national census demographics. The NCRI is an independent American organization that says its mission is to track, expose, and combat misinformation, deception, manipulation, and hate across social media channels.
The NCRI findings were stark: Some 38% of respondents said it would be at least “somewhat justified” to murder Donald Trump. But when counting only left-leaning Democrats, the justification for killing Trump rose to 55%.
If that doesn’t validate the stark divisions in our country and how low the Democratic party has sunk, nothing does.
Yet, in my lifetime, I have never seen an American president accomplish more in his first 200 days in office. You would think Trump’s long list of accomplishments might contradict the negativity toward him.
Think again. If anything, Trump’s successes—including negotiating the end to at least five wars—would generate at least a modicum of support from the socialists and communists who are taking control of today’s Democrat Party.
You would also think that a president who made promises and who has actually kept them might engender a smidgen of approval from the left.
Dream on. The socialists and communists who control the Democratic Party want Trump to fail, and they will do anything to achieve that goal, including assassination, if that NCRI survey is to be believed.
I mentioned Trump’s promises made and promises kept. Here is a list of those, according to the White House:
PROMISE MADE: “We will close the border. We will stop the invasion of illegals into our country.” (10/12/24)
✅ PROMISE KEPT: The U.S. reached a new monthly immigration low for illegal crossings at the southern border — including multiple months in a row with ZERO illegal immigrants released into the country’s interior. Border wall construction has resumed, with new border barrier projects underway in El Paso and the Rio Grande Valley.
PROMISE MADE: “We get all these bad deals. We changed a lot of them… but still plenty of them out there — a lot of unfair deals. If China or any other country makes us pay a tariff… we will make them pay a reciprocal tariff.” (3/9/24)
✅ PROMISE KEPT: President Trump reached eight historic trade deals with major U.S. trading partners covering more than half of global GDP, and tariff revenues have totaled $150+ billion, keeping his promise to liberate the country from decades of failed, anti-American trade policy.
PROMISE MADE: “We will keep men out of women’s sports.” (5/26/24)
✅ PROMISE KEPT: The U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee banned men from competing in women’s sports.
PROMISE MADE: “A vote for President Donald J. Trump is a vote for prosperity.” (9/13/24)
✅ PROMISE KEPT: President Trump’s America First economic policy has created a windfall in the stock market, with the S&P 500 and Nasdaq reaching new record highs several times over the course of the second hundred days — while inflation has moderated, business is booming, the economy is growing, and egg prices fell 67% from their peak.
PROMISE MADE: “We will make America safe again.” (11/4/24)
✅ PROMISE KEPT: After deporting tens of thousands of criminal illegal immigrants, the U.S. is on track to see the lowest murder rate on record.
PROMISE MADE: “We will stop the Biden-Harris war on American energy … American energy is such a big deal. We will drill, baby, drill.” (8/3/24)
✅ PROMISE KEPT: The Trump administration announced it is opening 13 million acres in Alaska to mining and drilling and terminated Biden-era preferential treatment for unreliable, foreign-controlled wind energy.
PROMISE MADE: “We’re going to go back to a merit system.” (8/29/24)
✅ PROMISE KEPT: The Trump Administration rolled out new merit-based federal hiring plans.
PROMISE MADE: “We will build a great Iron Dome over our country… a state-of-the-art missile defense shield that will be entirely built in America and create jobs, jobs, jobs.” (6/15/24)
✅ PROMISE KEPT: President Trump announced a draft architecture and implementation plan for a Golden Dome missile defense system to protect our homeland from 21st Century threats — and secured funding for it in the One Big Beautiful Bill.
PROMISE MADE: “We’re going to be way ahead on AI.” (12/12/24)
✅ PROMISE KEPT: The White House unveiled America’s AI Action Plan in order to secure U.S. AI dominance and usher in a new golden age of human flourishing, economic competitiveness, and national security for the American people.
PROMISE MADE: “I will also stop Joe Biden’s crusade to crush crypto. We’re going to stop it. I will ensure that the future of crypto and the future of Bitcoin will be made in the USA.” (5/26/24)
-✅ PROMISE KEPT: President Trump signed the GENIUS Act into law, establishing a regulatory framework for stablecoins and helping to ensure the U.S. remains the global leader in cryptocurrency, and unveiled a framework for achieving U.S. digital asset dominance — keeping President Trump’s promise to ensure the future of crypto is American.
PROMISE MADE: “We’re going to have very large tax cuts for workers and … No Tax on Tips, No Tax on Overtime.” (10/12/2024)
✅ PROMISE KEPT: President Trump signed the One Big Beautiful Bill into law, delivering the largest tax cut in history for working- and middle-class Americans — including No Tax on Tips, No Tax on Overtime, and No Tax on Social Security — along with unprecedented tax relief for small businesses, farmers, workers, and families.
PROMISE MADE: “I’ll insist that every NATO nation must spend at least 3%.” (8/26/24)
✅ PROMISE KEPT: President Trump secured an agreement from NATO member nations to raise their defense spending to 5% of their GDP — a remarkable foreign policy feat long thought impossible.
PROMISE MADE: “To reduce costs for both manufacturers and consumers, I will remove ten old regulations for every new regulation.” (10/10/24)
✅ PROMISE KEPT: The Washington Examiner: “Trump killing federal regulations at 10-1 rate, tops first term’s 4-1 cut”
PROMISE MADE: “I will defend religious liberty.” (1/19/25)
✅ PROMISE KEPT: The Trump Administration directed all federal agencies to protect religious expression in the workplace.
PROMISE MADE: “We are not going to allow child sexual mutilation.” (11/18/23)
✅ PROMISE KEPT: Stanford Medicine ended sex-change surgeries for minors, Children’s Hospital Los Angeles closed its “Center for Transyouth Health and Development and Gender-Affirming Care,” UChicago suspended so-called “gender-affirming care” for minors, Rush Medical Center halted so-called “gender-affirming care” for new patients under 18, the University of Pennsylvania Health System all stopped so-called “gender-affirming care” for patients under 19, Kaiser Permanente paused sex-change surgeries for patients under 19 across all its hospitals and surgical centers, and Yale New Haven Health and Connecticut Children’s Medical Center announced they are ending their so-called “gender-affirming care services.”
Fifteen promises made and 15 kept. All in 200 days! No other president in my seven decades on this earth, beginning with Harry S Truman, comes close to such an achievement.
And what do you hear from Democrats? Crickets.
When I think back to that hot and humid summer day on that Kansas farm, none of us could have even faintly imagined that 66 years in the future, there would be a nationwide squabble over what a woman is, or if a biological man could bear a child, or if men and boys should compete against women and girls in sports. Nor could we have in our wildest dreams ever imagine that a bumbling, mentally deficient Democrat president would deliberately open the nation’s borders so that 10-12 million unvetted migrants, thousands of whom were violent criminals, would be allowed to invade our country.
Presidents are supposed to protect our country and its citizens, not encourage an invasion of lawbreakers and felons who have murdered, robbed, and scammed scores of Americans. By promoting that invasion, Joe Biden committed an unpardonable act of treason, and that will be his shameful legacy.
I am sure my uncle and my cousin, both now deceased, couldn’t have imagined the morally depraved America we find ourselves in today. They would be shocked by the kinds of nonsensical issues discussed and debated in the once hallowed halls of Congress—a place that today is rife with F-bombs, crude expletives, vulgar insults, and overbearing Democrats who comport themselves like the tawdry trash they are.
A few well-known names come to mind, but I will abstain from mentioning them. They get enough coverage in our corrupt legacy media and on various social media platforms. We know who they are.
Thinking back to my uncle and cousin, I am sure neither of them would ever have reckoned that today’s America-hating Socialist Democrats would be eager for our president and, consequently, our country to fail.
But as the Romans used to say: Invicti manemus — We remain unvanquished
–30—
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