Giving Trump’s accomplishments their due

OPINION:

I’m told by one of my favorite millennials that many of her friends have not heard anything at all positive about President Trump.

The left, which turned a blind eye to the flagrant immorality of Ted Kennedy and Bill Clinton, is ordering evangelical Christians to abandon Mr. Trump. Before too many well-meaning people take the bait, a reminder of what Mr. Trump has accomplished might be in order.

First, America ducked a very large bullet — a reboot of the Obama administration under Hillary Clinton. Although President Obama had a more “presidential style” in some respects than Mr. Trump, he was a disaster. Hillary would have been more of the same.

Here are a few other things that Mr. Trump has done:

• Appointed Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch and more than 75 other constitutionally sound federal judges, 30 of which are serving.

• Reinstated an expanded Mexico City Policy blocking foreign aid from being used for abortions.

• Cracked down on illegal immigration and “sanctuary cities.” As Attorney General Jeff Sessions put it: “The lawlessness, the abdication of the duty to enforce our laws, and the catch and release policies of the past are over.”

• Issued an order killing two federal regulations for every new one. In actuality, 16 were cut for every new one in his first year, saving billions.

• Engineered a historic tax cut that will save money for more than 80 percent of American households.

• Withdrew the U.S. from the Paris Climate Agreement, ending the threat of U.S. governance by international bureaucrats.

• Reversed onerous Obama environmental rules that gave the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) ham-handed authority to destroy the coal industry and abrogate landowners’ rights.

• Kick-started America’s energy sector by curtailing regulations, facilitating the Keystone XL Pipeline and opening up vast federal areas to oil and gas exploration.

• Presided over an economic and stock market boom, lowered unemployment and brought manufacturing jobs back to America from overseas.

• Rebuilt the nation’s military, destroyed ISIS and faced down North Korea’s “Rocket Man.”

• Issued an order enforcing First Amendment protections for religious liberty.

• Restored the freedom of military chaplains to espouse biblical morality, and essentially reversing Mr. Obama’s transgender military policy.

• Revoked the Education Department’s order that public schools allow gender-confused males access to girls’ restrooms and locker rooms.

• Cracked down on sex trafficking. President Trump signed a law allowing states to move against sex-ad Internet sites, and the Justice Department on April 6 seized and shut down Backpage.com, which carried ads for prostitution, including trafficked children.

• Overhauled the mismanaged Veterans Administration and giving veterans more health care choices.

• Replaced Obamacare incrementally, beginning with a repeal of the individual mandate.

• Imposed sanctions on Venezuela’s socialist dictatorship and revising Mr. Obama’s deals with communist Cuba.

• Recognized Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and repairing damage that Mr. Obama did to the U.S.-Israel relationship.

• Worked with Central American nations to crack down on MS-13 gangs.

OK, let’s stop here, though it only scratches the surface.

A question for Mr. Trump’s conservative critics, including some well-meaning evangelicals who rightly express concern over character: Would you really prefer to have a “more presidential” chief executive who promotes socialism, open bordeers, abortion, sexual anarchy and the criminalization of Christianity?

Here are just a few likely outcomes had Mrs. Clinton won:

• An explosion in government funding for abortion.

• The LGBT political agenda on steroids, with the Justice Department attacking Christian business people who won’t bow to Baal.

• Tax increases — not a tax cut — to fund a vast expansion of nanny government.

• Obamacare morphing into a single-payer, socialist government monopoly.

• Federal agencies like the EPA and the IRS re-weaponized against political opponents.

• More radical judges like Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor. Maybe even Chai Feldblum on the Supreme Court.

• Hordes of new federal bureaucrats drawn from the ranks of MoveOn.org, NARAL, the ACLU, the Human Rights Campaign and the Women’s March.

• “Pink hat day” throughout the federal government on Planned Parenthood founder Margaret Sanger’s birthday. (No reported plan; it just makes sense.)

• Massive illegal immigration, along with the Justice Department attacking states that have strong voter ID laws.

• A shutdown of all inquiries into Clinton corruption, such as missing emails, Russian money flowing into the Clinton Foundation or the Clinton-Russian connection in the 2016 election.

• A naive foreign policy that would have emboldened Russia, China, North Korea and Iran to test American resolve.

Finally, think back to Election Night 2016 and what passed for reporting. Instead of the undisguised gloom over Mr. Trump’s victory, a Hillary win would have produced smug grins and giggles all around, except at Fox.

Say what you will about Mr. Trump. He spared us that and much more.

• Robert Knight is a Washington Times contributor and the author of “A Strong Constitution: What America Would Look Like If We Followed the Law” (djkm.org, May 2018).