“This is the end of Trumpism!” “Conservative Populism, RIP.” “Goodbye, MAGA!”
If these pronouncements sound familiar, it’s because they are. The same people predicting this now in op-eds, online and in podcasts predicted the same after Trump’s first impeachment, after the 2020 election, after January 6, after the second impeachment and after every criminal indictment filed against him.
Their wishful thinking is as dim-witted now as it was then.
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Any fair-minded political analyst would admit that over the past decade, Donald Trump has been the most consequential leader in the world, and that he has accomplished more than any Republican president in at least the past 100 years. His record should not be judged on midterm results but on what it has delivered. And if the question on the table is “Should Trump’s policies continue?” the record says yes — politically, economically, geopolitically and culturally.
The political record
Critics predicted Trump would destroy the Republican Party and set back American conservatism. The opposite happened. Across the West, the right has either collapsed or made its peace with the governing consensus. Canada hasn’t had a conservative prime minister since 2015. Britain’s Conservatives hold just 118 of 650 seats in the House of Commons. Marine Le Pen has never cleared 42% of the vote in a French presidential election. Germany’s conservatives govern in coalition with the Social Democrats, and in Italy, The Economist recently praised Giorgia Meloni for “tacking to the middle.”
Only in America has the right governed on low taxes, lighter regulation, social conservatism and a strong military — and kept winning. Democrats had little trouble beating moderate Republicans like John McCain and Mitt Romney. Trump has confounded them for most of a decade. No other leader on the Western right can say that.
The economic record
We were told populism would wreck the economy. It hasn’t.
Trump worked with Congress to cut taxes and roll back regulation, and he has trimmed a bloated bureaucracy: Between December 2024 and June 2026, the federal workforce shrank by 255,000 employees, or 12%, according to The Washington Post.
Ordinary families have benefited. Real median household income rose from $77,230 in 2016 to a record $87,460 last year, both measured in 2025 dollars. Those figures are adjusted for inflation and describe the household squarely in the middle. Nostalgia for the ’80s and ’90s is understandable, but the American middle class has never been richer than it is today.
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Inflation, the defining failure of the Biden years, has been tamed. Core inflation, which strips out volatile food and energy prices, peaked at 6.6% in September 2022 and was still 3.3% in November 2024. This September it stood at 2.6%. Headline inflation of 3.7% is in line with the eurozone’s 3.8% and Britain’s 3.5%. Americans are not uniquely squeezed.
Growth is outpacing our peers. In September, the OECD projected U.S. real GDP growth of 2.2% for 2026, the highest in the G7. The latest data are stronger still: the economy grew at a 3.4% annualized rate in the third quarter, compared with 0.5% for the EU and roughly 1.3% for Canada.
The upshot is that Americans are by far the wealthiest people of any major economy. The IMF projects 2026 GDP per capita of $95,212 in the United States, against $65,699 in Germany, $61,108 in Britain, $60,105 in Canada, $51,448 in France, $35,400 in Japan and $15,371 in China. The United States is not merely the richest major country on earth; it is pulling away from the rest of the West.
The geopolitical record
Critics warned that Trump’s foreign policy would leave America isolated and weak. Instead, he is charting a course to victory over China, our only serious geopolitical rival.
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Before Trump, Washington’s establishment insisted that China’s rise was good for America, a view the Obama administration voiced as late as 2012. Trump took a more realistic view. His tariffs kept state-subsidized Chinese cars from gutting our auto industry. His moves on the Panama Canal and Greenland denied Beijing footholds in our hemisphere. He is rebuilding a military that had grown dangerously weak and distracted by ideology. And our economic lead keeps widening: in 2016, U.S. GDP exceeded China’s by $7.3 trillion; last year, the gap was $11.3 trillion.
In the Middle East, Trump has severely degraded an Iranian military that threatened the entire region. Critics predicted the Strait of Hormuz would be closed. It hasn’t been: The Wall Street Journal reports that Persian Gulf oil exports, counting both Hormuz shipments and alternative routes, now exceed prewar levels. All of this has been achieved without an invasion or boots on the ground. With a stronger military and a booming economy, American leverage abroad is likely the greatest it has been since the early 2000s.
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The social record
Some warned social conservatives that Trump didn’t really share their priorities and that they would regret backing him. Consider what he delivered.
For four decades, Republican leaders promised to do something about Roe v. Wade. Trump kept that promise, and Roe is gone. Unlike past Republican presidents, he has not appointed justices who drift left, and on most key constitutional questions the Supreme Court now has a solid conservative majority for the first time since the early 1930s.
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The border is closed to illegal immigration — another decades-old Republican promise that only Trump fulfilled. We were told this would devastate the economy. The data above say otherwise.
What the Democrats are offering
By any serious measure, the Trump movement ranks among the most successful in American history, and the country is better off for it — compared both with where we were and with our peers abroad.
Tellingly, Democrats aren’t seriously arguing that they would deliver a stronger economy, a firmer foreign policy or safer streets. Voters can see what their approach produces by looking at Canada and Western Europe. Instead, their campaign rests on a single promise: to go after Trump and everyone who has worked with him. It is a campaign of retribution, not prosperity.
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Of course, voters, including this one, are frustrated with the Iran conflict, and they want lower gas prices. Others are simply tired of politics, and some may hope a Democratic win would at least bring some calm to America. But remember what President Reagan said: “Freedom is never more than one generation from extinction.” Freedom does not come cheap. Americans today are stronger, richer, safer and freer than we have been in decades, and those who want to see this country humbled, even humiliated, know it. The socialists, Marxists and even run-of-the-mill Democrats did not run this year to make your life better. They ran to punish you for wanting more than the scraps the political establishment used to toss you.
Do not fall for it. Can you imagine Republicans abandoning Reagan because he lost eight Senate seats in 1986? Did the Democrats abandon Obama after he lost nine Senate seats in 2014? Of course not.
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We know which policies work. We know which policies have been a disaster. We know how to build a better country for ourselves and our children. We know how Democrats almost destroyed America and what they intend to do to our Constitution if they get the chance.
We may not have everything we want — we probably never will — but we have already made huge progress, and we just need to keep relentlessly fighting for the type of country we want.
