Voices

Trump: not ‘wounded’ or a ‘victim,’ but a successful president

WARDSBORO — No popcorn needed, thanks.

In Kevin O'Keefe's opening paragraphs of his essay, he seems to exhaust a lot of words trying to psychoanalyze President Donald Trump, as if the president were a character in a play.

Mr. O'Keefe's experiences as a performer in developing the gestures and posture of a character that a playwright has already delineated in a script, in my opinion, do not directly apply to real people, even less to a man he has never personally known and just seen and heard on TV. It does not really qualify him to do psychotherapy without a couch and in printed form.

It's too bad that Mr. O'Keefe can neither focus nor comment on some of the accomplishments of the current administration, things that clearly and demonstrably elevate President Trump well above the level of “victimhood.”

I don't see the president as a “wounded” man, as Mr. O'Keefe calls him. I see him as a leader who always thinks positively about his actions; who, given time, believes he can make good things happen; and as a leader who has in less than 750 days in the Oval Office not been shunned, accused, or indicted by the G.O.P.

For Mr. O'Keefe's benefit, I'll just mention the following: prison reform, which, by the way, was passed by both houses of Congress; the recent statistics that show a thriving economy, including low unemployment and recent great jobs reports; and, so far, two outstanding Supreme Court picks.

Remember how the year-over-year GDP growth never topped 3 percent while Obama was in office? Guess what? The year-over-year change in GDP was 3.4 percent in the third quarter of last year, and 4.2 percent in the quarter before that.

I ask Mr. O'Keefe to analyze “Trump the victim” a little less and admire the fact that what the letters on all those hats stand for - MAGA - is actually coming true.

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