Donald Trump is our only hope

I told you last week that President Trump had turned a corner with his State of the Union address. He is in full campaign mode, and no one is better on the campaign trail than Donald Trump. But the liberals are handing him ammunition. The Green New Deal is a dream come true for Trump. That’s why it’s so important in this moment of American history that we have someone like Trump in the White House. He is the clear delineation between capitalism and socialism.

This is where the Democrats have been heading for a long time. It could be argued that this is where they’ve been for a long time. Tip O’Neill didn’t start the slide to socialism for the Democrats, but he’s emblematic of the bridge between the likes of Sam Rayburn and Nancy Pelosi. When my father was a Democrat in Congress in the ‘80s, people like Pelosi and Barney Frank were considered the left fringe of the party. Now they’re the middle of the road of the Democrat Party. They’re also being edged out by the more radical voices of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Elizabeth Warren, and Kamala Harris.

Some are frightened of these radical new voices, and well they should be, but these voices also offer a clear contrast to capitalism in this country. Trump is capitalism personified. He loves this country. He knows what made it great. He’s an American success story. Had we even had someone as business-minded as Mitt Romney as president we wouldn’t have this clear distinction. Romney tends to be mushy on the important issues like illegal immigration and global warming. He would surely be compromising with the likes of AOC.

Trump understands his role in history. He is the bulwark against a total transformation of this country from capitalism that made it great to socialism that has failed wherever it’s been tried. That is the litmus test. Ask any proponent of AOC and socialism to cite any example—past or present—where socialism has worked. They can’t. The irony of all of this is they cry for taxing the ‘tippy top’ at 70 percent while Venezuela, which did exactly that, crumbles before our eyes.

Speaking of irony, Sen. Amy Klobuchar announced her candidacy for president and scolded the Republicans about the dangers of global warming in the midst of a blizzard. Of course, the people who spent decades telling us the earth was going to burn are now telling us the frigid weather is climate change. These are the same people who point to floods as climate change but were just telling us we were running out of water.

Any other Republican president would be buckling to the pressure from the radical global warming crowd. Not Trump. He made fun of Klobuchar’s announcement, and well he should. The liberals are fond of saying, “Speak truth to power.” Trump is speaking truth to liars. This Green New Deal would be a disaster for America. It would cut off the lifeblood of capitalism which is affordable energy. It would reward people who don’t work. It would cost the taxpayers trillions they don’t have.

Global warming like Occupy Wall Street and myriad other left-wing causes are merely vehicles to destroy capitalism and give rise to socialism. Socialism is complete government control. If you don’t know what that looks like remember this. The Nazis were socialists. Like I said, socialism has been tried many times before and failed.

Trump is now above 50 percent in approval. He is what stands between us and another Venezuela. Our only hope is that he prevails. 

Phil Valentine is the host of the award-winning talk radio show, The Phil Valentine Show. He's also the co-host of The PodGOATs podcast.

Pulling back the curtain on Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez

OK, we’ve had our fun with Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. It’s time to stop pretending that she’s relevant. Or even serious. Sure, she took the left-wing media by storm when she unseated the chairman of the House Democratic Caucus. That was quite a feat. Joe Crowley had been there for 20 years and had climbed the ranks of power, but his defeat was a local issue in the Bronx.

The left-wing media have blown her all out of proportion. Why? Because she’s a socialist just like they are. It also helps immensely that she’s a) young, and b) attractive. Liberal, young, and hot are three attributes that make a politician absolutely irresistible to the media. However, AOC is devoid of any substance, despite constant appearances on late night television and cable news.

She has equated the fight against global warming to that of defeating the Nazis in World War II. She believes we should ‘mobilize and industrialize our entire economy’ to fight it, just like we did during the war. The Nazis were real. Global warming isn’t. We could actually see Hitler and the Nazis marching across Europe. The left chases this phantom of global warming without a shred of evidence. All you have to do to shut them down is ask them to prove it. They look at you with anger and frustration as if you’d just asked them to prove the Easter Bunny is real. If you believe even half of the rhetoric of the Branch Algorians, you can’t really think that retooling our entire economy to fight it is a good idea.

Speaking of World War II, AOC compared the migrants fleeing Central America with victims of the Holocaust. Maybe you believe most of these people are refugees from violence (which they’re not), you still can’t possibly equate them to 6 million Jews being gasses by the Nazis. But, of course, if you’re trying to gin up hysteria you can.

AOC came out with the claim that the Pentagon had lost over $21 trillion. Even the left-wing media were skeptical. Jake Tapper at CNN called her out on the numbers. She couldn’t produce any evidence to support her accusation. She made the point to illustrate that we could fund Medicare for All, her communist plan to take over the medical sector, at 66 percent with just the lost money from the Pentagon. Problem is the entire military budget for a year is barely over a half-trillion dollars. In fact, experts estimate that we haven’t spent $21 trillion on the military in the entire history of the country, must less lost that much.

Now the Bronx Braintrust is at it again on global warming. During a Martin Luther King, Jr. celebration she said, “And we’re, like, the world is going to end in 12 years if we don’t address climate change.” The crowd applauded in agreement. Then she asked, “Your biggest issue is how are we going to pay for it? And, like, this is the war, this is our World War II.”

Um, like, Alexandria, the world is not going to end in 12 years. This is the same bovine scatology that Al Gore’s been pushing for 30 years or more. It’s always 10 or 12 years in the future. Then the future arrives and nothing happens and the crazy people who worship at the altar of Al Gore act like it was never said.

I’m going to be brutally honest, because somebody has to be. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is cute, but she’s nuts. It’s time to actually start listening to what she says.

Phil Valentine is the host of the award-winning talk radio show, The Phil Valentine Show.

Understanding Antifa

I have long been warning you that Antifa is marxist. For the longest time they denied this. They claimed to be just like the boys who stormed the beaches at Normandy to fight the Nazis. They are not. They’re more like the thugs who stormed the streets of Petrograd in 1917 and went on a nearly 110 million-person killing spree until the Soviet Union was finally put to sleep some 70 years later. Now they finally admit to who they are.

A “menacing” group of Antifas recently pulled down their cowardly black bandanas from their faces and showed themselves to the world on Twitter. Their now-familiar logo of the two waving flags, one red and one black, is the exact same logo as the Communist Party of 1930s Germany. This particular chapter in Denver has now dropped any pretense that it’s not marxist. Their logo uses the 1930s nomenclature, “Antifaschistische Aktion,” which means “Antifascist Action.” Only this chapter has added a nice little logo to their flag: The hammer and sickle of the former Soviet Union.

I’ve done a lot of studying on these modern Antifa types. Basically they hate capitalism because they think the capitalist system is broken. The truth is it’s not capitalism that’s broken, it’s them. And I mean this in all sincerity. They believe capitalism is a failure and they are the failures. That’s why socialism and communism have, for so long, attracted the misfits of society.

It’s easy for us to ridicule them. I’ve certainly done my share of that. For this moment I would like to try a different approach. To fully understand disgruntlement one must first understand the disgruntled. These people aren’t losers in the conventional sense. Many a communist has come out esteemed institutions like Columbia University, which was a hotbed of communists during the Cold War. What attracts these people to marxism? To be blunt, many just don’t fit in. Many are socially awkward. They lash out at society in general for their inability to function normally within it. Marxism or Antifa give them a sense of purpose, like they’re changing the world.

I don’t want to sound patronizing, nor do I want to excuse their conduct, but many of these Antifa types are very smart. They’re that nerdy smart we all remember from high school. I’m sure many of these people were made fun of, or at least thought everyone was making fun of them. They also obsess over things including the state of society. It’s easy to look around at the have-nots and assume it’s not their fault. It’s even easier to look at the haves and hate them for what they have. That’s how marxism is bred and spread. It is quintessential class warfare.

Notice you don’t see many Antifas outside of their twenties. Once people grow up and take on some responsibility, perspective starts to change. At 25, my emphasis was solely on me. By 45 my emphasis was primarily on my family and their well-being and their future. Growing up necessarily changes your perspective.

Capitalism provides a competitive atmosphere that continually makes us all better. Is it fair? Not always, but I can’t think of anything more unfair than taking from those who produce and giving it to those who don’t. Capitalism and the United States are inseparable. Capitalism is what made America great, despite what New York Governor Cuomo may tell you. If you are anti-capitalist you are, by definition, anti-American.

The nanny state is for those who need a nanny. For the rest of us, capitalism equals prosperity.

Phil Valentine is the host of the award-winning, nationally syndicated talk radio show, The Phil Valentine Show.

It's time somebody put America in perspective for the snowflakes

I don’t know what you did on the recent Independence Day holiday (unless you had to work). I had all sorts of bold plans to do some bush hogging or clean up the garage. I sat down in front of the tube around nine in the morning and came across a History Channel miniseries that was released in 2010 called ‘America: The Story of Us.’ I actually had the whole series on DVD, but I had never gotten around to watching it. I was about a third of the way through the first episode when my wife joined me. Next thing I know it’s early evening and we’re finishing up episode eight.

After we finally decided to turn it off, I sat there reflecting on what I’d seen. We had been taken from the settlement at Jamestown through the Revolutionary War, the Industrial Revolution, the Civil War, Reconstruction, and the Gilded Age. We saw the good, the bad, and the ugly. We saw the slaughter of the Indians. We saw the enslavement of Africans. We saw the connection of east and west by the railroad, the invention of the lightbulb that lit the darkness, the discovery of how to make steel affordable thus ushering in the age of the skyscraper.

And we hadn’t even gotten to saving the world from Nazi domination or putting a man on the moon.

I reflected on our country as a whole. Not as a white man. Not from the perspective of an Indian or a black American or anybody else. Just from the perspective of an American. When you look back over our entire history it’s impossible to deny that we are the greatest country the world has ever known.

I was sharing my reflections with one of my sons, and he commented that any time the greatness of America is brought up in conversation his liberal friends say, “What about the Indians? What about slavery? What about the internment camps of World War II?” There’s no denying all of that is bad, but does the bad outweigh the good? It’s not even close.

I know this is a bold statement but here goes. No matter who you are—no matter what ethnic or racial or religious background—you are undoubtedly better off because of America. I was discussing this on my radio show and a guy called in and said, “Tell that to the Indians.” OK, I will. No matter the brutality that befell your people many years ago, you are better off today as an Indian living in America than you would be had the Europeans never dawned these shores. The alternative is living in a teepee somewhere in the middle of Kansas. If you’re black the alternative is living in a hut somewhere in Timbuktu. On the UN’s top 10 list of the poorest nations on Earth, all of them are in Africa.

Again, that’s not to excuse the slave trade or the Trail of Tears. We can’t change history. What we can do is appreciate our place in it. My genealogy tells me my ancestors came from England, Wales, and Ireland. Pretty cool places to live, but I’m certainly better off because my ancestors decided to move here.

Countries are like people. There’s no such thing as a perfect country. They all have their histories. They all have things they’re not too proud of. However, we judge countries in their totality, not by cherry-picking the negative things we want to highlight.

America ain’t perfect, but it’s a sight more perfect than 99 percent of the other places on Earth.

Phil Valentine is the host of the award-winning, nationally syndicated talk radio show, The Phil Valentine Show.