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Donald Trump Has Laid out His Agenda and Mark Levin Will Hold Him to It

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Earlier this week, Conservative Review Editor-in-Chief Mark Levin reviewed the agenda for the first 100 days of Donald Trump’s presidency.

“The first hundred days, the first three or four months are crucial in getting the big things through congress,” Levin said. President-elect Trump laid out his agenda in a speech delivered in Gettysburg shortly before the election, an agenda Levin has called “outstanding.”

Listen:

Among the President-elect’s proposals were a full repeal of Obamacare, tax reform, an end to common core, and—of course—funding for a wall along the southern border and other increased border security measures.

Whatever the first hundred days will hold, be sure that conservatives will hold President-elect Trump’s feet to the fire to ensure he keeps his word. (For more from the author of “Donald Trump Has Laid out His Agenda and Mark Levin Will Hold Him to It” please click HERE)

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The Next Great Battle for Conservatives: Keeping RINO Insiders out of the Administration

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It’s no secret that Donald Trump is as much of a blank slate on policy as anyone who’s ever been elected president. Both supporters and opponents of the president-elect agree that Trump is still very malleable on many issues and has a lot to learn about both foreign and domestic policy. This is why it is critical for conservatives to win the ‘battle of personnel’ in the coming days. Failure to land conservative outsiders in key cabinet and advisory roles would be akin to failing to establish control of the beach head during the Normandy invasion. We can dream of our policy battles once we get a footing on land, but if the same RINO insiders who broke the system are allowed to control the administration, we will immediately fall back in the sea, rendering the entire election moot.

While many conservatives were and remain apprehensive about Trump’s commitment to conservative values on some issues, the appeal most saw in him was a figure who would bulldoze the failed elites and rid the system of its barnacles. This sentiment was perhaps epitomized during the debates when Hillary Clinton would proudly tout her decades of experience. Trump simply retorted, “Hillary has experience, but it’s bad experience.” It gets back to Bill Buckley’s old adage – “I’d rather entrust the government of the United States to the first 400 people listed in the Boston telephone directory than to the faculty of Harvard University.”

Nowhere is this more evident than with foreign policy, national security, and immigration. Almost everyone with experience in these fields within government has been on the wrong side of these issues and harbor views so divorced from reality that even random names in a telephone book would make better decisions. Yet, these same failed insiders are now gravitating to the transition team like a fly on stink and are looking for jobs.

The first challenge is to appoint a chief of staff who is not only resolute and organized but who shares the vision of the movement Trump has led. A good first start is to reject calls from establishment figures to name RNC Chairman Reince Priebus to this top advisory role.

Additionally, failure to keep the following people out of the administration would tarnish the entire appeal of a Trump presidency:

Chris Christie – potential pick for Attorney General

Just take a look at CR’s issue profile of Chris Christie and it will become clear that this man has been pushing liberal views on fiscal, social, and foreign policies for years. He was rabidly pro-amnesty before he latched himself onto Trump. The notion that someone with his principles and mindset would clean out the Justice Department is a fantasy. The notion that a man who appointed liberal judges as governor would fight legal battles against the rainbow jihad is an exercise in pink unicorns. Christie would be better suited at the Department of Transportation where he can manage traffic on the bridges.

Rep. Michael McCaul (R-TX) – potential pick for DHS Secretary

There is no doubt that the issues of immigration and Islamic terror are the two biggest factors in Trump’s win. This is why it’s so important to keep McCaul away from DHS. As we’ve chronicled in this column, McCaul has done nothing to fight the open borders crowd, and in fact, proposed terrible immigration bills as chairman of the Homeland Security Committee. This is the exact sort of “bad experience” the voters want Trump to reject.

More importantly, McCaul has been a leader in the promotion of “Countering Violent Extremism,” which is subversion agenda advanced by North American Muslim Brotherhood affiliates to obfuscate any mention of Islamic terrorism. This is the very willful blindness that Americans so desperately wanted to change with the outcome of this election. Appointing McCaul to head Homeland Security would continue to empower groups like CAIR at a time when they must be banned from government. McCaul famously wrote a note to a top CAIR official suggesting that his organization is moderate and an effective weapon against terrorists.

Ambassador to Saudi Arabia would probably be a more appropriate position for Mr. McCaul.

Bob Corker – Secretary of State

There is no better example of elevating the arsonist to firefighter than the prospect of appointing Senator Bob Corker (R-TN) to head the State Department. Even in past Republican administrations, the State Department has served as a fifth column promoting the ‘America last’ agenda. This is why it is even more critical to place someone with an outsider’s mindset in the office of Secretary of State more than any other position. Bob Corker is the worst possible choice.

Corker is every bit as responsible for the Iran deal as Hillary Clinton and John Kerry. His views on foreign policy in general reflect the very inside-the-beltway mentality that must change with a new administration.

As I chronicled in my dossier on Corker back when he was being considered for Vice President, the Tennessee senator has sandbagged us on amnesty, taxes, Dodd-Frank, and the START treaty – just to name a few issues. Appointing Corker to any position of prominence, much less Secretary of State, would undermine Trump’s entire movement and reflect an exercise in making the establishment elites great again.

But maybe if Trump appoints him to a cushy ambassadorship, it could free up his Senate seat for conservatives …

Mike Rogers – National Security

Former Michigan Rep. Mike Rogers (R-MI) is heading up the part of the transition team responsible for national security. He is rumored to be in the running for CIA Director or Director of National Intelligence. If there was ever a politician who emblematized the disease of “Washington insiderism” and represents the failure of Republicans to hold Obama accountable for his perfidious foreign policy, it’s Mike Rogers.

As Chairman of the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, Rogers put out such a weak report on the Benghazi scandal that it was tantamount to a cover-up. As Trey Gowdy said at the time, Rogers didn’t even interview eye witnesses before he issued his report. In May 2014, ace national security report, Eli Lake, reported that Rogers downright opposed the formation of the Benghazi Select Committee and seemed to be defending the Obama administration.

Why was he siding with Obama?

While we might never get the full story, the details that are out in public should automatically disqualify Rogers to serve in the administration. In June 2014, Judicial Watch reported that Rogers’ wife, Kristi, who was a top executive at the British-based security contractor Aegis Defense Services, helped win major security contracts for her group. “Libya also was an area of activity for Aegis, Ms. Rogers’ company. As Rep. Rogers assumed control of the Intelligence Committee, an Aegis subsidiary, Aegis Advisory, began setting up shop in Libya,” wrote Micha Morrison of Judicial Watch.

Read the full report from Judicial Watch, which raises serious questions about a conflict of interest in Libya.

Rogers bizarrely announced his retirement and said he planned to pursue a career in radio, a move that shocked a lot of people in Washington. Yet, now he is groveling for a position in the new administration. What happened to his radio career?

If people around Trump plan to elevate a man like Mike Rogers to a top national security or intel post, they as may as well replace him with Huma Abedin.

In summary …

The key for Trump is to avoid the mistakes of the past and to NOT automatically rely on insiders. Everyone expects Trump to look outside the box for Cabinet positions. That is in fact his mandate. There are plenty of smart, qualified conservatives who have not been infected by the elitist Kool Aide and the corruption of Washington. And if he is ever short on staffing options, he should remember Bill Buckley’s advice and pull out a telephone book before he taps the very people that have endangered our national security. (For more from the author of “The Next Great Battle for Conservatives: Keeping RINO Insiders out of the Administration” please click HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.

3 Ways the Trump Administration Can Improve Education

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As the post-election dust settles, the incoming Trump administration now has the chance to consider some immediate policy goals for the new year.

As a part of its top and immediate education priorities, the Trump administration should seize the opportunity to advance education choice for children in Washington, D.C., and reverse President Barack Obama’s policies that have grown federal intervention and stifled innovation in education.

This can be accomplished in three ways:

1. Supporting the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program. One of the greatest opportunities to improve the prospects of poor and minority children will be right at the White House doorstep when President-elect Donald Trump assumes office.

The nation’s capital is home to the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program (D.C. OSP), which provides scholarships to children from low-income families to attend a private school of choice within the District.

The D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program has been overwhelmingly successful. Students in D.C. who used these scholarships to attend private schools had graduation rates 21 percentage points higher than their peers who applied for a voucher but did not receive one (the program is oversubscribed and a lottery was employed to award scholarships when demand outpaced supply).

Graduation rates for D.C. OSP students reached 91 percent, far outpacing graduation rates in D.C. Public Schools.

Despite this success—and for a fraction of what is spent in the public system (D.C. Public Schools’ per-pupil revenue exceeds $29,400 per student per year, compared to the voucher amount, which is up to $12,600)—the Obama administration has tried to phase out the program, creating uncertainty for families.

As a federal city, the next administration should support education choice in the District of Columbia by supporting the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program (which is due for reauthorization), and should consider supporting policies that expand education choice to more District families.

2. Rescinding ESSA regulations. On Dec. 10, 2015, Obama signed into law the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), the eighth reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) and the most recent successor to No Child Left Behind (NCLB).

Although ESSA made some important changes to prescriptive and ineffective NCLB policies, lawmakers failed to enact reforms that genuinely restored state and local control of education. Not only were many conservative priorities absent from the bill that became law; the bill’s shortcomings are now being exacerbated by the Department of Education’s rulemaking process.

If the regulations that have been written by the department go into effect, ESSA will serve as a heavy-handed law that dictates the day-to-day affairs of local schools regarding spending, staffing, and accountability. This matters for states, local school districts, and the more than 49 million American schoolchildren who will be impacted by the law.

If the regulations as currently drafted are finalized, the next administration should rescind those regulations while supporting the longer-term conservative legislative policy priority of allowing states to opt-out from ESSA completely, as envisioned in the Academic Partnerships Lead Us to Success Act (A-PLUS).

3. Rolling back higher education regulations. Under the Obama administration, the Department of Education has supported policies that pick winners and losers in the higher education sector by, for example, promulgating regulations that unfairly single out for-profit colleges and universities.

The next administration should roll back two significant regulations: defense to repayment (regulation enabling the department to cancel the debt of students who can show their colleges have misrepresented the education students thought they would receive), and gainful employment (regulation that for-profit colleges and vocational programs must ensure their graduates’ loan repayments to not exceed 20 percent of their discretionary income), adversely affecting schools that serve nontraditional students.

Repealing such regulations would remove barriers to innovation in higher education and allow the marketplace to be a better determinant of quality, while also ensuring the federal government remains neutral on students’ and parents’ higher education choices.

Protecting education choice in the District would be a welcome change for low-income families in the nation’s capital, while signaling general support for policies that advance education choice.

Rolling back regulations weighing down ESSA would be a first step toward limiting federal intervention in local school policy, paving the way for more robust reforms in the year to come. And rescinding regulations unfairly targeting certain sectors of higher education would help ensure there is a market of higher education options that is diverse and reflects the varying needs of traditional and nontraditional students alike.

These are three important first steps in ensuring that students across America will begin to experience better and more diverse options in pursuing an education. (For more from the author of “3 Ways the Trump Administration Can Improve Education” please click HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.

Portland Police Declare Riot in Third Day of Anti-Trump Protests

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Chaos rocks Oregon on the third night of protests against Donald Trump’s election as president of the United States.

Police in Portland declared the situation a riot after windows were smashed and cars demolished.

As The Oregonian reports:

Police declared the demonstration a “riot” more than three hours after its 5 p.m. start, citing “extensive criminal and dangerous behavior.” The bureau said it warned the crowd about the designation, then tweeted that rioting is a class C felony.

The crowd – at least on par with the 2,000 that gathered the night before — started at Pioneer Courthouse Square in the early evening before taking off on a route that included a stop at the Portland waterfront and trip over the Hawthorne Bridge into Southeast Portland.

(For more from the author of “Portland Police Declare Riot in Third Day of Anti-Trump Protests” please click HERE)

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Trump’s Victory Presents a Golden Opportunity for Conservatism

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The polls were wrong, the pundits were wrong, the establishment was wrong. But the people got it right, electing the populist billionaire Donald Trump—and rejecting the ultra-progressive Hillary Clinton—as our 45th president.

They also gave Trump a Republican Congress, as well as 33 Republican governors to work with. It was a tsunami victory for the GOP and the conservative movement that supplied its politicians with ideas.

For more years than anyone can remember, the American people have been saying that the country is headed in the wrong direction and that they wanted change. Serious change.

They found it in the person of Donald Trump, who took his campaign where no Republican had gone in decades—to Michigan, Wisconsin, and other parts of rustbelt America—and brought back into the GOP a group previously known as “Reagan Democrats.”

Trump also performed better than expected in the African-American community because, it appears, he took time to visit and talk with them.

This election may go down as a realigning election because it meets two key criteria: (1) A major political party has been seriously weakened, and (2) a new political leader with new ideas has acquired the reins of power. Certainly the Republican Party—that is, the conservative party in our country—now dominates the political landscape.

In the new year, the new president and the new Congress must begin delivering on campaign promises such as repealing Obamacare, nominating respecters of the Constitution to the Supreme Court, improving border security, and repairing our badly run-down bridges and roads.

For their part, conservatives can offer solutions based on the first principles of limited government, free enterprise, and individual freedom. The Heritage Foundation has already been working with the Trump transition team, at its invitation, on policy alternatives and personnel possibilities.

Heritage is using as a model the 1980 “Mandate for Leadership” manual that President Ronald Reagan adopted for his administration. Reagan liked the conservative proposals of “Mandate” so much that he had copies placed before each member of his Cabinet at their very first meeting.

Almost two-thirds of the “Mandate” recommendations were eventually adopted, either in whole or in part, during the Reagan years. Heritage would like to match that record in the next four years.

As it moves forward, the Trump administration will face many powerful pressures to compromise, to settle for less, and to cut deals with special interests. As it has for 40 years, Heritage will argue that conservative policies are the best policies because they are based on one basic, time-tested idea: freedom works.

The historic results of the 2016 election offer a golden opportunity that must not be wasted. (For more from the author of “Trump’s Victory Presents a Golden Opportunity for Conservatism” please click HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.

China State Media Warns Trump Against Isolationism, Calls for Status Quo

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Chinese state media has warned the U.S. president-elect against isolationism and interventionism, calling instead for the United States to actively work with China to maintain the international status quo.

President-elect Donald Trump threatened to tear up trade deals and pursue a more unilateral foreign policy under his “America First” principle during a tempestuous election campaign.

But China and other foreign governments are uncertain how much of Trump’s rhetoric will be translated into policy because he has at times made contradictory statements and provided few details of how he would deal with the world.

Trump often targeted China in the campaign, blaming Beijing for U.S. job losses and vowing to impose 45 percent tariffs on Chinese imports. The Republican also promised to call China a currency manipulator on his first day in office.

U.S. isolationist policies had “accelerated the country’s economic crisis” during the Great Depression, warned a commentary by China’s official Xinhua News Agency, though it added that “election talk is just election talk”. (Read more from “China State Media Warns Trump Against Isolationism, Calls for Status Quo” HERE)

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How Trump Closed the Deal With Evangelicals

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“Weeping may endure for the night, but joy comes in the morning.” Those words from the Psalmist, King David, rang especially true for many Americans on November 9th when they awoke to the news that the nation had rejected the continuation of the anti-family, anti-faith policies of Barack Obama by electing Donald Trump in perhaps the most stunning political upset of the modern age. In a year of surprises, the ultimate outsider delivered the biggest, tapping into the frustration that pollsters didn’t detect and liberal elites never took seriously.

“The forgotten men and women of our country will be forgotten no longer,” vowed the president-elect, who not only overcame the opposition of the Democratic Party, but his own — soaring to victory in spite of a biased media, his own personal baggage, lopsided polls and a bevy of Hollywood stars. In disbelief, pundits watched as the electoral map turned a sea of red, colored by almost a decade of disillusionment with the president’s extremist agenda. Fueled by massive turnout, the highest in U.S. history, voters delivered a stinging repudiation — not just of Hillary Clinton — but her party’s ultra-liberal agenda and arguably the entire Obama era.

But the night wasn’t just a vindication of Donald Trump. It was also a validation once again of the evangelical movement, which once again overcame the media’s narrative of division to deliver one of the most significant political messages this country has ever seen. In nearly every election cycle for the last 40 years, the Left has tried to bury a movement they wish had never been born. And on the night of November 8th, they learned just how impossible that prospect will be. Evangelicals, many of whom (myself included) backed other candidates during the primary, quietly assessed the perilous state of the nation and unified behind Trump in greater number than they had behind the last three GOP nominees. To the astonishment of everyone, Trump outperformed John McCain, Mitt Romney and even George W. Bush — winning an overwhelming 81 percent of the evangelical vote.

If the media had questions about the influence of the religious right, they were answered early Wednesday morning by the greatest coalescence around a Republican nominee in two decades. It turns out the press had about as much success writing the obituary of the evangelical movement as it had predicting this election. Anyone who traveled the country these last few months saw how values voters were drawn to Donald Trump, not because of shared values, but because of shared concerns over the damage a Clinton Supreme Court would do to our freedoms. Recognizing that national security hung in the balance, they saw this as an opportunity, after eight years of President Obama’s repressive policies, to make freedom mean something again.

They also had the opportunity to hear, along with the rest of America, one of the best arguments against partial-birth abortion the country has ever heard in a presidential debate, in which Trump described — in detail — the barbaric procedure that rips a child out of the womb moments before birth. It may have been the most significant moment — not just of Trump’s campaign, but in the history of modern presidential politics. In four short sentences, the GOP nominee closed the deal with millions of pro-life voters, solidifying their support as the best chance to end America’s nearly 44 years of Court imposed abortion on demand. According to pollster George Barna, politically engaged evangelicals rank abortion as their top issue (30 percent) and Supreme Court nominations a close second (28 percent), the final debate delivered exactly the clarity they were hoping for.

In the end, though, what we witnessed wasn’t just the revenge of the deplorables, but the collapse of the Obama legacy. After the spectacular failures of Obamacare, the demoralization of our military, the explosion of lawlessness, tolerance of corruption and obsession with social engineering, Americans finally have the opportunity to rebuild the country they once knew. But the election is just the starting gun. Donald Trump may open the door to America’s solutions, but he was never meant to be the solution. The true transformation of a society starts in the hearts and minds of men. And under an administration with no interest in continuing the eight-year war on the First Amendment, we may finally see what the Church is capable of. In the meantime, one thing about this historic uprising is clear: Americans are looking for leaders of conviction. And as the results of the race for president show, they will accept no substitutes. (For more from the author of “How Trump Closed the Deal With Evangelicals” please click HERE)

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Hello, DC Republicans: There’s a New Sheriff in Town

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Republicans are in shock that Donald J. Trump did the unthinkable — he won. The establishment wing of the Republican Party, the #NeverTrump wing, and stalwart conservatives must all figure out what to do with Trump.

Here are three action items that conservatives in Congress should implement moving forward, both before and after Trump takes office.

Roll out a bold agenda

The old adage goes. “you can’t beat something with nothing.” Well, Republicans need to roll out a bold agenda for the future, and it needs to paint with the bold colors of Donald Trump.

First, they need to cancel the lame-duck session of Congress. Republicans in the House and Senate would be smart to pass a Continuing Resolution that lasts until the end of the fiscal year to clear the decks for Trump’s first 100 days.

Part of that 100 days needs to be a wholescale assault on Obamacare. In addition, Republicans should push Trump’s bold plan to reform the tax code and cut corporate taxes to make America great for business again.

One of the greatest threats to our republic is crushing debt. It’s time to push a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution that limits the size of government and that prohibits Congress and the courts from imposing tax hikes. A balanced budget amendment would force Congress to take a hard look at entitlement programs that are on a path to insolvency, while also requiring them to honor the promises to people relying on Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security today.

Trump is the true outsider. Trump is disliked by Wall Street, K Street, the corporate cronyists, and the main stream politicians. He may be the perfect candidate to promote a policy that truly tackles crony capitalism.

Republicans should end all legislation that provides special tax credits, regulations, and appropriations that help a specific lobbying interest or corporation. The special loopholes directed at certain industries or companies must end; the political favors for certain individuals or entities need to cease too.

Finally, one of the most important efforts in the first 100 days will be to pull from his list of potential Supreme Court nominees and nominate Senator Mike Lee, R-Utah (A, 100%) to the high court.

These agenda items are merely the tip of the iceberg. A radical agenda would capture what the American people told us yesterday — that they hate Washington and want radical change.

Fight

Republicans need to channel Trump.

They need to stop cutting deals in the name of “incrementalism.” Our squishy leaders will try to lower expectations for the new Congress. They will blame the Senate’s filibuster as a way to deflect from their own lack of leadership.

Learn from Sens. Rand Paul, R-Ky. (A, 92%), Mike Lee, Tom Cotton, R-Ark. (C, 76%), and Ted Cruz R-Texas (A, 97%) and start this new Congress with guns blazing.

Learn from Trump

The lessons of Donald Trump’s victory should be studied. He was a reaction to the terrible leadership in Congress over the past few years. When these “leaders” were confronted with numerous gun control bills, they played defense and refused to push popular ideas like national conceal carry. When they had the opportunity to defund the Obama agenda, they refused to use the power of the purse to even engage in a fight.

The only time they fought was to block Merrick Garland’s nomination to the U.S. Supreme Court, but had Trump lost, they would have immediately confirmed Garland, anyway.

Donald Trump is wildly popular with the base because he was the most anti-establishment candidate in the race. He called Washington politicians “dumb” and “stupid” — and he was right in a political sense. Washington politicians were not listening to Republican voters who wanted their representatives to stand up for what they believe in.

Are they listening now? We will find out soon. (For more from the author of “Hello, DC Republicans: There’s a New Sheriff in Town” please click HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.

Why Is the LGBTQ Community Freaking out About the Most Pro-Gay Republican President-Elect in History?

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President-elect Donald Trump has been reality for fewer than 48 hours now, and media outlets are already running stories about the LGBT fallout from the results. This is a special kind of absurd.

Two stories in the LGBT-centered Advocate highlight negative Trump reactions from gay voters online and in a gay bar in Columbus, Ohio.

“I hope that Canada will start taking refugees,” one person says in the latter. “They might have to build a wall themselves.”

Writing at Complex.com, deputy style editor Steve Dool, full of doom and gloom writes:

LGBTQIA+ rights were not anyone’s actual focus in this election. No marginalized group’s rights really were, if we’re being honest. The 2016 election cycle was more about emails and fear-mongering and walls and Russia and Billy Motherfucking Bush. And in the cold, hard light of Nov. 9, that’s embarrassing and hurtful. And there’s literally nothing we can do about that now. It’s done. We lost before a single ballot was cast.

Both The News Journal in Delaware and the Chicago Tribune ran stories highlighting supposed LGBT anxieties following Election Day results.

According to the Tribune story, a Naperville, Ill. LGBT activist is quaking in her boots at the prospect of a Trump administration, fearing that that it somehow signals “open season on the LGBT community,” that “paints an even bigger target on the back of our heads.”

Am I missing something here? Because this doesn’t really make sense. The Left has tried to cast Trump as all sorts of terrible “-ophobes” based on his rhetoric or proposed policies, but they don’t have a leg to stand on when it comes to LGBT issues. It’s not like Trump is pushing for a constitutional amendment going around Obergefell. It’s not like any of his immediate circle doesn’t buy into the supremacy of the Obergefell v. Hodges decision as “the law of the land.”

Sure, VP-elect Mike Pence has a long career as a solid social conservative (the 2015 Indiana RFRA “compromise” notwithstanding), but the tone of the campaign was nothing but friendly to gay voters.

Donald Trump went as far as to wave the rainbow flag at a rally in Colorado before the election. And not only invited the first openly gay man to speak at the Republican National Convention (on the main stage during primetime, no less), but addressed gay voters directly during his RNC nomination acceptance speech, as he had since the tragedy at the Pulse nightclub a month before. Hell, Trump was first invited to CPAC by a gay conservatives group in 2011.

His team may not be in favor of using the anti-conscience steamroller that Hillary Clinton wanted to get through Congress, but it’s not like anyone is pushing a natural marriage-affirming amendment to the Constitution. If anyone in this equation should have any concern about the Trump administration’s LGBT stance and rhetoric, it should be the social conservatives who helped him get elected, hoping that everything mentioned above doesn’t signal a shift in the vital conscience protections they’re hoping for (See: First Amendment Defense Act, repealing Obamacare transgender mandate, etc).

I get that Hillary promised LGBT voters the moon (she pretty much had to in order to get around her marriage flip flop), but again: Trump’s nothing to be afraid of on this front. The reaction from the Left has ranged from schadenfreude-inducing histrionics, to disgusting levels of hypocrisy (undermining peaceful transition of power, much?). But to get bent out of shape about Donald Trump’s presumed agenda on gay issues is nothing short of perplexing. (For more from the author of “Why Is the LGBTQ Community Freaking out About the Most Pro-Gay Republican President-Elect in History?” please click HERE)

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The Shocking Intolerance of Anti-Trump Liberals

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I have an unusual reading habit for a young, conservative woman: I regularly peruse the very liberal feminist site Jezebel.

Why? Well, I’ve always felt it was important to try to understand where liberals are coming from, think about if there are chances for common ground, and try to be thoughtful and considerate about their own concerns when I write. And on the Jezebel site, which is part of the larger Gawker (of course, the original site is now gone) family, there is generally a robust comment section.

I figured there would be a lot of emotions over Donald Trump’s win in the presidential election. But I wildly underestimated the extent of the anger—and the actions people would be taking.

Commenters are talking about ending relationships with Trump voters—and not just on Facebook.

Just take this comment from someone using the handle “bess marvin, girl detective,” responding to a piece about liberal comedian Samantha Bee noting that a lot of white women had voted for Trump, and addressing “so-called progressive white Jezzies”:

So many comments over over the past few months shows that a lot of y’all don’t want to be liberated, you want to be liked. ‘My (insert relative, loved one here) is voting for Trump but he/she is the nicest, kindest person ever…’ REALLY? How about this? Your loved one or relative is an awful human being. How kind and nice are they that they would push aside everything Trump has said and done to pull the lever?

To which “LesPane” responded:

Some of us white folks did, and it didn’t matter. Some of us asked relatives to leave our houses, and it didn’t matter. Some of us told grandparents that they wouldn’t be see they grandkids again if they talked politics around them, and it didn’t matter.

Though we come from very different places, I’m not actually to blame for this. I understand and share your anger.

What?

Look, I’m no stranger to disagreeing with relatives about politics. And that’s partly why I was so shocked to read this. Sure, some are truly upset now in light of this election’s result (welcome to how some of us felt in 2008 and 2012!), and maybe people will take different actions in the end.

But right now, at least some liberals are considering literally ending ties with relatives—including not letting grandparents see their grandkids!—over a vote for Trump. And that’s not just these two commenters. On a different Jezebel post, commenters discussed unfriending people on Facebook who supported Trump. “ImmortalAgnes” wrote:

I also deleted everyone who supported Trump from FB. Thankfully, it wasn’t that many people. Unfortunately, it included my step-dad. I don’t think these people don’t get it – I think they don’t care. I think that to take rights from women, from people of color, from the LGBT+ community, from non-Christians is what they want.

I love my step-dad. But I cannot stand by and pretend like he didn’t just proudly support racism and misogyny. I will not be speaking to him. I will not be seeing him. It’s a hard thing for me, but in this case my values and principals are more important and I will not invite someone at war with those to be part of my life.

Again: What? What are the rights that supposedly Trump is going to take away? We’ve been living in a country where, as The Weekly Standard’s Mark Hemingway tweeted, “Obama did sue nuns over birth control for crying out loud,” where religious bakers and florists have been told they have to participate in same-sex weddings, where an African-American fire chief lost his job over a book he wrote about his religious beliefs that included passages on same-sex marriage, and yet, the real threat to rights is from Trump?

Now there are hundreds of comments on Jezebel, and certainly not every one went in the direction of ending all contact with Trump fans. “InCaseYouDidn’tKnowTheyCallMeTheJackal” wrote, “Bent, but not broken. I am still a proud American. I am still a proud feminist. I will still welcome debate with those who oppose my views.”

And, of course, this kind of anger is not just happening online. There have been protests in cities across the country.

In Los Angeles, “Protesters … set on fire a piñata depicting the head of the president-elect,” reported CNN.

“Police in riot gear struggled to hold back scores of protesters in some of the cities as protesters chanted ‘Not My President’ and ‘No Racist USA,’” reported USA Today.

Liberals, I’ve spent the past eight years seeing the implementation of policy after policy I’ve despised, whether through law or executive action. I certainly get that it’s not easy. But I hope you’ll do what I’ve done, via reading Jezebel and other sites and talking to those on the left: Try to listen to what Americans at a different spot on the political spectrum are saying. Think about what they’re feeling. Try to understand, no matter how morally heinous you think a particular policy is, why someone, even if you think misguidedly, believes otherwise.

Yes, sometimes you’ll get angry. Sometimes you’ll be sad. Sometimes you’ll be truly baffled as to how someone can be both kind and compassionate and hold a certain position.

As I said: It’s not easy.

But it’s worth doing. Hillary Clinton was right about one thing: We are “stronger together.” This is an emotional week. But I hope in the long run, we can have a vigorous, but civil, debate between liberals and conservatives in the Trump era—not a refusal by liberals to even talk to Trump voters. (For more from the author of “The Shocking Intolerance of Anti-Trump Liberals” please click HERE)

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