“The experts” seem to have two things in common: an inveterate opposition to President Trump and being wrong. Seemingly, every big issue — from Iran to immigration — they have gotten wrong. Even flipping a coin would do better than “the experts.” Or a dartboard. Stopped clocks and blind squirrels outperform them, yet they’re still deemed to be “experts.”
Being wrong is seemingly what “the experts” do best.
On Iran, “the experts” told us that attacking Iran would trigger Iranian retaliation on America and possibly World War III, with Russia rushing in and possibly China. First, Israel attacked Iran: nothing happened except a stunning military success that humbled Iran in the eyes of the region and the world. Then the U.S. followed in Israel’s wake, hitting nuclear sites Israel couldn’t reach.
Iran’s proxies — Hezbollah and the Houthis — have been as quiet as the utterly prostrate Hamas. Iran itself fired missiles into Israel, but in the exchange between Iran’s indiscriminate terrorist ballistic missile launches and Israel’s targeted strikes, Iran lost badly every time.
Iran’s supposed partners have done even less. Russia has not joined, despite the two nations only being separated by the Caspian Sea and their increasingly close oil ties. China, the main buyer of oil from Iran, has done even less.
There has been no World War III to date, nor anything remotely approaching it. Instead, Iran has been forced into a ceasefire with Israel after receiving a massive beating.
It is hardly the first time that “the experts” have been wrong about Trump’s policies. On immigration, they told us that the influx of illegal immigrants was not the Biden administration’s fault; instead, it was due to an inherited and broken U.S. immigration system. Then Trump took office and closed the open border as quickly as Biden had opened it.
The result: the intractable problem of illegal immigration was actually easily solved by simply enforcing America’s supposedly “unworkable” immigration laws. The only real problem with solving the illegal immigration problem has turned out to be Democrats who have used every means — from protests to attacks on ICE facilities and agents, to doxing of ICE agents, to constant judicial challenges to breaking the law to hide and protect illegal immigrants — to thwart immigration laws’ enforcement. Once again, “the experts” were wrong.
Being wrong is seemingly what “the experts” do best, or at least do most often on the biggest questions. The experts’ track record is not better on tariffs. These were going to ignite inflation, wreck the economy, increase unemployment, tank the stock market, and precipitate trade wars. Wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, and wrong.
On NATO they have fared no better. Trump was going to destroy America’s alliance with Europe and leave that continent-wide open to Russia. Instead, NATO is stronger than ever and, thanks to Europe’s dramatically increased defense spending, is going to become stronger still. When Trump attended the last NATO summit, he was hailed.
The experts derided Trump’s executive actions as prima facie unconstitutional. Trump was a threat to democracy. Instead, the Supreme Court has upheld an impressive array of Trump’s actions.
In contrast, Democrats have attacked the Supreme Court’s decisions. Senate Minority Leader Schumer, after the recent Supreme Court decision limiting nationwide injunctions, which had been used to stall Trump’s executive actions, said:
The Supreme Court’s decision to limit courts of their long-held authority to block illegal executive actions is an unprecedented and terrifying step toward authoritarianism, a grave danger to our democracy, and a predictable move from this extremist MAGA court. By weakening the power of district courts to check the presidency, the Court is not defending the Constitution — it’s defacing it.
Who sounds like the threat to democracy and American government institutions now?
Going back further, the experts told us that Biden was fit to serve, that Hunter’s laptop was fake, that Russia collusion was real, that California and New York know best — however, Biden was not; Hunter’s laptop was real; Russia collusion was fake (rather, China is now alleged to have meddled in the 2020 election); and California goes up in flames from mishandled wildfires and unpoliced immigration protests, while New York’s Democratic nominee for mayor is an avowed Democratic socialist whose promised policies will plunge that city even deeper into the cesspool that’s already there.
Prior to these examples, they told us that Defund the Police would work. That green energy subsidies were temporary.
Yet despite all these pratfall performances that Ouija boards and Magic Eightballs could outperform, “the experts” are still deemed to be experts. Simply, they couldn’t have been more wrong if they had tried to be.
It is hard not to reach the conclusion based on performance that “the experts” were not trying — or rather trying to achieve something other than accuracy — with their predictions. Trump is not always right. But “the experts” rarely are. Seemingly their only real qualification is saying Trump is always wrong.
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READ MORE from J.T. Young:
Broken Border Enforcement and Broken Windows Policing
Democrats Talk Only to Themselves on Immigration
Reduce Spending and Reduce Illegal Immigration
J.T. Young is the author of the recent book, Unprecedented Assault: How Big Government Unleashed America’s Socialist Left, from RealClear Publishing, and has over three decades’ experience working in Congress, the Department of the Treasury, the Office of Management and Budget, and representing a Fortune 20 company.