Republicans should have been hammering home every single day how their policies had actually made things more affordable, such as tax cuts for working and middle-class Americans. But they didn’t.

Kenneth R. Timmerman | November 9, 2026

We were wrong. I’ve got to admit it right up front. 

Our optimism about the economy, our confidence that most Americans were thankful to President Trump for having halted mass migration at our Southern border on Day One, were all wrong.

We trumpeted Trump’s achievements over the past 20 months, from tax cuts to tariffs to increased NATO defense spending and getting Europe to cover the cost for the Ukraine war (instead of the American taxpayer).

And that’s not to mention the Greenland Deal. And ending eight wars. And $22 trillion in direct foreign investment in the United States. And driving the transgender nonsense to the fringes of our culture where it belongs.

We thought those accomplishments were self-evident. But they were not. 

On the contrary, every day the President, his administration and federal agencies such as ICE were denigrated, castigated, and vilified by the formerly mainstream media and on millions of social media channels that have increasingly taken their place as news sources for younger Americans.

And then came the Iran war, and the totally predictable rise in oil and gas prices. 

Even conservatives griped about the price at the pump. My friend Morgan Murphy, a former DoD........

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