O pinion
Donald Trump: Promises Made, Promises Kept
BY WILLIAM WANGER
TRUMP HAS accomplished
more in 45 months in office
than Biden has in his near half
century. I know many cringe at
some of Trump’s tweets. I have.

Clearly, the
former businessman isn’t a politician. He
loves his country and that’s what
guides him. He’s not about finan-
cial benefit or a hypocritical insider
with disdain for our values. Unlike
career politician Biden, who, with
his family, became a millionaire
serving in the D.C. swamp, Trump
has forgone millions to serve.

Biden’s policies are a mix
of recycled bologna and pie in
the sky. He’s sold out so many
of his moderate positions
taken during his career that his
resume resembles Swiss cheese.

The Trump presidency is
highlighted by “promises made,
promises kept.”
Trump’s actions on behalf of
Israel are especially noteworthy.

He supports Israel, not just
because he has an observant
Jewish daughter, son-in-law
and grandchildren. Trump
recognized Jerusalem as Israel’s
capital, moved the U.S. Embassy
to Jerusalem, recognized Israel’s
sovereignty over the Golan and
clarified that Israel’s settle-
ments in Judea and Samaria are
legal. Trump stopped payments
to UNRWA for its misuse of
funds, and cut funding to the
Palestinian Authority until it
ceases making “pay to slay”
payments to terrorist families.

Trump embraces Israel as
a strategic ally, rejecting the
“daylight” stiff-arm by Obama-
Biden. Trump released a bold
vision for peace between Israel
and the Palestinians. His
leadership led to historic peace
agreements by the UAE and
Bahrain with Israel.

U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley
delivered Trump’s powerful
message that America won’t
tolerate U.N. anti-Israel bias. Haley
repudiated UNSC Resolution
2334. Passed with Obama-Biden’s
complicity in December 2016,
2334 called East Jerusalem, the site
of the Western Wall, “occupied
Palestinian territory,” and
condemned Jewish “settlements”
in Jerusalem’s Jewish Quarter.

Biden’s support of 2334 was
reminiscent of his bullying Israel
four decades earlier, when he
threatened to withhold economic
aid if Israel didn’t comply with his
demands regarding settlements.

Biden’s poor record on
Israel is worse now. Anti-Israel,
anti-Semitic activist Linda
Sarsour spoke at his Democratic
National Convention, along
with other Farrakhan friends.

His party embraces the warped
anti-America, anti-Israel, and
anti-Semitic remarks of the Rep.

Ilhan Omar, Rep. Rashida Tlaib,
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio Cortez
and Rep. Ayanna Pressley squad.

While Biden welcomes
anti-Semites, Trump fights
anti-Semitism. A Trump execu-
tive order extended Civil Rights
Act anti-discrimination protec-
tions to Jewish students fighting
anti-Semitism on campuses.

He signed the JUST Act to
strengthen Holocaust restitution
efforts and the Never Again Act
to fund Holocaust education.

Trump destroyed the ISIS
caliphate, and is extricating the
U.S. from endless foreign wars
favored by the military-indus-
trial complex. He withdrew
from Obama-Biden’s disas-
trous Iran nuclear deal that
gave Iran a pathway to nuclear
weapons and billions in cash.

Trump reinstituted sanctions
against Iran, cutting-off its
oil exports and denying Iran
revenue to fund terrorism.

Trump eliminated murderous
Qasem Soleimani.

Biden says he’ll rejoin the Iran
deal, and resume payments to
Iran. Trump withdrew from the
job-killing, China-advantaged
Paris Climate Accord, and
NATO allies now pay billions
more on their own defense.

Trump has nominated
Supreme Court justices and
judges who understand they’re not
policymakers. Trump’s tax reform
legislation provided relief for
82% of middle-class families. His
Opportunity Zones foster govern-
ment investments to revitalize
previously overlooked and under-
served communities.

Trump’s regulations roll-back
lifted-up American families
and businesses. He termi-
nated NAFTA, and signed the
U.S.-Canada-Mexico trade deal
putting American workers first.

While Biden champions open
borders without any vetting,
Trump champions revamping
legal immigration to protect
America’s workers and our
security. He has made the U.S.

energy independent, and the
world’s top energy producer and
net energy exporter, all while
keeping our drinking water and
air the cleanest they’ve ever been.

Despite what Biden and
Harris now claim, they oppose
the fracking and clean coal that
have revitalized Pennsylvania’s
economy, and supports the
Green New Deal that would
kill U.S. energy independence.

Obama-Biden shipped jobs
See Wanger, Page 31
Quarantining With My Holocaust Survivor Grandmother
EMILY BARASCH | JTA.ORG
A WOMAN I quarantined with
inadvertently shamed me on a
regular basis. As strange March
rolled into tragic April which
rolled into tragic and strange
May, she found ways of keeping
herself occupied that were both
JEWISHEXPONENT.COM maddeningly self-enriching
and deeply sophisticated.

Though we are related, our
approach to quarantine was
different. As she watched the
French film “Portrait of a Lady
on Fire” and the French series
“The Bureau,” both sans subti-
tles, I gleefully watched the
most depraved Bravo shows.

She played bridge on her iPad
— lessons and tournaments in
which she competed for cash; I
learned the ins and outs of the
TikTok “Hype House.”
Where my social Zooms
petered out, she was invited
everywhere: into people’s
living rooms for birth-
days, bat mitzvahs, even the
occasional bris. As ambulances
ravaged our home city, New
York, and deaths mounted,
we both turned to food. I’d
botch Alison Roman recipes
and smother cream cheese
frosting onto cinnamon buns
and then lick it off the spoon.

She’d slow cook ratatouille and
regularly remind me that she
drinks at least nine glasses of
water by 6 p.m. Infuriatingly,
she did online yoga, kept up
her skin care routine, and wore
flattering lipstick.

Even seeing no one, her
style could be described as
uptown-doyenne-takes-a-day- trip-to-Brooklyn-galleries. She
wore sweatpants, yes, but they
were somehow chic paired with
sumptuous cream cashmeres,
JEWISH EXPONENT
well-ironed button-down
Oxfords, and several different
pairs of festive Birkenstocks.

It was a good day if I wore a
bra, or better, something that I
didn’t wear the day before.

This woman was, of course,
my octogenarian grandmother
— we call her Oma — who my
husband and I found ourselves
quarantining with
from mid-March to July.

She didn’t mean to shame me;
she was just better prepared to
live in a “cool zone” of history —
as in a “period in history that’s
super cool to read about, but
much less cool to live through.”
Oma is no stranger to “cool
zones”: She was born a Jew in
Arad, Romania in 1934, where
her family narrowly side-skirted
the Nazis and then fled from
the Soviets on foot and horse
to Belgium. There she met my
grandfather, himself a survivor
of Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen.

Fast forward seven decades,
two children, six grandchil-
dren and widowhood; my
grandmother is now a bona
fide New Yorker. And like any
New Yorker with taste and an
independent streak, she has her
preferences: her favorite butcher
and shoe cobbler, her favorite
companion for the symphony
and art house movie, her
favorite walking route around
Central Park.

See Barasch, Page 31
OCTOBER 29, 2020
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