Alfonse D'Amato

To learn more, tune out the liberal media

Posted

This week, I decided that after decades of suffering through pages and pages of liberalism and slanted, left-leaning views, I was canceling my subscription to The New York Times.

The Times continues to slam our president-elect for saving about 1,000 jobs right before the holidays. Donald Trump made a campaign promise to save manufacturing jobs and is delivering, and now The Times no longer has to worry about delivering to my front door.

There is no arguing with the fact that the newspaper, and the rest of its friends in the liberal media, are not fans of Trump, but The Times has gone out of its way to voice its disapproval of just about every decision Trump has made since winning the election.

When Time magazine named Trump its Person of the Year, one of the Times’s opinion page headlines was “Trump: Madman of the Year.” And the paper has had a field day with his cabinet choices, publishing one opinion piece by editor Susan Chira titled, “Is Donald Trump’s Cabinet Anti-Woman?”

The media has no love for Trump. They’ve had a bias against him and his run for the presidency since Day 1. But the election is over. It’s time for a fresh start.

Take a look at his cabinet choices, a mix of outsiders, even millionaires and successful professionals. He recently announced his choice of Dr. Ben Carson, his former rival, for secretary of Housing and Urban Development. Carson had stated publicly that his preference was to remain in private industry, but Trump persuaded him to join the administration.

During the campaign, Carson took Trump on a tour of the shattered neighborhoods in Detroit and showed him his boyhood home. He knows firsthand what it’s like to overcome poverty. He has a passion to challenge the racial discrimination of banks, developers and landlords. These ideals will make him an effective HUD secretary and a tremendous asset to the new administration.

Yet the liberal media is convinced that Carson doesn’t fully understand the government’s programs, and that he ignores the incredible progress those programs have made in curbing poverty. Carson may not have experience running a government agency and bureaucracy, but he is a widely regarded, extremely successful African-American neurosurgeon who also has a deep understanding of life in the inner cities.

Locally, I understand why some Long Islanders would be concerned about Carson leading HUD. Many of us live in coastal flood zones, and are still recovering from Superstorm Sandy. But I believe Carson will have our best interests in mind, too.

We’ve never had a secretary of HUD with such strong attachments to the inner city. And let’s be honest: Carson can’t be any worse than the current secretary, Julian Castro, who has abandoned families in crime-ridden, unsafe housing projects.

While the media continues to criticize Trump for his cabinet selections, it is important to realize that our president-elect isn’t just putting campaign contributors into high positions, but also recruiting some of America’s brightest minds to run the nation. He’s “draining the swamp” of career bureaucrats and replacing them with successful, smart, talented people. Carson and Betsy DeVos, Trump’s selection to lead the Education Department, are pointed examples.

A number of inner-city mayors have voiced their opposition to DeVos. I believe they are opposed because they care more about getting re-elected. Inner-city kids are a distant second among their priorities, and are sold out for campaign contributions from the education unions, which are afraid of competition from charter schools and the school voucher program.

On the contrary, DeVos has made a herculean effort — and donated millions of dollars of her personal wealth — to fight for quality education for inner-city schools. She has stood up to the political bosses in defense of children who have been trapped in mediocrity. She should be celebrated, and not chastised daily, by the Times and the liberal media!

The new administration isn’t just draining the swamp; it is making real changes. If you want to learn more about it, put down The Times, cancel your subscription and broaden your horizons.

Al D’Amato, a former U.S. senator from New York, is the founder of Park Strategies LLC, a public policy and business development firm. Comments about this column? ADAmato@liherald.com.