The “Make America Great Again” movement started by President Donald Trump has never been more alive and energized to take on the pressing challenges created by the radical Marxists of the Biden administration and the Democrat-controlled Congress. So signaled the numerous high-profile attendees of the “America First Agenda Summit” held by the America First Policy Institute (AFPI) in Washington, D.C., on July 25-26. Featuring some of the biggest names from the Trump administration to conservative lawmakers, governors, state attorneys general, and public leaders, the forum provided a glimmer of hope if Republicans are restored to power after the midterm election this November.
When announcing the event at the beginning of July, Brooke Rollins, president and CEO of AFPI and former director of the Domestic Policy Council under Trump, said, “Americans are struggling in just about every facet of life due to our Nation’s leaders failing to put America First,” adding,
The “America First Agenda” will showcase policies that will restore American greatness by lowering gas prices, bringing down historic inflation, securing the border, returning law and order in our cities, and restoring America’s global leadership.
The frustration with the destructive leftist policies was palpable during a dozen hour-long, in-depth policy discussions.
The open-border policies that are taking American lives lost to crime and opioids, the sky-high inflation that makes the American middle class poorer, the energy policies that turned America into a “beggar nation,” and other pressing issues such as Covid mandates, crime, disregard for the lives of the unborn, and sexualization of children, all could be avoided if the nation’s leadership was committed to fundamental American values. That, however, is not the case, underlined the speakers. The Biden administration and the Democrats in control of the legislation are making America less free, less prosperous, less strong — and much more socialist.
The solution, they said, is to do what President Trump did when he took office in 2017 — to return the power back where it belongs, to the American people.
Linda McMahon, AFPI chair and former administrator of the U.S. Small Business Administration, underlined in her speech that the country thrived during Trump’s first term because Donald Trump was an America-first president who unapologetically put the interests of the American people first. She reminded attendees of the economic boom triggered by the tax cuts that benefited lower- and middle-income Americans. Trump also cancelled trade contracts that did not benefit Americans, such as NAFTA, and unleashed America’s oil and natural gas potential by relaxing Obama-era rules regulating methane and other greenhouse gas emissions as well offshore drilling limitations.
Senator Rick Scott (R-Fla.), speaking on the panel dedicated to making America energy-independent again, stressed how much Americans are struggling under the current administration:
Month after month, we have seen raging inflation and higher and higher energy costs for American families. Since his first month in office, Joe Biden’s war on American energy has hurt families and our country. Biden’s failed Green New Deal energy agenda, which started with his disastrous decision to block the Keystone XL Pipeline, has driven prices to historic highs and forced families to make an impossible choice: fill up their gas tank, put food on the table or heat their homes. In order for us to compete with our nation’s adversaries, like Communist China and Russia, we must make America energy independent.
The latest polls confirm that an overwhelming majority of Americans believe that the nation is heading in the wrong direction. At the same time, the economy is the issue that easily tops voters’ concerns, even among the Democrats.
It was not surprising that the attendees radiated optimism about the midterm results. Yet Biden’s awful performance was only one of the factors that drove it. The attendees said they were confident in the future of the nation with the roadmap of putting the country back on track, which the institute, staffed with numerous officials from the Trump administration, has worked on since 2020.
Many talked about the prospects of winning an enduring Republican majority in November.
“I believe in this next election, this is a 50-year election. Never before are we going to feel this type of opportunity in a year of redistricting,” said the House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.). “We can lock in a conservative majority for the decade.”
McCarthy also previewed the ”Commitment to America” 2022 midterm agenda that he promised to roll out in September. In the meantime, he pinpointed some of the policy areas that will be a focus of the new Republican majority, starting with making America “energy-dominant,” securing the southern border, and “holding Washington accountable.”
Other policy agendas included curbing federal spending and expanding and strengthening law-enforcement capabilities. In addition to that, “We’re going to withhold money [from] any prosecutor that doesn’t uphold the law and picks and chooses who they go to prosecute,” McCarthy said.
The keynote speech was delivered by Donald Trump himself, who returned to the capitol for the first time since leaving office on January 20, 2021.
In his 90-minute address, the president focused on the dreadful state of the economy, urban decay, crime and homelessness, illegal immigration, and the national-security threat posed by Communist China. He harshly criticized the Biden administration for so rapidly demolishing a strong economy and a secure border that he’d brought under control.
“We will not have a country left if this economic, social, and attack on civilization itself is not quickly reversed,” he stressed.
“People are going to vote to stop the destruction of our country and they’re going to vote to rescue America’s future,” President Trump said.
The president also touched on the issue of election fraud, which he insists cost him a second term. This was met with loud cheers from some 1,200 prominent attendees. He said, “I won, and I won a second time. Did much better the second time…. We may just have to do it again. We have to straighten out our country.”
Later during the speech, the president yet again hinted at the possibility of him running for the Oval Office, “Never forget, everything this corrupt establishment is doing to me is all about preserving their power and control over the American people. They want to damage you in any form, but they really want to damage me, so I can no longer go back to work for you. And I don’t think that’s going to happen,” he said, sending the audience into a chant of “Four more years!”
