Trump Is Endorsed for President by Three Leading Columnists Who Say the Campaign Has Reached ‘the Moment for Choosing’

 Conrad Black, Victor Davis Hanson, and William Bennett, in a detailed statement, declare Trump the better candidate in ‘every important policy area.’

An endorsement of President Trump in 2024 has been issued jointly by three famed columnists and podcasters — Conrad Black, Victor Davis Hanson, and William Bennett — who, declaring that there is “no excuse for fence-sitting or moral equivalence,” say the race for the White House has reached “the moment for choosing.”

“We believe,” the three say, “that America and the world would be best served by the reelection of President Trump. We believe this because we find him superior in every important policy area, a much more capable executive, a much stronger and more energetic and intellectually agile occupant of such an enervating office, and a person who, despite terrible bouts of hucksterism in his commercial career, is substantially less compromised ethically than President Biden.”

Lord Black, the press baron who built the Hollinger group of newspapers, is a biographer of Trump and a weekly columnist of the Sun; Mr. Bennett is a author and former secretary of education; and Mr. Hanson, a senior fellow in military history and classics at the Hoover Institution at Stanford and an emeritus professor at California State University, Fresno who has emerged as one of the most prolific columnists on the right. The three, who issue a podcast, are unapologetic in their support for the 45th president.

Their endorsement was issued shortly before the June 27 CNN debate at Atlanta. “We concluded some weeks ago that President Trump deserved to be reelected, and the debate between the apparent candidates confirmed that on June 27,” the columnists added in an update. “We believe that the same reasoning applies in respect of any plausible alternative Democratic candidate to President Biden.”

“The virtues and vices of President Trump are well known,” they write. “No candidate in history has received more scrutiny. Now, after three years, President Biden’s record is clear (albeit his vices remain relatively obscured from the public). We hoped for the best and were prepared to approve his successes — and said so openly on our podcast. But the moment for choosing has arrived, and this time there is no excuse for fence-sitting or moral equivalence.”

The triumvirate said they find Mr. Trump “superior” to Mr. Biden “in every important policy area, a much more capable executive, a much stronger and more energetic and intellectually agile occupant of such an enervating office, and a person who, despite terrible bouts of hucksterism in his commercial career, is substantially less compromised ethically than President Biden.” 

The columnists start with the economy, putting at 83 percent the portion of the American taxpayers whose taxes were cut by Mr. Trump. They say that the tax cuts increased revenue, while maintaining inflation “at very modest and easily sustainable levels and producing, prior to the COVID shutdown, an economy with 750,000 more vacancies to fill than there were unemployed people.”

“It was a superb performance: lower taxes, minimal inflation, and full employment. The Biden administration’s record does not bear comparison: severely damaging inflation, with higher taxes and no better a record of job creation — albeit most of it due to Covid layoffs returning to work as the shutdown ended.”

They also cite President Trump’s deregulation strategy, under which had the aim of eliminating two regulations for every new one issued. They say that the Trump administration “reduced air and water pollution appreciably while encouraging the energy industries and restoring the United States to the status of a net energy exporter for the first time in nearly 70 years.”

On immigration, the Black-Hanson-Bennett endorsement focused on the administration’s pursuit of “legal and orderly immigration at a little over one million people per year, and almost completely ended illegal entry into the country.” They decry the Biden administration’s “willful admission” of between 8 million and 10 million illegal immigrants.”

The columnists write that the “influx of predominantly unskilled and undereducated people places great strain on the country’s education, social services, and law enforcement resources. These self-destructive practices must stop, and Trump’s pledge to stop them is entirely defensible.” 

“With respect to ‘culture wars,’” the three write, “the Democratic emphasis on identity politics and the incitement of the grievances of almost every group against gainfully employed white Christian males is tawdry, destructive, and based on a false notion of the nature of American society, and the federal government must cease to encourage it.”

On education, the three stress that the federal government “must act to improve standards at all levels. Federal assistance to school districts that do not produce competitive results and do not require a reasonable effort by teachers and a generally acceptable curriculum, should be reduced.”

They argue that universities “must be compelled through the tax system to reduce their fees, reduce their bloated administrative budgets, and ensure that the curriculum is in no place unrelievedly hostile to the United States and its history.”

On national security, the columnists declare that America “must clearly define its strategic interests in the world and leave no country in any doubt of its ability and determination to defend those interests.”

The three endorse in respect of Ukraine what amounts to a compromise on the border areas with Russia. The three endorse the assistance of Israel in “all practical ways in terminating Hamas as a terrorist force. It is our most reliable and distinguished ally in the Middle East and the right of the Jewish People to their homeland is unconditional, though there will be legitimate discussion of its exact borders.”

Communist China, the endorsement asserts, “must be left in no doubt that further territorial advances will be resisted by the United States and its allies in the region, and that any assault upon Taiwan will be directly opposed by the United States and its allies to prevent the reunification of China by force.”

The three back the new American administration’s “adherence to the Shanghai Agreement of 1972 between President Nixon and Mao Tse-tung and Chou En-lai that there is in principle one China but that its reunification must be voluntary.

“In all of these matters, without exception,” the endorsement says, “we believe it is demonstrable that President Trump will be more reliable and effective than President Biden or any imaginable Democratic replacement of him.

Messrs. Black, Hanson, and Bennett say that “the indomitable resistance” by President Trump to the campaign against his candidacy has “enabled him to show admirable strength of character under daunting conditions” — making the 45th president the candidate who would “best serve the interests of the United States and of the Western world.”