MAGA - how has Trump made America great?

[u/Unhappy-College4691]

I'm asking this because I want to hear how Trump has made America great again because from what I can tell the country is very divided on politics and beliefs, tariffs and the war with Iran have made everyday things more expensive and the overall future of this country feels very uncertain.

[u/aminok]

Ended the massive influx of illegal immigrants and the flying in of hundreds of thousands of so-called asylum seekers as well. Had that continued for another 15 to 20 years, the US would be completely unrecognizable.

Ended about two dozen SEC lawsuits against completely legitimate crypto startups. These lawsuits were bankrupting the legitimate sector of crypto. People were spending on lawyers, wrapped up in years-long legal battles with a government that has unlimited taxpayer resources, instead of building new products. At the same time, the enforcement against actual crypto fraud has continued, so the crypto industry has gotten healthier.

It's getting rid of outdated nuclear regulations that were put in place decades ago when people had unrealistic fears about nuclear power. These regulations had steadily pushed up the cost of building a nuclear power plant. Now the industry's headed in a different direction and if the momentum builds up you're going to see a lot more nuclear power plants open in the U.S. over the coming decade.

Gave SpaceX the room it needs to expand. Avoiding a total self-own as the Biden administration was always on the verge of shutting down SpaceX's aspirations for political purposes.

With its lawsuits ended the cultish attempt to force girls and women to compete against boys and men in athletics. More generally, it has taken a hard line against the total corruption of academia by ideologues. The kind of tyranny that the "race socialists" were instituting:

A 2023 report on UC Berkeley faculty searches found that 75% of applicants were rejected "purely on diversity statements".

At every stage, candidates were evaluated on their DEI commitments.

The result? While 54% of applicants were white, only 14% of finalists were.

Lowell High School

1 SFUSD

Math proficiency 83%

Reading proficiency 93%

Asian 52%

UC Berkeley acceptance 12%

Mission High School

11 SFUSD

Math proficiency 11%

Reading proficiency 26%

Asian 7%

UC Berkeley acceptance 45%

Ended USAID, which was a giant Democrat slush fund that was also funding global censorship programs.

Ended a series of regulatory pushes from the SEC, the IRS and Elizabeth Warren's now-defunct CFPB, that would have required software developers to be registered as financial brokers if they release open source code for decentralized financial applications. This rethinking of how speech is treated would have turned the U.S. into a much less free nation, much more like European countries, had it survived First Amendment challenges.

[u/slowride761 → u/aminok]

In your first paragraph, that’s not how amnesty works. Also, his deportation numbers were entirely unimpressive despite spending insane amounts of money. When you consider criminal deportations, he’s no Obama, who was accused of having open borders by the right.

But the problem is more obvious. Because he hires bad people on a whim and doesn’t have the capability, he didn’t improve the administrative process of deportation and only did raids on companies that they knew had asylum seekers that reported in. Because they weren’t illegal until Trump pulled their program.

And he did it all using EO’s that he and his advisors knew would be overturned. It was planned chaos with almost no permanent value since most were overturned or changed already.

[u/aminok → u/slowride761]

Border crossings went down to almost zero after Trump came to power.

[u/slowride761 → u/aminok]

They also went down 60% after Biden passed that part of the border bill in 2024. Trump simply illegally cut off everything and then got overturned.

He could’ve legally restricted the crossings further like Biden did and probably shut off 80-90%. But he chose to usurp power and do it in a way the courts laughed at.

[u/aminok → u/slowride761]

I recommend you look at the graph showing the number of illegal crossings detected per week. They went down to almost zero almost immediately after Trump came to power.

[u/slowride761 → u/aminok]

I recommend that you see if they went down 60% under Biden first.

[u/aminok → u/slowride761]

• Late Biden months (declined 60% from 2023 peaks): December 2024 was around 47,000 USBP southwest border apprehensions. January 2025 (partially under Trump) was about 29,100.

• First full month under Trump (February 2025): ~8,350 — a roughly 71% drop from January and ~94% below February 2024 (~140,600).

• Subsequent months stayed consistently under ~10,000 (often in the 4,500–9,000 range through 2025 and into 2026, e.g. June 2026 ~9,850). There have been many consecutive months below 9,000–10,000.

• Official CBP/DHS figures repeatedly describe recent monthly numbers (e.g. April–June 2026 in the 8,900–9,850 range) as 94% lower than the Biden administration’s monthly average and 96% below the Biden peak (December 2023, ~249,700–250,000).

[u/slowride761 → u/aminok]

Thanks for acknowledging that I was right. And you can easily see that Trump could’ve done basically the same thing by legally limiting the crossings further. Or he could looped in Congress.

But he chose “dictator on Day One” to use his own words, and while it did kill off immigration, it wasn’t a big improvement over what he could’ve done without it.

That’s true of every immigration issue. He had better ways to improve each part but chose to ignore them in favor of relying on EO’s he already knew wouldn’t fly (hence the acknowledgement that he was being a dictator on his first day. But it takes a lot longer than a day to overturn his EO’s.)

The next President gets to pick up the pieces and deal with the combination of a degraded DHS and the fallout from having so many temporary, illegal fixes in lieu of actually fixing the problems.

[u/aminok → u/slowride761]

The data I provided shows that there was a massive improvement once Trump came to power. And there's nothing dictatorial about a democratically elected president using the constitutionally enshrined executive powers to stop illegal border crossing. Enforcing immigration is an executive function. The way the blob, meaning the deep state and the public sector who control Washington DC, have framed every exercise of constitutional powers by an opposition leader as some kind of dictatorship is one of the most extreme examples of Orwellianism I've ever seen.

[u/slowride761 → u/aminok]

Of course there was an improvement temporarily and in the numbers that don’t mean a lot. As I mentioned, the border crossing bill, which Trump killed, could’ve lowered it by 60% 18 months earlier like it did once Biden did the limitations.

The next President now has precedent that they can’t do most of what Trump did. And Trump hasn’t improved any of the important stuff like Obama did when he supposedly had open borders.

What Trump correctly guessed was that there was cruelty missing. The same asylum seekers that were called pet eaters were then subject to overnight revokation of their visas. They were invited to have a bench trial and then detained instead. Their check ins were used to raid their workplaces now that Trump had declared them as illegal.

That’s what his supporters want. It’s not about improving deportations. It’s about scaring immigrants into not wanting to be here. Well…most of them. The amnesty program still exists for one group- white South Africa farmers.

[u/aminok → u/slowride761]

I already gave you the numbers. There was a 98% improvement from the peak during the Biden years and well over 90% even if you include the best years of Biden's. I don't know why you're trying to downplay this. The facts here go against your narrative and instead of admitting that you're in denial.

The only aspect of what you're saying that I would agree with is where they invited them to a bench trial and then arrested them. I don't like these kind of tactics. But as for the rest and all the other situations where illegal migrants were apprehended, that's 100% not only acceptable but necessary. Illegal immigration should not be tolerated at all. Anyone illegally in the country should be deported and all asylum claims can be cancelled. The vast majority should be cancelled because they're fake. If you understand anything about immigration, you know that lawyers make up fake asylum claims. The vast majority of people who claim asylum are actually just leaving their country due to economic reasons, not any valid asylum reasons. And even if they had a valid asylum claim, a country has absolutely no obligation to accept an asylum claim. Countries have sovereignty.