What Does President Donald Trump Have in Common with American Flag Day?

President Donald John Trump’s birthday is today, June 14, American Flag Day. He was born in 1946. One hundred and sixty-nine years had passed since the Second Continental Congress adopted the “stars and stripes.” The year was 1777.

The vivid new flag emblazoned with stars for the 13 colonies, symbolized the courage of our forefathers and foremothers already laboring to birth a world-changing nation by rising up to fight The Revolutionary War. Now, the 45th President is fighting to strengthen the foundations of the American dream drawing from the first patriots, the Declaration of Independence, and the Constitution.

And yes. The US President is an unlikely one and kaleidoscopic in his personality. President Trump is flamboyant. Yet, our Commander-in-Chief maintains a solemn and laser-focused goal for putting Americans first. One moment, he is polarizing, the next unifying. Some mornings, he’s twitterly impulsive, yet the afternoon may find him intently listening in one of his many problem-solving roundtables. The Flag Day 74 year-old has an energy level that seems to outpace everyone around him. And his outsized work ethic has resulted in a stunning amount of economic and job opportunities which have benefited all Americans before the pandemic.

On formal occasions he capably delivers a hope-filled speech. In packed arenas with his enormously popular rallies, he is off script as if he is at one of his building sites chatting it up with his skilled employees or out to dinner with friends. On Twitter, his fingers click a flight around the world tweeting words that especially rile up the United States, both conservatives and liberals and for distinct reasons. Conservatives support his policies of “promises made, promises kept” and yet often cringe at some of his words and comments. Liberals and mainstream media mostly refuse to find even one word or one policy they will get behind. One attribute I hope that a majority of Americans agree with is that President Trump is a patriot.

We conservative evangelical supporters are accused of being cultish but we have 20/20 clear-eyed vision about his past; the billionaire playboy, the brilliant builder, the TV star, his Hollywood pals, his beauty pageants, casinos, Trump Tower, books, et al. This quote could explain in part conservatives’ support for President Trump who will, by the way, again vote for him in 2020.  British Prime Minister Winston Churchill is thought by many to coin  this phrase: “I no longer listen to what people say, I just watch what they do. Behavior never lies.”

Evangelicals understand the complexity of human nature; not excusing weaknesses but understanding its realities. We also view President Trump in present tense. We embrace  his pro life, pro Israel, pro capitalism policies. And we fully agree with his anti-socialism stance. To us, these policies and his optimism reflect constructive character traits and affirm the encoded patriotic principles that have served our great nation, despite our own national transgressions.

If anyone, then, asks me the meaning of our flag, I say to him – it means just what Concord and Lexington meant; what Bunker Hill meant; which was, in short, the rising up of a valiant young people against an old tyranny to establish the most momentous doctrine that the world had ever known – the right of men to their own selves and to their liberties.”  ~Henry Ward Beecher

Now, here we are today on Flag Day, June 14, 2020, two hundred and forty-three years after the Second Continental Congress approved the United States Flag. And here is a minuscule sample of hundreds of initiatives President Trump has addressed in the last three years which are important not only to conservatives but to all United States citizens. 

• Establishment of White House Opportunity and Revitalization project to energize investment in Opportunity Zones, and expand educational opportunities, etc.
• Trump announcing enactment of The Jerusalem Embassy Act passed by Congress in 1995. The US Embassy is now in Jerusalem, Israel’s capitol. He also declared Israel’s sovereignty over the Golan Heights.
• Appointing a “Special Adviser to the President on International Religious Freedom” to serve as part of the National Security Council. Authorized by the International Religious Freedom Act of 1998, it had remained empty for 20 years.
• President Trump supported the First Step Act, the biggest reform to the US criminal justice system in over 10 years. The law makes the justice system fairer. Ninety-one percent of the first 1,000 inmates released are black.
• On Trump’s pro-life stance, Susan B. Anthony List President Marjorie Dannenfelser states, “From stopping taxpayer funding of abortion and of experimentation involving aborted baby body parts, to protecting conscience rights, to calling out extremist Democrats who support abortion-on-demand through birth and even infanticide, to his two outstanding Supreme Court justices and transformation of the federal courts, President Trump has beyond delivered on his promises to the pro-life voters who propelled him to victory in 2016.”
• In October 2019 US unemployment was the lowest since 1969.
• The President signed a bipartisan bill giving more than $250 million a year to historically black colleges and universities.
• A Trump Executive Order outlines penalties for colleges and universities aimed at reducing discrimination against Jewish students.
• The president named the opioid crisis-killing 60,000 Americans a year-as a public health emergency. It raised more than $6 billion to begin with and reflects one of his reasons for  an effective wall on our southern border to prevent cartel drugs as well as Human Trafficking.

After reading just a tiny sample of policies close to the hearts of American conservative evangelicals, I hope reader takeaways include a few factual nuggets about our patriot President. It may be a coincidence of human history, but the fact that President Trump was born on Flag Day is at least fascinating. Three years after Trump was born, President Truman signed Congress’ approval in 1949 to make Flag Day, June 14, official.

More than ever, Flag Day is the right fit for President Trump’s birthday.

Happy Flag Day birthday, President Trump!