There’s no denying it — for once Trump has made a valid point

Among the things I am thankful for, today, is that I can honestly say I think Donald Trump recently made a good point.

The president has also made some dubious points recently, to be sure. On Tuesday, for example, he declared his support for Roy Moore, Alabama’s Republican Senate candidate, who has been accused of sexually assaulting a number of teenage girls, one of whom was, at the time, just 14.

The women who have come forward are adults now, and none of them has filed criminal charges, nor would they be able to do so under Alabama law because of the statute of limitations. That being the case, Moore has not been proven guilty in a legal sense, nor is he likely to be.

But the allegations, which were first reported by the Washington Post, are credible. One of the women who came forward subsequently produced her yearbook, which someone named “Roy Moore” had signed, in a message calling her beautiful and sweet. His memoir was revisited, and readers noticed that his wife, Kayla, was also 15 when she first caught his eye. Moore writes that when they were introduced at a Christmas party, he remembered that he had noticed her dancing, in a school recital, eight years previously.

A number of Alabamians vouched that Moore’s interest in teenage girls was no secret among those who knew him in the 1970s, when he was in his 30s. The parents of those he dated gave him permission to do so, according to pastor Flip Benham, a friend and supporter who defended Moore on an Alabama radio show.

“He did that because there is something about a purity of a young woman,” said Benham.

Moore, however, has denied the allegations and the president, at least, seems convinced.

“He totally denies it,” said Trump, after reminding the reporters gathered at the White House that they have to listen to Moore also, as if the national media might be ignoring Moore’s version of events, rather than weighing it against a pile of evidence.

A matter of character

Things like that help explain why I genuinely was pleased, last week, to find that I agreed with Trump about something else. I know some readers suspect I’m unwilling to say anything positive about this president or his administration. More generally, many on the right believe the mainstream media is biased against him. Trump himself, of course, insisted this was the case over and over again during the campaign, and has continued to do so since becoming president.

While covering the election, I could understand why his supporters responded to the message at hand; I’ve historically agreed with conservatives that the mainstream media, writ large, skews to the left.

And the truth is that Trump does get a lot of negative press, even compared to other Republicans. If I was catching up on recent news after spending the past few years stranded on a desert island, I would probably be suspicious, too.

But there’s a reason I rarely have good things to say about Trump: I rarely have occasion to. I can’t speak for all journalists, and in the interests of transparency, I should note that I was never a fan of his candidacy; in fact, I spent quite a bit of time trying to convince Texans not to vote for him, in the primary or the general.

But my concerns weren’t about his partisan affiliation or policy agenda. I just didn’t think Trump was a man of good character, or one that would make a good president. I don’t fault Republicans who disagreed with that assessment, especially since most of our state’s leaders did. And since Trump won, I hope he ultimately proves me wrong on both fronts.

In the meantime, I realize it seems like I’m being too hard on the guy, but what am I supposed to do — make things up?

So I was heartened to hear the White House make a good point, even though the point in question was a criticism of Texas.

State ‘should step up’

What happened was as follows. On Friday, the White House announced that it was would request $44 billion from Congress, to assist Texas, Florida, Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands in their ongoing recovery from this summer’s storms. This is significantly less than the $61 billion Greg Abbott requested in the proposal he sent to Congress last month, to help Texas in its recovery from Harvey, and the governor quickly expressed his concern.

“The president has said that he wants this to be the best recovery from a disaster ever,” said Abbott.

The proposal that had just been announced, he continued, was “completely inadequate for the needs of the state of Texas,” and would not allow Trump to achieve his dream.

Interestingly — and shrewdly, I thought — Abbott did not directly criticize the president. He pointed to Mick Mulvaney, the director of the Office of Management and Budget, as the culprit behind the White House’s disappointing funding request, and referenced Trump’s stated desire to be “the builder president.”

But for some reason, the White House wasn’t having it. When the issue came up at that day’s news briefing, the response was blunt.

“Up until this point, Texas has not put any state dollars into this process,” said Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the White House press secretary. “We feel strongly that they should step up.”

Rainy day is here?

I was not sure how to feel about this, at first. Abbott is right to have raised this concern. In the aftermath of a natural disaster, it’s entirely fair for a state to ask the federal government for help, even if the state is this one. Texas sustained enormous damage during Harvey. And we’re at least out of crisis mode. It’s been two months since Hurricane Maria hit Puerto Rico, and most of the island is still without power.

At the same time, Sanders had a point. Texas should step up. We could, given that we have $10 billion in what we literally refer to as “the rainy day fund.” And Abbott himself has indicated that we will, just not yet; in response to calls for a special session in the wake of Harvey, he said that there would be no need for one, because the state has enough resources to meet its needs through the interim.

The governor may have been assuming that the White House would be more receptive to his proposal, and second his request that Congress pony up accordingly. But he’d be in a better position to insist that they do so if the state could show that it is doing its share, or prove that we are committed to doing so, eventually. As it stands, though, the Trump administration has a good point. And we can’t fault them for that. erica.grieder@chron.com twitter.com/EricaGrieder