It was approximately 18 months ago when I wrote my first column about Donald Trump. Like many of the columns I have written before and after it, the focus was illegal immigration.

It is my opinion that Washington, D.C., invited the election of Trump as president by refusing to solve the problem of illegal immigration, and indeed refusing even to acknowledge the problem of illegal immigration.

The politicians had been warned. The public had sent a shot across the bow in 2010 when the Tea Party movement was at its apex. We do not want “immigration reform,” the people said loudly to Congress — we want immigration sanity! Respect the laws, respect the needs of the country, respect our wishes.

But the politicians were smarter than the people. They thought they could outwait the people’s movement — and they nearly did. With President Obama at the helm, there were more and more cracks in the wall that protected us from an invasion of foreigners, and eventually both Republicans and Democrats would have joined together to announce a new amnesty plan, and the people would have been told to shut up and take it.

But then Donald Trump came down the escalator at Trump Tower and talked about a real wall — a wall that could be built on the border with Mexico that would stop drugs, stop illegal aliens, stop the insanity — and the people saw they had a champion, someone who would fight for them, someone who would not be cowed by political correctness.

The die was cast, and although the outcome was not certain, the more that the media and other politicians tried to destroy Trump by attacking his ideas, the more Trump grew in stature (and in the polls) — because his ideas were the ideas of everyday Americans.

Trump was not elected president because he is a great man; he was elected president because he understood the greatness of America and promised to preserve it and, where necessary, to restore it.

For many of us, he will be judged on how well he keeps that initial promise — to restore sanity to U.S. immigration policy — and any other failures can be forgiven.

It is obvious the establishment will continue to fight against the new president, just as they fought to prevent his election, but with courage, determination and reliance on God, he may surprise the world once again and be the great president that this great nation deserves.

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Frank Miele is managing editor of the Daily Inter Lake in Kalispell, Montana.