While I have long admired Peggy Noonan for her writing talent, I feel the need to respond to her latest column.

Peggy Noonan’s east coast corridor snobbery is showing again as her movement between Manhattan’s Upper East Side and “old Washington” runs deep in her Wall Street Journal columns.

I occasionally question why I continue to read her columns, but then I realize it’s her wordsmith talent. Noonan’s talent made Ronald Reagan’s famous “these are the boys of Pointe du Hoc” speech, given in 1984 at the 40^th Anniversary of D-Day, memorable. Reagan’s poignant delivery gave her speech a special life. I still choke up when I listen to him putting us on that Normandy cliff that day. If you have never heard it, I suggest you do so by CLICKING HERE.

Over the past years, I have been critical of her columns. She has chosen to join the media’s disdain for President Trump; not with fake news laced with charges of being mentally incompetent, but with criticism of his lack of refinement. It must really bother her when he refers to the elitists.

Her latest column, “How Trump Lost Half of Washington,” is a treatise on how President Trump has changed Washington. Even though she has known Trump for many years, she simply cannot come to terms with what he has done to the relationship of the president and “what used to be called official Washington.”

He was elected because he was not a politician and promised to change the way things are done in Washington. And while he has found that to be more difficult than he thought, his achievements in the first two years have been remarkable.

Reagan, too, was the butt of media jokes … a cowboy, an actor in “B” movies … when he came to Washington. They chuckled when he said, “Government is not the solution to our problems; government is the problem.”

Unlike Trump, Reagan’s approach to the presidency was less combative.

Candidate Trump was highly critical of Washington and “draining the swamp” became a line in every rally speech. Noonan writes that his relationship with official Washington is “ugly and broken,” and claims “it could have been otherwise. He destabilized the entire town.”

Writing almost reverently about “the old ambassadors, mostly men in their 60s, 70s and 80s … woven into the town,” she believes they were willing to give Trump a chance though he was not their type. “He didn’t act like a liberal or a Democrat, or a conservative or a Republican.”

At first, they didn’t fear his extreme conservatism, originality or new synthesis, according to Noonan. But, “They’d come to think the president was irredeemably, a screwball. In the nuclear age this is a dangerous thing.” They believed the stories that came from inside the White House via tell-all books.

Noonan should have recognized that their opinions of Trump were formed before his election when, as she recalled, many of them had signed a letter in 2016 opposing him. Hundreds of legislators and bureaucrats boycotted his inaugural.

Has Noonan forgotten how President Obama and late-night host Seth Meyers ridiculed Trump during the 2011 Washington correspondents’ dinner while he sat in the audience? It could be said that the disliking of Trump began more than five years before his election.

Shamefully, Noonan shows her ignorance in mentioning the departure of generals who left the Trump administration “one by one,” obviously referring to John Kelly and James Mattis, while ignoring President Obama’s unprecedented purge of general officers during his eight years.

Fourteen general officers, including five four-star generals were among the nearly 200 military officers purged by Obama. Do the names John Allen, Carter Ham, James Mattis, Stanley McChrystal, David McKiernan and David Petraeus ring any bells? And let’s not forget how Obama and his acting AG Sally Yates sabotaged Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, whose opinion differed with the president’s while serving on his national security team.

I would have expected more from Noonan. She probably is unaware that a Military Times/Syracuse University Institute for Veterans and Families survey of the military’s view of Obama after his eight years in office revealed that 51.5 percent viewed Obama very unfavorable or somewhat unfavorable, compared to the 36.4 percent who considered him very favorable or somewhat favorable.

Does Noonan need to be reminded of how Obama decimated our military, and Trump’s effort to restore it?

Despite general knowledge that Special Counsel Robert Mueller knew there was no collusion with Russia more than a year ago, and ignored the misuse of the dossier while punting on obstruction, Noonan continues to admire him as a “patriot looking to finish a distinguished career with integrity.” She seemingly mourns that Trump supporters, and most Americans, will not read the embarrassing comments in the obstruction chapter.

“Should the Democrats move to impeach? No, not for reasons of merit but of national interest,” she says.

She concludes her column with the hope that Democrats will return “official Washington” to the seriousness and calm. “There is an unarticulated wish out there to return to some past in which things were deeply imperfect and certainly divided, but on some level tranquil, and not half mad.”

I find it interesting that Noonan would seem to prefer the “imperfect,” but “tranquil” presidency of the unapologetic Barack Obama, where scandals around fast and furious, Benghazi, the IRS, and a corrupt FBI and DOJ were hatched.

Yes, President Trump can be brash and exhibit a behavior she may find unacceptable in a president. Voters knew what they were getting when they elected him. Surely, Noonan can look past President Trump’s brashness and home -spun New York behavior as millions did with Lyndon Baines Johnson.

While Noonan worries how her “official Washington” will survive, I see our president succeeding – keeping his promises – while “old Washington” and its tired pols fade away.

May God bless the United States of America.