It Was Never About Trump
The Democrats and the Left have it all wrong. Their unhinged hatred of Trump blinds them to why Americans are increasingly pushing back against their policies and programs.
As we enter 2024 and look forward to an election year that promises perhaps more drama, vitriol, hyper-partisanship, and chaos than any preceding it, it is perhaps helpful to look back. I wrote the Facebook post below on January 7, 2021, the day after the Capital riot that was later branded an “insurrection” and has led to indictments and wrongful imprisonment for over 1200 Americans, some of who did nothing more than be in the wrong place at the wrong time. You be the judge if things are better or worse today.
January 7, 2021- The democrats, progressives, and left wingers just don't get it. It isn't about trump. It never was. It was about condescending, hypocritical, snarky, entitled elitists- read Obama, Clinton, Pelosi, Schumer, and a host of others- telling us they had the only right vision for the country and the rest of us were regressive, irredeemable, deplorable, bitter, “-ists” of every stripe, unenlightened, and clearly in need of their help to manage our personal and professional lives. They rejected the exceptional character and history of our country, gave us "you didn't build that", "we must pass this bill so we can see what is in it", and "if you like your health insurance, you can keep it". They gave us “what difference does it make?” in the wake of the murder of US citizens representing our country abroad. They apologized to the world for being American. They gave us identity politics and divided us by our color, race, gender, ethnicity, geography, and any other divisive character they could identify. It was no longer enough to be American; we were (fill in the blank)-Americans only. They gave us open borders (while living in gated communities), sanctuary cities, and the idea that we somehow should feel guilty about our country’s imperfect past. They have given us universities where open exchange of ideas has been replaced with pathologic self-absorption, micro-aggressions, safe spaces, the idea that hate speech is anything that makes me uncomfortable, and the spectacle of students shouting down invited speakers with whom they disagree. They have re-written history to fit their narrative, e.g. the 1619 Project. They gave us “facts don’t matter if you are morally right.” They gave us the idea that what is important is not equality of opportunity, but rather equality of outcome and that the answer to disparity is not to raise up the disadvantaged, but to take away from those who have been successful and give it to those who have not under the guise of “redistribution”. They are the ones who feel that the answer to all of society's problems lies in more government. They pass laws from which they are exempt, e.g. insurance mandates. They preach to us about not caring for the less fortunate but support abortion on demand, including the abomination of partial birth abortion. They preach tolerance but are the most intolerant of all. They cannot see beyond their own hypocrisy. They do not argue or discuss facts because being morally right is more important. When truly pressed to defend their indefensible positions, they resort to calling us names; we are xenophobes, racists, oppressors, homophobes, islamophobes, and any other –phobe that serves to validate them and disenfranchise us.
Now, they scream invective at those who have clearly broken the law by invading government offices and occupying the hallowed chambers of Congress and the Senate and accuse us unfairly of supporting or fomenting this. Where were they when statues were being pulled down and destroyed, when urban streets were filled with rioters, when lives and businesses were destroyed, and when state governors broke their own laws to allow protesters to disrupt the lives and jobs of their own citizens?
We, who have supported many of the actions of the Trump administration, have never really been “pro-Trump”. I know of no one who would not have preferred that the one chosen to pushback against progressivism and our socialist direction be anyone other than an unlikeable, bombastic, crude, self-promoting, billionaire, serial tweeter with a checkered personal and business background. We did not have any other choice. Even so-called conservative Republicans were likely to maintain the status quo in cozy Washington, DC. It took a bull in the china shop, someone with the means not to be in the pockets of lobbyists, and someone who truly enjoyed getting down and dirty in the swamp of Washington politics to effect meaningful change. And he did. It was painful, but beautiful to watch. He pushed for border security, a sine qua non of a sovereign nation. Those who focused on the “the wall” missed this altogether. He moved the embassy for our only ally in the Middle East to Jerusalem. He told NATO to pay up. He told Iran to go jump in a lake, killed their top general and one of the world’s most notorious terrorists, and pushed them to the point of near collapse and irrelevance. He brokered the Abraham Accords Peace Agreements between Israel and UAE, supported by Oman, Bahrain, and Saudi Arabia, something no other president has succeeded in doing since the Camp David accords. This would have earned any other president a Nobel Peace prize; the media barely mentioned it. He oversaw the US’s energy independence from Middle East oil, freeing us from a perennial quagmire. He was the toughest president towards Russia since the cold war, freezing assets of oligarchs, sending lethal weapons to Ukraine (something Obama/Biden never did), pushing for the European Deterrence Initiative and all the media and the left see is his alleged buddying up to Putin, something we used to call diplomacy. He recalibrated trade with Mexico and Canada for more equitable terms and put China on notice that its many egregious violations of fair trade practices, cyber espionage, and aggression in the Indo-Pacific were going to be dealt with. He did more and he did all this while spending the first two years of his presidency fighting a Russia collusion hoax perpetrated by government agencies, and the second part of his term fighting a bogus impeachment. Even those who hate him most, grudgingly admit he is resilient. All the left and media saw were the tweets, which probably lost him the election.
Then the CCP virus arrived on our shores and everything he did was either too soon, too late, too much, or too little. He could have single-handily defeated the virus and the media and the left would have found fault somehow.
During his term, we witnessed a paradigm shift in this country in which the mainstream media abdicated its responsibility to report the news and events objectively and honestly and became little more than a mouthpiece for the democratic/progressive/left. Those of us seeking accurate information with which to formulate opinions and make decisions were left scrambling to find sources that did not have an obvious pre-determined agenda. Even my own profession of medicine became tainted with progressive bias and this year alone, two of the most respected journals in medicine retracted clearly biased, inaccurate “studies” regarding the CCP virus. The public health measures taken to combat Covid have arguably made the cure worse than the disease, with no end in sight yet after nine months and the reported numbers of cases and deaths are inconsistent and unreliable, making decisions at the grass roots level extremely difficult. All we know is that we cannot continue this way for much longer.
The chaotic, unhinged ending of his administration is not terribly surprising, yet lamentable and sad none-the-less. What is truly infuriating is that I and others like me are lumped in with unhinged, extremist, criminal elements that purport to support Trump and our constitution. These elements no more represent me and those like me than the rioters after George Floyd’s death represent the black community at large.
I am a patriot, love my country, proudly served nine years in the military, and think our constitution should be changed only with great caution, fear, and trembling. I believe in individual freedom and responsibility. I believe we are all equal in the sight of God. Because of my acknowledged support for Trump in the past, I have been called many names, been sworn at, and had my morality and even Christian faith called into question. Fine. I just look at who is doing the name-calling and questioning and try to avoid returning the insults.
I will close by saying that the democrats, progressives, and left-wingers have gotten their wish. Trump will likely be gone soon and they will be in control of both houses of congress and the executive. I wish them well but will withhold final judgement until I see what comes out of the administration in the next two years. None of the progressive agenda items promulgated thus far- Green New Deal, reparations, universal single-payer healthcare, free university education, forgiveness of all student loans, open borders, gender neutral public facilities, etc. have polled at 50% in the US. They will not have Trump as an excuse any longer and will now be held accountable for their governance.
God help us if we don't find some way out of this morass of divisiveness and hateful rhetoric. God bless the USA.
It was never about Trump.
Richard T. Bosshardt, MD, FACS
Your recap of what actually happened during the Trump administration was stunning. I live in Portland, Oregon, which had the most days of street protests of any U.S. city after Geoge Floyd died. This city has still not recovered from the physical destruction of businesses wreaked on our downtown by hundreds of people, some of whom also assaulted police officers, because our woke DA has refused to prosecute those who committed criminal offenses. As a result, there has been a marked increase in violent crimes exacerbated by a serious delay in police response to all kinds of 911 calls because so many officers quit the force. Businesses have left the city for surrounding suburbs. Tax revenues are down and city services, needed now more than ever, have decreased because of the shrinking tax base. And yet most Democratic voters continue to vote for Democratic incumbents and other Democratic candidates because they cannot imagine voting for Republicans and Democratic candidates who do not support the woke agenda of the state Democratic Party have an uphill battle against the woke Democratic incumbents. The Democrats have succeeded in convincing people that they should never do anything that could be construed as "supporting rightwingers". I have been a lifelong Democrat, but now my eyes are open! Among other things, the support of the Democratic establishment for "gender identity" and the "rights of transgender people" has resulted in there being no safe spaces for women. All women's shelters now admit men who claim to be women, thereby terrifying the women in those shelters who are forced to either sleep and attend to intimate self-care in the presence of these males or sleep on the streets. And women in our women's prison are forced to share cells with any male who claims to be a woman. Most women in prison have already been sexually assaulted before entering prison. Now the State of Oregon, with Democrats completely in control of state government, is forcing these already severely traumatized women to live with men amongst them.