Not "Trump The Dictator" Again...
Authored by Victor Davis Hanson,
It is “Trump Will Destroy Democracy” season again.
And predictably the Left has gone hysterical, after experiencing a trifecta of frightening 2024 news.
One, current polls in the primaries and in a general election for now show that Trump would win.
Meanwhile, Joe Biden’s popularity dives below 40 percent. His policies on the economy, abroad, at the border, concerning crime, and about energy poll even more feebly. Never has an American president utterly and deliberately destroyed immigration law for the sole purpose of inviting in millions of illegal aliens, to establish political constituencies supportive of agendas that otherwise have scant public support.
Two, unequivocal evidence is mounting that the Bidens are one of the most corrupt political families in American presidential history. Hunter, the Leona Helmsley of our times, is now indicted for massive tax evasion, despite his earlier, government-aided efforts of running out the statute of limitations on the full array of his crimes.
When asked about his grifting, Biden angrily denies the undeniable. He can only become animated these days, when asked to square his denials about knowing what Hunter was up to with a multitude of facts and data to the contrary. And so in exasperation he shouts, “Lies!,” “Lies!,” and “Lies!”
There is now conclusive proof that Biden himself lied repeatedly when he swore that he knew nothing about his wayward son Hunter’s grifting business. He used several aliases to communicate directly with his son’s grifting and quid pro quo partners.
Canceled checks show the president was paid substantial sums by family members after they received money from foreign governments—for nothing other than being related to the future president. The pay-offs were hidden by “loan repayment” lies; no one expects ever to find any such evidence that there were formal loan documents or agreements between Biden and his family.
Former Hunter Biden associates, explicit messaging on his laptop, IRS whistleblowers, and bank records all explain why an opulent Joe Biden enjoyed a lifestyle impossible on either a senator’s or Vice President’s salary. While Biden toured the country sermonizing that the rich must “pay their fair share,” it is increasingly likely that he had received huge amounts from foreign governments eager to purchase him as an influencer—and never paid taxes on such occult income.
Three, Joe Biden’s cognitive decline and feebleness have reached a point where he is one fall, one bad cold, or one long brain-freeze away from incapacity. He clearly is not running the country. How could he be, when he cannot finish a sentence without mangling the syntax, slurring the vocabulary, and confusing his listeners?
So Biden’s blank stares lengthen. His disorientation and uncertainty where to enter and exit occur hourly. And his bizarre, repulsive fixation with young girls, and his desire to call them out, hug them, breathe on their hair, or nuzzle their necks become all the more embarrassing. Had a U.S. senator engaged in such reprehensible behavior he would long ago have been censored.
Add all this news up that Biden is fading, Trump apparently is outpolling him, and suddenly the Left has rebooted the tired “Trump will destroy democracy” boilerplate.
Almost nightly now TV anchors warn of a dictatorship. Columnists predict the “end of democracy.” Essayists vie to see who can become the most absurd in predicting Trump’s planned takeover America.
There are several considerations, however, about these bankrupt and discredited Nostradamuses that the American people should note—aside from the fact the “democracy will die” mob is the same herd that assured us of Russian collusion, laptop disinformation, and the integrity of the Biden family.
First, ex-president Trump is now a known quantity.
A comparison of his four years with the first three years of Biden’s tenure is instructive.
Biden’s border is nonexistent–and by design.
Eight-million illegal aliens—unaudited, from all over the world, the vast majority without legality, diversity, English, or skill sets—have swarmed the country to the extent that even swamped leftwing blue-state governors and mayors are opposed to the Biden nihilism.
Biden stopped catch-and-release, and phony refugee statuses, and pressured Mexico to patrol their side of the border. He destroyed immigration law as we knew it.
Biden’s flight from Afghanistan was the greatest foreign policy humiliation in modern American history. It destroyed U.S. deterrence and greenlighted Vladimir Putin to invade Ukraine, Hamas to craft an intricate plan of slaughtering Israeli civilians, Iran to arm to the teeth its terrorist surrogates, and China to send a spy balloon over the U.S. and serially to threaten Taiwan. The common denominator abroad was a correct appraisal that Biden’s controllers would talk tough, but always equivocate.
There was zero inflation before Biden; 30-year mortgages were less than 2 percent. Now prices for staples like gas, food, power, health care and housing have spiked well over 30 percent since Biden took office. Mortgages are hitting 7 percent and the housing market is comatose. Real wages have eroded.
It seems hard to accuse Trump of being a dangerous demagogue when his four years saw effective government action on the economy, foreign policy, energy, and crime.
Afterall, was the Trump Middle-East Policy (e.g., branding Houthis as terrorists, the Abraham Accords, moving the embassy to Jerusalem, a non-negotiable Israeli Golan Heights, cutting off aid to Hamas, junking the Iran deal, slapping sanctions on Iranian oil, eliminating Soleimani, etc.) or Biden’s antithesis (sending money to Hamas, lifting sanctions on Iran, begging to reenter the Iran Deal, freeing the Houthis from their terrorist classification, cutting back on oil production, maligning/then courting Saudi Arabia, distancing from Israel, etc.) the more beneficial to the U.S. and the Middle East at large?
Two, who exactly has weaponized the government in dictatorial fashion?
Who by fiat pandered illegally to cancel student loans before a midterm, or suddenly drained the strategic petroleum reserve to lower gas prices before an election?
What do former FBI directors, former “intelligence authorities.” and the former Directors of National Intelligence and the CIA all have in common? They lied, often under oath, and always in service of weaponizing the government for political agendas.
Who hired a foreign national Christopher Steele to concoct a silly file of lies to destroy a political rival? Why did the FBI sequester the Hunter laptop for a year? Who subcontracted out Twitter for $3 million to suppress information deemed harmful to the Biden campaign? Who squashed an IRS investigation of the Biden family?
It was not the would-be dictator Donald Trump who secretly routed money to the Wuhan virology lab, and who then manipulated government agencies to hide that fact—at the expense of the welfare of the American people.
Who called up a former CIA director to round up 51 intelligence retirees to lie to sabotage an election? Did not the current national security advisor Jake Sullivan try to concoct the Alfa Bank ping ruse to destroy the Trump campaign and administration?
When a former Pentagon lawyer and military officers called for a military coup to remove Trump, for which political agenda were they working?
Did Trump prompt the acting Attorney General and FBI Director to consider in secret wearing a wire to entrap and remove a president through the 25th Amendment?
What was “Anonymous” about—if not to destroy an administration from within through use of the deep state bureaucracy?
Who coordinated Pfizer executives to delay announcement of the vaccine rollout until after the election to ensure Trump’s Operation Warp speed received no prelection credit?
Liberal journalist Molly Ball, in her notorious Time essay, outlined what she called a “cabal” and “conspiracy” to destroy the 2020 Trump reelection campaign and indeed his presidency, through modulating Antifa/BLM protests, suppression of the news, and huge infusions of corporate money to augment or indeed absorb the work of the registrars in key states.
Who exactly cooked up the phony Letitia James suit? Or the Alvin Bragg joke of an indictment? Or the weaponized Fani Wallis vendetta? Or the partisan and asymmetrical hunt of Jack Smith? Who impeached a president twice and tried him as a private citizen, without a report of a special counsel? Who revived the ossified Logan Act to destroy General Michael Flynn?
And who is trying to strip Trump’s name off the 2024 ballot, convinced that such a Third-world dictatorial effort can alone stop dictatorship?
In contrast, the supposed “dictator” Trump appointed a special counsel, Comey pal and insider Robert Mueller, to run a witch hunt against him for 22 months.
He did not fire Anthony Fauci who worked to undermine Trump at every turn, and used government monies to fund gain-of-function, dangerous viral research in China, while spending most of the Trump administration covering that fact up, most often by serially lying.
Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Gen. Mark Milley despised Donald Trump to such an extent that he called his Chinese communist counterpart to advise him that he, Milley himself, would not follow a Trump order, should he deem it too dangerous, without warning the Chinese in advance. Milley faced no repercussions.
Nor did Trump fire immediately Comey when many called on him to go, given Comey’s effort to use the FBI in the 2016 election to undermine the Trump campaign and sabotage a FISA court.
Why did retired generals and admirals with impunity violate Article 88 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice by smearing their Command-in-Chief as a liar, Mussolini, Hitler-like, and deserving of early removal? Were any even reminded that they were in violation of statutes? Is it a dangerous thing for the U.S. military to attack their civilian overseers and in private to negotiate with the communist Chinese military?
Most of the Russian collusion hoax was discussed in the waning days of the Obama administration inside the Oval Office, as Obama greenlighted illegal CIA and FBI involvements.
Who cooked up the idea that Mark Zuckerberg could infuse $419 million to warp balloting in key swing states?
What did Lois Lerner do as an IRS adjudicator, as the 2012 Obama reelection loomed?
Trump may well have at times trolled the Left wildly, but the Left seriously sought to undermine the government, cancel existing laws, lie under oath, deceive a federal judge, and enlist the FBI and CIA to conspire to destroy a presidential campaign. All that seems a bit dictatorial.
Three, after nearly nine years of Trump demonization - celebrities vying publicly with each to dream up ways of killing Trump (incineration, decapitation, shooting, stabbing, dismemberment, explosives, etc), lawfare used to deny the American public the right to vote for or against Trump, a deranged media shouting pseudo-conspiracies of “collusion” and “disinformation” for years, and billionaires spending hundreds of millions of dollars to ensure Trump was never elected or reelected or even on the ballot - why have the American people still not bought into the “dictator” Trump meme?
Is because they have enough common sense to grasp that those who protest too much, do so for obvious reasons?
In sum, we have seen a 24/7 effort of leftwing presidents, deep-state bureaucrats, and the media to break the law and weaponize the government. The only rationale for such illegality has been the sick notion that the ends of destroying the supposed “dictator” Trump justified any dictatorial means necessary to achieve them.
So what else is behind the latest epidemic of DNC talking points that spin Trump as an existential threat to democracy?
The Left knows that in dictatorial fashion it has turned a federal republic into a government run wild, lawless, and in service to partisan agendas. It again talks of what Trump will supposedly do only because the Left surely would do exactly what it accuses Trump of planning to do if it were Trump.
In other words, the Left projects itself onto Trump, and understandably finds itself all too terrifying.