The US economy is faltering, crime is through the roof, the border is a disaster, everyone hates the vice president and Democrats are not backing off one inch on transgenderism. Only one Republican could lose to President Joe Biden next year. But Democrats’ trump card is, well, Trump.
Infallible two-step Biden re-election plan. Step one: trick Republicans into nominating Trump. Step two: that’s about it.
I still don’t think Trump will be the nominee, but never underestimate Republicans’ ability to embrace the worst possible thing, especially with conservative media wildly cheerleading the worst possible thing.
As we know from the Fox News internal communications released in the Dominion lawsuit, the one thing conservative media learned from Trump is how to grift supporters. They didn’t learn that restricting immigration is a winning issue. They didn’t learn that a wall is wildly popular. They didn’t learn that tax cuts aren’t the vote-magnet Republicans swore they were. The only thing they learned is that your own bottom line is more important than your country.
As President Trump was about to sign his third spending bill in 2019, with no wall funding, most conservative media stayed silent on the massive betrayal. Meanwhile, Matt Drudge and I went ballistic. A two-inch Drudge Report headline from December 2018: “WALL FUNDING OFF TABLE.” That month I wrote that Trump “must know that if he doesn’t build the wall, he has zero chance of being re-elected and a 100 percent chance of being utterly humiliated.” Gutless President in Wall-less Country.
At that point — when there was still time to save Trump’s presidency — the New York Times reported that Trump was beside himself with me for “viscerally attack[ing him] for caving on the wall,” but was delighted by the continued slavish support from “Sean Hannity, Laura Ingraham, Tucker Carlson and Rush Limbaugh.” I don’t know how you can keep hailing Trump as a hero and claim to give a crap about the mass third-world immigration destroying our country.
In any event, on Election Day 2020, we found out that even an army of unquestioning Trump defenders couldn’t fool all the people all the time. (Guess which demographic group Trump lost in 2020 compared to 2016? Only one: white men.)
Today, we have smart Democrats (Biden’s re-election team) and dumb Republicans (Fox News and conservative talk radio) working hand-in-hand to ensure Trump gets the nomination. Either Trump will lose (a dead certainty) and take the House and Senate down with him, or he’ll get re-elected and do nothing again, except at the bidding of two of America’s most esteemed intellects, Ivanka Trump and Kim Kardashian.
Conservative media insist on telling us Trump is the greatest! He’s unbeatable! Poor Trump! It wasn’t his fault! How about asking him what he accomplished in four years as president? Here are my suggestions, plus a cheat sheet with true and accurate answers, something you’ll never get from him or Fox News:
How many times did you vow to build a wall during the 2016 campaign?
Answer: at least 200.
How many miles of new wall did you build on our 2,000-mile southern border the entire time that you were president? (Not “replacement fencing” or walls in the “pre-construction phase.”)
Answer: forty miles.
Didn’t you promise to start building the wall on “Day One” of your presidency?
Answer: yes — that was me!
On what day of your presidency did you actually build the first mile of wall?
Answer: sometime between Day 790 and Day 1,200.
When you had a Republican House and a Republican Senate your first two years in office, how much money did you get to build the wall?
Answer: zero dollars.
Please tell us the difference between “anchor babies” and “birthright citizenship?”
Answer, which Trump absolutely, positively will not know: birthright citizenship means that children born in the US to legal residents, other than ambassadors, are automatically US citizens, according to longstanding Supreme Court precedent. “Anchor babies” are children born to illegal aliens on US soil, who for unfathomable reasons are treated as if they are citizens too — despite the fact that no court or Congress has ever expressly authorized such an absurdity.
Did you sign an executive order ending this scam — as you promised to do when campaigning for president in 2016 and again before the 2018 midterms?
Nope. Never got around to it.
How many times did you campaign with the “Angel Moms” — parents whose children were killed by illegal aliens — in 2016?
Answer: too many to count.
Once you were president, did White House aides — handpicked by you! — berate the Angel Moms and refuse to let them meet with you?
Answer: Yup, Mercedes Schlapp and Kellyanne Conway are tigers!
How many policy advisors in the Trump White House agreed with your campaign promises on immigration?
One, but Jared Kushner ignored him.
If Trump had an ounce of self-awareness, he would not run. And if conservative media had an ounce of patriotism, they would not be flacking for him. Alas, neither of them give a crap about the country. We can only hope that American voters still care about America.
This article is taken from The Spectator’s June 2023 World edition.
