Monday, October 26, 2020

Amy Coney Barrett Sworn in by Justice Clarence Thomas at the White House

 

Article by Paula Bolyard in PJMedia

Amy Coney Barrett Sworn in by Justice Clarence Thomas at the White House

 The Senate voted on Monday evening to confirm Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court by a vote of 52-48, mostly along party lines, fulfilling President Trump’s vow to nominate originalist judges to the nation’s highest court. She was ceremonially sworn in by Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas tonight at the White House. On Tuesday, Barrett will become an official member of the Court when she is sworn in by Chief Justice John Roberts at a private ceremony at the Supreme Court.

While President Trump deserves a great deal of credit for nominating and sticking by Barrett amid harsh criticism from the left (and a few members of his own party!), Judiciary Committee Chairman Lindsey Graham and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell also ought to be applauded for successfully shepherding the nomination through the Senate. President Trump thanked both men for their leadership ahead of Barrett’s swearing-in.

Trump noted that Barrett is the first Supreme Court Justice who has school-aged children and said her family “has captured America’s heart.” He touted her academic record, her accomplishments, and her “sterling character.”

Just before the ceremony began, the Senate Judiciary Committee wished failed presidential candidate Hillary Clinton a Happy Birthday:

After she was sworn in, Barret said a few words to the crowd gathered on the White House lawn. “The oath that I have solemnly taken means, at its core, that I will do my job without any fear or favor and I will do so apart from and independently of both the political branches and of my own preferences,” she vowed. “I love the Constitution and the democratic republic that it establishes and I will devote myself to preserving it. 


https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/paula-bolyard/2020/10/26/watch-live-amy-coney-barrett-sworn-in-by-justice-clarence-thomas-at-the-white-house-n1094146







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Amy Coney Barrett Confirmed To Supreme Court With Support From Majority Of Senators

 

Article by Ryan Saavedra in The Daily Wire

Amy Coney Barrett Confirmed To Supreme Court With Support From Majority Of Senators

A majority of U.S. Senators voted to confirm Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court on Monday evening with Democrats refusing to engage in bipartisanship.

Barrett was confirmed on a 52-48 vote with only Republicans voting to confirm her. One Republican, Susan Collins (ME), voted against Barrett which comes as she is in the middle of a tough re-election campaign and her “no” vote would ultimately not alter the outcome.

A recent POLITICO/Morning Consult poll showed that 51 percent of Americans wanted Barrett confirmed to the court while only 28 percent opposed the move.

“A little more than 2 in 10 voters, 21 percent, don’t have an opinion about Barrett’s nomination,” Politico reported. “The new survey represents an increase in support for Barrett’s confirmation compared with a survey immediately after her initial nomination last month, when 37 percent of voters said the Senate should vote to confirm her.”

Furthermore, only 27 of Americans supports Democrats’ extreme proposal to pack the court with additional judges to give them a partisan advantage.

 

 “Justice Amy Coney Barrett is a reminder to millions of Americans why they voted for President Trump in the first place,” the Trump campaign said in a statement. “She is now the third solid, conservative Justice appointed to the Supreme Court by the President and she will apply the Constitution and not turn the Court into a super legislature.”

“Her nomination and confirmation exposed the radical leftist plan to pack the Court by expanding its size, and also put Joe Biden on the spot,” the statement continued. “He must now come clean with the American people, reveal his list of prospective Justices, explain his position on court packing, and stop telling voters that they ‘don’t deserve’ to know what he thinks.”

Barrett’s Alma Mater, Notre Dame, wrote the following brief biography on her:

The Honorable Amy Coney Barrett was confirmed as a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit in October 2017. She is a Notre Dame Law School alumna and has taught as a member of the Law School’s faculty since 2002.

Judge Barrett teaches and researches in the areas of federal courts, constitutional law, and statutory interpretation. Her scholarship in these fields has been published in leading journals, including the Columbia, Virginia, and Texas Law Reviews. From 2010-2016, she served by appointment of the Chief Justice on the Advisory Committee for the Federal Rules of Appellate Procedure. She has been selected as “Distinguished Professor of the Year” by three of the Law School’s graduating classes.

Judge Barrett earned her B.A. in English literature, magna cum laude, from Rhodes College, where she was elected to Phi Beta Kappa and, among other honors, was chosen by the faculty as the most outstanding graduate in the college’s English department. She earned her J.D., summa cum laude, from Notre Dame, where she was a Kiley Fellow, earned the Hoynes Prize, the Law School’s highest honor, as the number one student in her class, and served as executive editor of the Notre Dame Law Review.

Before joining the Notre Dame faculty, Judge Barrett clerked for Judge Laurence H. Silberman of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit and for Associate Justice Antonin Scalia of the U.S. Supreme Court. As an associate at Miller, Cassidy, Larroca & Lewin in Washington, D.C., she litigated constitutional, criminal, and commercial cases in both trial and appellate courts. Judge Barrett has served as a visiting associate professor and John M. Olin Fellow in Law at the George Washington University Law School, as a visiting associate professor of law at the University of Virginia and is a member of the American Law Institute (ALI).

 

https://www.dailywire.com/news/breaking-amy-coney-barrett-confirmed-to-supreme-court-with-support-from-majority-of-senators 


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7 Open Leftist Threats That Political Terror Is Coming To America Whether Trump Wins Or Not

 

Article by Stella Morabito in The Federalist
 

7 Open Leftist Threats That Political Terror Is Coming To America Whether Trump Wins Or Not

Many leftists have directed some deeply disturbing rhetoric at conservatives and Trump supporters in recent months, claiming President Trump’s bombast is responsible for the political polarization of today’s America. This is pure nonsense.

Sure, Trump talks about MS-13 as “animals,” Antifa as “thugs,” and Hillary Clinton as crooked enough to “be in jail.” His supporters know his presentation to be a bombastic and theatrical schtick, but he never threatens any group of voters.

By contrast, some ominous tones, even homicidal and terrorist tones, are coming from the mainstream left. Increasingly, through mainstream media and Big Tech, high-profile leftists are speaking openly about violence to be inflicted on Trump and all his supporters.

I’m not talking specifically about the Antifa and Black Lives Matter street violence we’ve seen in places like Denver and Portland, which includes outright murders of Trump supporters. I’m referring here to voices that normalize and promote open terror against any freedom-respecting person who has different views from those blessed by left-wing leaders, media, and Big Tech. Seven examples are included below.

1. A Think Tank Guy Should Meet…A Firing Squad

First, in a chilling Twitter incident, agitator Nils Gilman called for the execution of journalist and former Trump adviser Michael Anton. Gilman publicly stated, “Michael Anton is the Robert Brasillach of our times and deserves the same fate.” Brasillach was a Nazi collaborator in France whose fate was execution by firing squad. Neither Gilman nor Twitter took down the tweet, despite many protests, including a public letter of grave concern from the Claremont Institute, where Anton is a senior fellow.

Gilman is head of the George Soros-funded Berggruen Institute and a co-founder of the “Transition Integrity Project,” which war-gamed the ouster of Trump from office regardless of whether he wins re-election. Anton’s crime, in Gilman’s mind, was publishing an article about Gilman’s project in the American Mind, titled “The Coming Coup.”

Why is Gilman’s Sept. 21 death threat against Anton still up on Twitter an entire month later? Will it remain up after the election?

2. Shoot This CEO For Not being Woke Enough

Second, former Twitter CEO Dick Costolo objected to the company Coinbase’s decision to ease up on forcing employees to engage in social justice agendas such as critical race theory. Costolo accused Coinbase’s CEO Brian Armstrong of being among the “me-first capitalists” who would be the first lined up and “shot in the revolution.”

Costolo, who has 1.5 million Twitter followers, added that he would “happily provide video commentary” of the executions. The tweet has disappeared, although there is no mention of it being deleted. One response comes with a screenshot though:

3. If Trump Loses, His Supporters Remain ‘An Existential Threat’

Third, if the Democrats take over the reins of power — in an election, a coup, or a bought-and-paid-for “color revolution” — what happens to those who have supported Trump?

Take a look at this Aug. 1 Salon article, which argues that even if Biden wins, Trumpism “will survive the election and continue to be an existential threat.” Author Paul Rosenberg examines the arguments in writings by John Feffer and other anti-Trump pundits who believe there is a lot of work to be done to force the “de-trumpification” of America. They compare Trump supporters to Nazis or the Baathists of Saddam Hussein’s Iraq and describe America under Trump as a “pathocracy.”

Rosenberg cites Feffer, who says the solution is “to drain the swamp Trump created, bring criminal charges against the former president and his key followers, and launch a serious campaign to change the hearts and minds of Americans who have been drawn to this president’s agenda.” He even brings up the Nuremberg trials as instructive, trials that resulted in death sentences for 37 Nazis.

That isn’t good enough, however, according to Feffer. It’s important to go after “low-level participants” to root out Trumpism. It recommends enforcing this changing of “hearts and minds” so that there is “an attitudinal shift that could lead to lasting transformation.” This is not a far cry from re-education camps and coercive thought reform.

The formula appears to be threefold and on a large scale, “the scale on which we need to be thinking,” according to the Salon article. First, divide the so-called redeemable Trump supporters from those intent on keeping America great. Second, send those who are problematic to virtual education camps. Third, stomp out all the ideas the power elites don’t like.

In the same vein, former Labor Secretary Robert Reich, who has 1 million Twitter followers, recommended that a “Truth and Reconciliation Commission” be established to rid the nation of Trumpism.

4. Prosecute Everyone Who Supported Trump

Fourth, former MSNBC host Keith Olbermann recently ranted that everyone associated with Trump, including his enablers and supporters, must be “prosecuted and convicted and removed from our society.” To many, Olbermann might seem to be a has-been, but he has nearly 1 million Twitter followers. He represents the viewpoint of many in the propaganda media that control more than 90 percent of the megaphones. Olbermann referred to Trump supporters as “maggots” who needed to be chased from the stage.

5. Trump Supporters ‘Must Be Eradicated From Society’

Fifth, on Aug. 4, 2019, a supposed religious scholar and CNN contributor Reza Aslan announced on Twitter — a tweet still up as of Oct. 22 — that all Trump supporters “must be eradicated from society” along with Trump, and that there is “no longer any room for nuance.” Aslan has nearly 300,000 followers.

His extremely defamatory and threatening tweet reads verbatim: “The President is a white nationalist terror leader. His supporters — ALL OF THEM — are by definition white nationalist terror supporters. The MAGA hat is a KKK hood. And his evil, racist scourge must be eradicated from society.”

6. Openly Attacking Members of Congress

Sixth, the organized violence against guests at the Republican National Convention as they left the White House in August showed new levels of open hostility against the right. Most notably, the mob swarmed Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., and his wife, who were convinced they would have been severely injured or killed if there were no police presence.

This represents a ramping up of the Antifa and Black Lives Matter attempt to normalize extreme violence against any perceived political opponent. Agitators even set up a mock guillotine on the spot with an effigy of Trump in it.

7. Plots to Dox Political Opponents

Seventh, the left is now using doxing tools to invite widespread targeting of Trump voters. A recently unveiled database called “The Media Manipulation Casebook” is described as a means of gathering personal information that exposes anonymous Trump supporters. NBC News reporter Brandy Zadrozny appears to use it to find “addresses, property records … even Amazon wish lists” that can be a “goldmine for learning about what a person reads, buys, and wants.”

At the same time, open-source materials, such as donations tracked by the Federal Election Commission, are being used to invite the targeting of Trump donors, either by name or address on a hostile site. The information can be used much like the Southern Poverty Law Center’s “hate map,” which triggered the attempted murders at the Family Research Council and the GOP baseball practice.

Terror Is Predictably Increasing

Examples of hostilities toward Trump supporters abound. Many are connected to the potential for violence should Trump win re-election. As the examples above show, however, the threat of terror is even greater should he lose. If Democrats gain control of the White House and other branches, the left has spoken openly of their intent to punish a huge swath of Americans with a program that threatens to cancel them, impose thought-reform programs on them, and worse.

How far will this go? Members of the domestic terror organization Weather Underground, headed up by 1960s radical Bill Ayers, explained some 50 years ago that when “the revolution” came, a lot of Americans would have to be located to education camps. This sounds eerily like what Reich and others are now proposing after they oust Trump. Weather Underground members said that those who didn’t comply despite re-education, which they estimated would include about 25 million Americans, would have to be eradicated, as in killed.

Of course, that could never happen here, right? Just remember that history is littered with societies filled with decent, normal people who descended into chaos and murder, often incited by propaganda from a heavily controlled media. However unlikely this seems, we must pay close attention to these patterns so we don’t repeat some of the darkest days of history.

 

https://thefederalist.com/2020/10/26/7-open-leftist-threats-that-political-terror-is-coming-to-america-whether-trump-wins-or-not/ 


 


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Somalia conflict: Al-Shabab 'collects more revenue than government'

 

Using intimidation and violence, Somalia-based Islamist militant group al-Shabab raises as much revenue as the country's authorities, a report says.

The militants collect at least $15m (£11m) a month, with more than half the amount coming from the capital, Mogadishu, the Hiraal Institute said.

Some businesses pay both the jihadists and the internationally recognised government.

Al-Shabab has been fighting that government for more than a decade.

The group controls much of southern and central Somalia but has been able to extend its influence into areas controlled by the government based in Mogadishu

 

 

The report describes as "brutal" the way the group extracts money from the rural population.

"Fear and a credible threat to their lives is the only motivation that drives al-Shabab taxpayers," the report says.

 

 

According to the Hiraal Institute, unlike the Somali government, al-Shabab is "running a major financial surplus" as the amount of money it collects increases yearly, whilst its operational costs remain fairly static.

All major companies in Somalia give the jihadists money, both in the form of monthly payments and a yearly "zakat" (obligatory alms) of 2.5% of annual profits, says the report, which is based on interviews with al-Shabab members, Somali businesspeople, government officials and others.

Businesspeople in government-controlled areas complain they have to pay both the militants and the government.

These include those in the Villa Somalia neighbourhood of Mogadishu, where the government is based, and those in the cities of Bossasso and Jowhar, and to a lesser extent Kismayo and Baidoa, all of which are officially outside militant control. 

 

 

The seaport in Mogadishu is a major source of revenue for the Somali government. However, imports are also "taxed" by the jihadists who get the cargo ships' manifests from port officials.

The Hiraal Institute says many government employees give a part of their salaries to al-Shabab in the hope that the group will leave them alone despite considering them legitimate targets.

State employees and other people working in government-controlled areas also explain how the insurgents contact them by mobile phone to demand money.

 

 

Army commander pays al-Shabab

In areas controlled by al-Shabab, jihadist revenue collectors go directly to the businesses and demand payment.

A commander in the Somali army described how he "sent money to al-Shabab despite being at war with the group".

The soldier explained how a man who was building a house for him stopped the construction work and left after the commander refused to pay a fee to the militants.

The vehicles transporting building materials also stopped coming to the site after they too were asked to pay.

"Finally I was forced to either drop the construction work or pay al-Shabab," said the commander.

"Regrettably, I paid them $3,600 (£2,750) and my house was completed," he said.

All But the Lamest RINOs Are Getting Conserva-Woke Now

 

Article by Kurt Schlichter in Townhall
 

All But the Lamest RINOs Are Getting Conserva-Woke Now

One of the many glories of Donald Trump is his remarkable ability to clarify the truths than have been hidden, or that weak and stupid people have just preferred not to see. Our garbage institutions are teetering, victims of age, technology, and the utter corruption and incompetence of our allegedly elite ruling caste, and for years the soft conservatives have refused to see what is right in front of their dumb, pasty faces. Thanks to Trump breaking them in mind, body, and spirit, there’s no denying it anymore.

The Establishment is a boil that must be lanced.

So many people used to wishcast good faith upon the Establishment even in these chaotic times. How often have you seen Republicans treating the mainstream media like buddies instead of the partisan opponents that they are? GOP dummies go on "60 Minutes" or some Sunday morning libfest, get ritually disemboweled, and come back scratching their toupees wondering what the hell just happened. 

But but but the host was unfair.

But but but the host was biased.

But but but I don’t understand.

But but but I was told that the media were brave truth tellers of truth!

Well, understanding the reality has been thrust upon even the stupidest of us.

Take a look at the Hoover Biden laptop thing. We have a computer that the Toast of Medellin gave to a repair man and forgot about because meth-huffing losers forget about stuff. We got his signature on the papers. We got his ambulance chaser demanding it back. We got the testimony of a veteran with a vaguely Slavic name whistleblowing it, and I was told that it’s literally treason to doubt whistleblowing veterans with a vaguely Slavic name (maybe they have to look like a bratwurst in their uniform for this to apply – it’s hard to keep track of the ever-changin’ rules).

And yet we have Leslie Stahl, a licensed, approved journalist of journalism, telling the president that the laptop revelations are not verified.

No verified? If some hobo on a corner took a break from nadlering all over the streets of San Francisco to tell a passing NYT reporter, “I like James Bond movies and I’m pretty sure I saw Putin paying for Don Jr.’s latte at a Starbucks on Castro Street” we’d see a headline the next day reading “Anonymous Intelligence Insider Reports Trump Family Receiving Payoffs From Russian Leader.”

When the biggest corruption scandal in American history erupts and the media hacks who spent their whole life Toobin Zoom-calling themselves over the thought of someday being the next Woodward and/or Bernstein because it hurts the politician they like, even the wimpiest of Republican simps start realizing that maybe it’s time to get woke to the reality.

There is no normal to go back to. Pretending that everything is fine and that the basic premises of American society have not been completely upended by leftists seeking total power is no longer cutting it. 

It would be nice to have a country where institutions did what they were supposed to do.

Where the media reported thoroughly and fairly and did not actively side with the Democratic Party.

Where academia was concerned with academics instead of securing the cheesy sinecures of loser leftists who eschew knowledge in the pursuit of turning their colleges into commie conformity factories.

Where the NFL and NBA and, to the very limited extent anyone ever cared, the WNBA, just play their stupid games instead of temporarily pausing their drug and domestic abuse antics to lecture us on politics between bouts of bussing Chi Com butt.

The left relied on the credulous saps of the center-right to keep believing, and to keep lecturing us, about how everything was wonderful and how those of us paying attention and noticing that the left was working to marginalize and disenfranchise us in our own country were the real problem. But the real problem is the corruption and lies themselves, not the fact that we conservatives see the corruption and lies and call them out.

It was a way to shut us up, to try to shame us into silence. But it’s no longer working. Some of the worst of the allegedly conservative liberal water-carriers went full Never Trump. First, they admired the emperor’s new clothes, and then, when it became undeniable the king was going commando, they didn’t skip a step in going right to admiring his junk.

But it’s the ones who wanted everything to be peachy, who did not want to accept the existential conflict we are in, the ones who for so long wanted to believe that the real problem was that sometimes Donald Trump tweets mean things, who changed. When the Facetwitt simply refused to allow news of the Biden Family Joesta Nostra to be spread, it finally got through to them. The other side is serious about making us into serfs. And we have got to wake up and get woke to the fact that its not whether we get into the fight of our lives, but only whether or not we will fight back.

https://townhall.com/columnists/kurtschlichter/2020/10/26/all-but-the-lamest-rinos-are-getting-conservawoke-now-n2578739 


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Trump’s Grassroots MAGA Army Working Around Platform Controls


A diverse and patriotic MAGA movement is overwhelming the mechanisms of narrative control; and they are doing it by flooding the zones with a combination of “old school” and “modern tech” workarounds.  It’s quite honestly the most remarkable political dynamic since the organic Tea Party erupted in 2009.

Before getting into the details of how this truly organic situation is unfolding it is worth looking at how big tech is freaking out [CNN Narrative Engineering HERE].

A right-wing offensive” is the 2020 narrative equivalent to Clinton’s vast Russian conspiracy theory.  The truth is Big Tech is getting their ass kicked by the American electorate and they are freaking out about how visible, in-your-face, unapologetic and dramatic the MAGA activism has become.  Thus blame-casting is needed.

You know they are getting their asses kicked when they have to create a political enemy to blame; real or imagined it matters not, the point is to create some “other” in an attempt to avoid confronting reality. Remember, Alinsky created their rule book and process.

Here’s what is happening… really just an affirmation of what everyone is noticing and talking about…. and it is wonderful.

A combination of what I would call “old school” activism is taking place everywhere.  Car parades, boat parades, marches, rallies and massive swarms of American MAGA supporters are literally flooding the political space in a scale that makes it impossible to ignore.



The MAGA rallies, parades and grassroots events are breaking out independent of each-other and literally happening all over the place on any given day.  Miles and miles of cars with Trump flags… same with boats… and sometimes just marches in the street where thousands of people just gather and walk with American flags, Trump banners, and other gear.

To make the marches even more effective a really smart organic approach has started and we now see Trump rallies and marches targeted to the exact event venues where Joe Biden and Kamala Harris are showing up.

The Trump supporters easily outnumber the Biden supporters by 20:1 or more.  The magnitude of the MAGAnitude is incredible.  This is totally organic, but word has spread and now it is happening everywhere.  [Saturday in Pennsylvania]



This approach floods the social media sphere with more consequence because it is a real life organic manifestation of support for President Trump.

The visibility of the support fuels the movement and the movement expands.

Just like the visibility of tens-of-thousands of supporters at President Trump rallies diminishes the engineering value of media polling, these spontaneous eruptions of MAGA support show just how significant size of this MAGA movement is.  It’s astonishing.

Remember Poland circa early ’80’s when it was said: “we took to the streets and realized for the first time there were more of us than them”?… and thus the government control over the Polish people almost immediately started to collapse.   Well, the control of the manipulative narrative engineers is suffering a similar fate in this election as the MAGA coalition assembles in astonishing scale.


One of the best features of this uncoordinated eruption of patriotism is the lack of any controlling apparatus. It really is totally organic and therefore impossible to stop; and then there’s the element where Generation Z is stepping in to enhance the old school approach.

Generation Z dominates the social media platform TikTok; and what Brad Parscale did with Facebook in 2016 Generation-Z is doing organically with TikTok videos in 2020.

The MAGA movement on that platform is stunningly effective as they take 60 second videos of MAGA-people, MAGA-places and MAGA-events and then rebroadcast the content adding their own MAGA-centric enhancements and soundtracks.

The result is an astoundingly positive and targeted message -happening in real life- that is also being expanded by TikTock and has the center control agents of Big Tech totally caught off guard.

MAGA-TikTok is now an army of users generating content and it’s bleeding over to other platforms and now starting to swarm Twitter and Facebook.  Google is trying to tamp it down via controls on YouTube but the scale, just like the MAGA parades themselves, is overwhelming.

I cannot even believe I am saying this… but the MAGA movement in-person and in the digital sphere is actually, well, WINNING.

The American people are all-in, right now when it matters most; the Monster Vote is also clearly evident.   Spontaneous acts of patriotism are now considered representative of the counter-culture; people of all colors, races, creeds and orientations are united under the Red, White and Blue MAGA banner; and all of this was initiated organically by an American President who just transparently loves this country.

MAGA bitches, this is just awesome.


Trumpism, Then, Now—and in the Future?

Like it or not, Trump hit on a great truth that no country can write off its vast industrial interior, destroy its borders, or prefer managed decline over renewal, and meanwhile call itself moral.


What was, is, and will be the Trump agenda? 

Against all odds, what elected Trump in 2016 was a recalibration of American foreign and domestic policy—and the art of politicking itself.

Doctrine and Policy

In foreign affairs, the United States would no longer adhere to every aspect of the 75-year-old postwar order it created—given the world now bore little resemblance to the world of 1945. 

Prior bipartisan foreign policy had often ossified to the point of enhancing the power of our enemies, weakening our complacent friends, and terribly damaging our own power. When Trump entered office, ISIS was proving that it was hardly a “JV” organization. North Korea was recklessly testing missiles and bragging of its nuclear-tipped rockets pointed at our West Coast. 

Israel and the moderate Arab regimes were ostracized as part of the insane Obama empowerment of theocratic Iran and its quest for a radical crescent encompassing Syria, Lebanon, Hezbollah, and Hamas.

Russian reset was an utter failure. Unhinged, we were hectoring Vladimir Putin on human rights while agreeing to dismantle missile defense in Europe, if he would just please behave for a bit, and give Obama space during his 2012 reelection bid. The Asian pivot was laughable. Our friendly and hostile trading partners praised the Obama Administration in direct proportion to their manipulation of it.

In the 1950s, it was understandable that the United States would spend blood and treasure abroad to resurrect the destroyed economies after World War II and contain Soviet Communism. Its policy of allowing recovering allies to run up huge trade deficits to reenter the world community was seen both as desirable and affordable, as was putting down Communist insurrections the world over to contain the Soviet Union. 

Western Europe, Japan, Taiwan, and South Korea became powerhouses, often with wide open, one-sided access to U.S. markets. China would never have achieved its 40-year stunning ascendence had America applied to Chinese trade the same mercantilism that China applied to the United States. 

By 2016, it was clear that a host of world and international trade and development organizations took for granted U.S. moral and financial support, while assuming wide open entrance for all into the U.S. market. 

The result of the globalist project was the destruction of much of the American interior’s manufacturing and assembly industries. Those whose labor could not be so easily xeroxed—Silicon Valley, Wall Street, banking and insurance, big law, the media, entertainment, professional sports, and large research universities—saw their markets expand to 7 billion consumers. Coastal elites got rich. Interior deplorables and clingers were said to have deserved their fate by not going to college or failing to learn how to code.  

They were lectured that not even a magic wand could save their jobs, or, in the words of Lawrence Summers, former Harvard president and the architect of President Obama’s team of economic advisers, they deserved their unfortunate fates, which in our meritocracy matched their meager abilities. “One of the challenges in our society is that the truth is a kind of disequalizer,”  Summers reportedly once said. “One of the reasons that inequality has probably gone up in our society is that people are being treated closer to the way that they’re supposed to be treated.”. 

Into that comfortable matrix of easing into decline, Trump stormed in. He damned globalists as elites who cared more about abstractions abroad than unfairness and the poor at home right under their noses. 

To restore U.S. primacy, he greenlighted gas and oil production. When the United States became the largest producer of both, much of the world changed. The Middle East no longer had a political stranglehold over U.S. foreign policy. Russia, and illiberal regimes like Iran, lost hundreds of billions in carbon income. American consumers and industry enjoyed the cheapest energy prices in the Westernized world. And the elite dismissed all that as too damaging to the planet.

Tax reform and deregulation lured back to U.S. shores offshored money and opened up trillions of dollars for investment that had been inert—the owners of which had been understandably worried by the redistributionist rhetoric and policies of the increasingly leftwing second-term Obama Administration and its recalibration of the Democratic Party.

Closing the border with Mexico slowly tapered off the once-endless supplies of cheap imported labor. For the first time in a half-century, the American worker was courted by needy employers who paid record entry-level wages, as unemployment fell to near historic peacetime lows. 

Minority youth were no longer begging employers for a chance of a job, but rather were being begged by them to come to work. Ancient fights over unions and minimum wages faded as an increasingly wealthy America saw middle-class income soar for the first time in years as employers paid whatever was necessary to land American workers. 

Trump stopped most optional military interventions that did not pencil out in a cost-benefit advantage for the United States—or for regional stability. Instead, don’t-tread-on-me realism bombed ISIS out of existence and took out the terrorist Iranian mastermind Qasem Soleimani, or threatened Kim Jong-un with massive retaliation if he dared launch a missile toward the United States. 

At no time did Trump think he should remove Bashar al-Assad and try to create a Western democracy in Syria, or invade and overthrow the Iranian regime—as opposed to slowly strangle them with sanctions, new alliances, and military deterrence. There was no desire to return to spend money or lives in Libya or Iraq to establish or reboot democratic institutions.

There were two final pillars of the new Trump foreign policy. One was to talk honestly to allies about investing in their own defense as promised. Most not only counted on U.S. protection but often loudly seemed to resent their ensuing dependence by opportunistically ankle-biting the United States for its global policeman role. 

Western Europe and Asia, and especially Germany and Japan, were told that if Russia and China really were existential threats, then such front-line states had to commensurately invest in their own defense first—at least if they to expected 19-year-olds from rural Michigan or northern Florida to fly over to their defense.

Unpredictability was seen as safer deterrence in a dangerous world than predictable and ossified policy. 

So, against all advice, Trump called China to account for its commercial cheating and insidious infiltration into Western banking, corporate, media, entertainment, and academic institutions. He cut off aid to Palestinians who refused to recognize Israel, moved the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem, reminded the Assad regime that it would never recover the Golan Heights to launch another war on Israel, encouraged the moderate Arab world to ally with Israel to protect against revolutionary Shiite Iran, and reminded Canada and Mexico that one reason why they had small militaries, and growing economies, was their proximity to the United States—and thus such magnanimity should be reciprocated with symmetry rather than seen as naïveté that explained its continuance.

Class, Not Race

The second pillar of Trumpism was a shift in Republican orthodoxy to reemphasize class differences and in radically different ways. 

No longer was there talk of privatizing Social Security, institutionalizing free (but not fair) trade, or following international commercial accords against the interest of an increasingly hollowed out American middle class. Deregulation and cuts in corporate taxes galvanized the economy and indeed profits “trickled down” to the hoi polloi. But such necessary free-market reforms were not the be-all and end-all of Republican orthodoxy, which was now readjusted to be more in the interest of the factory worker, not just the Wall Street investor. 

Closing the border cut off the easy supply of cheap labor for corporations. Only that way would wages of entry-level and largely minority workers rise. More radially, Trumpism did not see the middle classes as spent, addicted, eroding and doomed, much less as deplorables, clingers, irredeemables, dregs, and chumps as the coastal elites increasingly liked to smear them. And Trump certainly did not see poor whites, without much influence, as privileged, and thus in need of making atonement for supposed sins of the past or the present. 

One reason why Trump is libeled as a racist is that he saw through the white elite con of blaming those without advantage for bias and prejudice, in order to win psychological exemption for the elite’s own near-monopoly on blue-chip university admissions, corporate, media and academic old-boy access and cultural influence. 

Bull-in-the-China-Shopism

Aside from fundamental changes in foreign and democratic policy, and renewed emphasis on class instead of race, Trumpism changed the political dialectic. 

Of course, Trump could be crude, even at times bullying and profane. But much of his braggadocio and vulgarity were designed as chemotherapy to kill the cancer of the administrative state and the lock-hold on permanent government by the revolving-door, bipartisan coastal elite. 

The reasons why Trump just days after his inauguration faced a failed impeachment, or calls for his removal by the 25th Amendment, or even talk of a military coup, or the Steele dossier hoax that led to a $40 million, 22-month effort by progressives to destroy his presidency, his person and his family, were manifold. But one cause surely was that Trump was orphaned from the hard-Left Democratic Party and the Republican establishment and seemed either to welcome the ostracism or not be fully cognizant of the cost that it entailed.  

True, Trump may have defined presidential comportment down with his “sleepy,” “crooked,” “lying,” and “low-energy” epithets and with his crowds cheering to “lock her up.” But then again, what was so moral in the past about mellifluously assuring Americans they would lose neither their doctor nor their health plan—to the amusement of the likes of Jonathan Gruber who knew all along that they would? Or ramming through the Iran Deal by bypassing the treaty duties of the U.S. Senate, while deluding the country with a “know-nothing” media echo chamber? If we learned anything from the Obama years, supposedly “scandal-free” presidents might do anything from weaponizing the IRS and siccing the FBI on opponents to dismantling viable allied missile defense to leverage foreign leaders to aid their reelection campaigns—and then call all that moral, with a chorus of media assent.

When a man takes on the role of the gunslinger arriving in the town to clean up the mess, one must expect that his methods and comportment will offend his supporters as much as they terrified his adversaries, all the more so as he succeeds and thus the beneficiaries see an end on the horizon to their embarrassing need to have called in the unorthodox to do what their own polite conventionality should have done, but choose not (or did not have the courage) to do. 

The Fate of Trumpism 

We can sense the viability of Trumpism by the current lack of coherent attacks on its principles and achievements. Would a President Mitt Romney demand that the U.S. embassy now leave Jerusalem? Would a President Nikki Haley cease the new containment of China? Would a President Marco Rubio return to the Bush-Obama coaxing of NATO partners to please, pretty please pay up what they had promised?

Or alternatively, would a President Joe Biden warn the Arab countries to cease their “destabilizing” new partnership with Israel? 

Would he jawbone them to return the autocratic Palestinians to front and center of the Middle East “peace” plan? Would a President Biden begin dismantling 400 miles of border wall and return to open borders?

At home, Biden most certainly would raise taxes, restore cumbersome regulations, strangle the fossil fuel industry, and return to identity politics pandering. But after the 2017-20 Trump boom, he would do so without any expectation that the economy would grow or the country would heal or the world would suddenly cool down and the seas cease to rise. 

Biden knows that under Obama a natural recovery stagnated, a uniter president ignited the country with his team of racial arsonists, and the government wasted billions of dollars in green boondoggles even as a hamstrung private sector did far more than Washington to expand the use of solar energy and electric cars. 

And what about the NeverTrumper—always wrong that Trump would not be nominated or not be elected or be destroyed by “Russian collusion”? At the end of Trump, whether in 2020 and 2024, would they resurrect the Weekly Standard or return to the Sunday talk shows? Would the legions of handlers, operatives and advisors return to recalibrate all the party Senate and House races along the lines of a Mitt Romney or John McCain orthodoxy? Would the NeverTrump Phoenix arise to save the Republican Party from the ashes of Trumpism—on the principle that deplorables would always support RINO candidates, but RINOS would bolt the minute a deplorable candidate appeared. Could a Jeff Flake or a Ben Sasse or a John Kasich candidacy shatter the Blue Wall?

Probably not at all. Elite Republicanism would fail because the white working classes would return either to political hibernation in the swing states or rejoin the Democratic Party. Growing minority support would vanish because blacks and Latinos would see platitudinous and pandering Republicans as far more injurious to their futures than was a crudely talking, Queens-accented populist Trump.

Trumpism did not dismantle Republican conservatism. It simply enhanced conservative appeal by closing the border, confronting China, demanding fair trade, avoiding optional military expeditions, emphasizing the concerns of the working class, and redefining presidential behavior as boisterously honoring promises rather than mellifluously reneging on them. 

Whatever Trump’s fate, the NeverTrump faction will not succeed in rebuilding a new-old Republican Party under the Bush-McCain-Romney paradigm. Biden and his leftist masters would not be able to lower minority unemployment to Trump levels. Neither would they declare an end to containing China and claim such past confrontation was an unnecessary provocation. 

Like it or not, Trump hit on a great truth that no leader can write off his country’s vast industrial interior, destroy his nation’s borders, willingly cede global leadership to a Communist dictatorship, manipulate intelligence agencies to destroy political opponents, prefer to manage decline rather than to seek renewal, and meanwhile as it did all that call himself moral and presidential.