Perhaps my favorite moment in Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s speech announcing the suspension of his presidential campaign and endorsement of Donald Trump was the rhetorical question, “Who needs a policy when you have Trump to hate?” I was reminded of that in the last couple of days as first Liz and then her father, Dick Cheney, declared that they were endorsing Kamala Harris for president.
I guess the legacy media regards those endorsements as big news because if you try to search for some of the blistering attacks Liz Cheney unleashed on Harris in the past, all you get is a solid wall of rah-rah headlines about what a big deal it is that the Cheneys turned on their party and endorsed Kamala. My own feeling is that Ann Coulter got it exactly right in her amusing post on X:
Uh Oh, I just heard the news…DICK CHENEY IS VOTING KAMALA!
This…is…the…BIG ONE!
If they lose David French, this thing is OVER!
O-V-E-R
Of course, the Cheneys are not huddling with Kamala because they like what she stands for. They, like the scores of other neocons who have endorsed Harris, are doing so because they hate and fear Trump. Sure, we have our disagreements with Harris, they say. But “The alternative . . . is simply untenable.”
Two points. First, their fear of Trump is not irrational. True, when he was elected in 2016, he did not “lock her up” Hillary Clinton, though he had better grounds to investigate her than the DOJ had to investigate him after he became president. Nor, despite Trump’s talk of “retribution,” do I believe he will weaponize the DOJ and other agencies to go after his political opponents. That’s what Democrats and NeverTrump neocons do.
But there will, I am confident, be a reckoning. Part of what this will entail was described well by Article III Project Founder and President (and former Chief Counsel for Nominations to Senate Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley) Mike Davis. A political neophyte when he came to office in 2016, Trump has learned his lesson. He will come back to office in 2025 with a plan to “clean house” on day one.
That spring cleaning will have emanations and penumbrae. Liz Cheney will not be going to jail. But she and her many ideological confrères will have their irrelevancy ratified and confirmed. Politically, they and their globalist agenda will be history.
My second point is about the comment that Trump’s reelection is “untenable,” an alternative that is just too horrible to contemplate.
That’s what the anti-Trump narrative says. But on what grounds? We know what Trump would be like as president because he has already served a full four-year term. There were things to criticize—profligate spending and, above all, his handling of the COVID hysteria. But by and large, he had not just a successful but a wildly successful term.
I have rehearsed his accomplishments here and elsewhere many times. For now, I’ll just remind you that
- We had a southern border and the flow of illegal immigration was slowed to a trickle.
- We were energy-independent and the cost of energy was low and sinking.
- There was peace in the Middle East thanks to Trump’s initiatives, especially the Abraham Accords.
- There was peace more generally. Putin did not invade Ukraine during Trump’s tenure.
- Unemployment was the lowest it had been in decades; minority unemployment was the lowest on record.
- Inflation was 1.4%.
- Real wages were rising, especially at the lower end of the scale.
- Trump rolled back onerous and counterproductive regulations that hampered prosperity.
- Trump began dismantling the Title IX insanity at colleges and universities.
- He also took aim at DEI and ESG initiatives that had so negatively affected American businesses and government agencies.
That’s ten items out of scores one could recite.
The weeks before a presidential election are fraught. As in war, the first casualty is truth. And while that has been the case for decades, the rhetorical atmosphere has become more and more poisonous in recent election cycles. There is probably nothing one can do about that except tune out the media bullhorns disseminating the mendacious narrative.
No one’s crystal ball is perspicacious enough to say who will win on November 5. Or let me amend that: No one’s crystal ball is perspicacious enough to say who will be accorded victory. As I write, Kamala Harris’s campaign is flailing. The rush of people like the Cheneys to her banner is not a sign of strength; it is a sign of desperation. I expect those feelings of desperation to increase as we approach election day. Will Donald Trump be allowed to win? Will he be allowed to take office?
No one knows the answers to those questions. It will be interesting to see if hatred of Donald Trump by the entrenched globalist elite is enough to suppress or obfuscate the vote. If I had to bet, I’d say that Trump’s disciplined campaign, his own charisma, and the supporters he has garnered from stars like Elon Musk, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Tulsi Gabbard, and Vivek Ramaswamy will win the day. True, he will probably be outspent by at least 2 to 1 as he was last time. But at the end of the day, I doubt that will save the frenzied “joy”-laden Harris-Walz campaign.