No one would elect Donald Trump to be the next Pope. Well, maybe Trump would do so himself, but few others would burn their ballots into white smoke for the thrice-married former president, if only because few think of him as a pious or godly person.
But the presidency is not the papacy. And while Trump would be horrible in the latter position, he was not at all bad in the former.
The prospect of Trump returning to that job has absolutely terrified the people who directly benefit most from him not holding it. And so the Democratic Party Industrial Complex, which has become increasingly unhinged, is now unleashed to do or say anything, no matter how undemocratic, to prevent it.
Former President George W. Bush famously declared, “I have abandoned free-market principles to save the free-market system.” Democrats are likewise abandoning the concept of democracy in order to save it.
To offer up ostentatious declarations of fealty to democracy, all the while devising dodgy new legal theories to put your electoral opponents on criminal trial, seems at least inconsistent — perhaps even hypocritical. To put your electoral opponent on trial for a crime your own candidate also committed might give rise to the impression that there’s a double standard at play.
And if you are really committed to democracy, to the point that you try to frame your opponent as a “threat to democracy,” then you probably shouldn’t be trying to deny ballot access to your opponents, or else you risk exposing yourself as the actual “threat to democracy.”
In each of these respects, Democrats have thrown everything they can at Trump except the kitchen sink, and they seem already to have the plumber on speed dial. He’s a rapist, he’s Hitler, he’s a racist, he’s a misogynist, he’s a criminal, he’s a…well, it would take less time to create a list of accusations they haven’t flung at him.
By now, they have made Trump the best-known candidate in the history of the presidency. His alleged misdeeds, at this point, are at least on par with George Washington’s alleged wooden teeth.
Yet even though the public has already heard all of the Democrats’ charges ad nauseam, nothing has stuck. Maybe people just don’t care. Maybe they don’t think the charges are serious. But Trump is beating Joe Biden in most national polls and every important swing state, even though (or maybe because?) the accusations have completely saturated the nation’s political consciousness.
Some people will vote for Trump, come hell or high water. Some will refuse to do so even if it would save their own lives. People either think he became president to make himself rich, or that he left the office poorer than when he went in. No one is without an opinion of anything Trump-related, including his views, his policies, his style, and his favorite foods.
And as with George W. Bush, Hollywood is coming for him too. Progressives in the entertainment industry have always hated Trump. They didn’t need Biden’s added desperation to get involved.
Television, movies and music have also been steeped in anti-Trump hatred since he came down that escalator in 2015. That hatred has manifested itself in caricatures of Trump as the villain in skits and movies, and as the butt of attempted and mostly not-very-funny jokes that come off more as political convention applause lines than punchlines.
And now there is a movie coming out — a fictionalized version of Trump’s life the way the left likes to convince itself it really happened.
In 2006, Hollywood produced “Death of a President,” a fictionalized progressive fantasy picture about the assassination of George W. Bush. There was also the television show, “That’s My Bush!” an immediately forgettable sitcom that no one really watched.
While a Republican got a “he’s a moron” show and a “I wish someone would kill him” movie, Barack Obama got “Southside With You,” a fiction about his first date with Michelle.
Trump now gets “The Apprentice,” featuring rape, plastic surgery, corruption and everything else you’d see if you flipped instead to MSNBC.
If the “truth” about Trump is so horrible, why do Democrats spend so much time making things up about him? There would be no need to take quotes out of context — think of the “very fine people” hoax or the “bloodbath” hoax — because they could simply run the whole thing, in context, and people would head for the hills.
But truth does not help the Democrats. Does Donald Trump pump his ego up sometimes by overstating things he’s done? Definitely. So does everyone who ever caught a fish.
Our current president makes himself out to be some kind of civil rights activist, arrested while trying to visit Nelson Mandela. He has claimed he graduated at the top of his law school class class and driven a big rig. He has claimed he spoke with a dead man about how many miles he’d ridden Amtrak. None of those claims were true, either.
Joe Biden’s lies are actually more pernicious. They are meant to fool audiences into thinking he identifies with them. Trump’s lies merely attempt to make him look cooler. Yet Trump is regularly attacked for lying, whereas Biden is only occasionally (and always gently) “fact checked.”
Lucky for Trump, he is immune from character assassination. Both truth and lies about him are by now so well known that they are already baked into the cake, and none of it seems to matter.
Derek Hunter is host of the Derek Hunter Podcast and a former staffer for the late Sen. Conrad Burns (R-Mont.).
