Baruch Hashem — thank God. Truly, thank God.
Here’s the thing: God spared Donald Trump’s life during this election cycle.
I know you may not believe in God. But I have to say, it’s pretty damned difficult sometimes not to see His hand moving in history. God’s hand was clearly on Donald Trump when he turned his head 20 degrees and avoided having his brains blown out live on national television. And God spared Donald Trump for a reason. We don’t know God’s reasons. But He’s making His hand pretty damned apparent to anyone who is willing to watch.
I’ll admit it: I’ve questioned some of God’s writing decisions on this season of Trump. Not one, but two assassination attempts? The feeble and elderly president actually going defunct live on national television? The replacement candidate being a word salad chef? Her picking, not the popular Democratic governor of a swing state, but a nutjob who has a clear relationship to Gumby? Tony Hinchcliffe, “eating the dogs,” P-nut?
Seriously, God?
But wow, can God stick the landing. The season finale: absolutely unbelievable. So good. 10 out of 10. Would watch again. Will download for the plane.
Best. Season. Of. Trump. Evah.
Let’s actually talk seriously about the meaning of this election. And let’s begin with the man who won it: Donald Trump.
Last night on the air, I got into an interesting discussion with Skeletor-impersonator Andrew Klavan. The conversation was about Trump and what made him different. Donald Trump, I pointed out, has run this race as a moderate Republican. He’s Left of Mitt Romney positionally on a wide variety of issues. So it wasn’t that Trump is some sort of throwback to rock-ribbed conservatism. That isn’t it.
What makes Trump different is that he was built for this moment.
There have been a lot of Biblical comparisons for Donald Trump. Many people point out that King David had some pretty serious personal flaws, but he was beloved of God. But I have one: Noah.
When the flood was coming, God found a man who could build an ark. A man who was, as God puts it in the Bible, “ish Tzadik, tamim haya b’dorotav.” A righteous man, complete in his generation. The commentators argue over what this means: Was he particularly good because he was righteous in a bad generation? Many commentators say no: Noah was built for his time. He was complete — a man in full — in his time.
Donald Trump is built for this time.
He has absorbed more punishment than any politician in modern history. That is no exaggeration. Twice impeached. Four times indicted. Fined tens of millions of dollars. Almost shot in the head. Then almost shot again.
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And we all know what the iconic image of Donald Trump is, the one that will go in the history books. It’s not going to be him at McDonalds or him driving a garbage truck or the mug shot or even him coming down the golden escalator.
It is the photo of him rising to his feet after being shot, blood coming from his ear, raising his fist in the air, exhorting, “Fight! Fight! Fight!”
Evan Vucci/AP Photo
Look again at the photo. It’s everything. It’s why Donald Trump is the most important man of our age. It is courage in the face of danger. It is defiance in the face of assault. And it is the American flag floating in the background — the unironic, patriotic symbol of the world’s most kickass country.
That’s Donald Trump. He is ish tamim b’dorotav. He was built for this time.
He was built for a time when America has to stare down its enemies abroad and tell them that, as Trump said to me, we might bomb the s*** out of them — but also a time when hard-nosed business negotiations can yield international peace. He was built for a time when America must choose between a future of economic dynamism and innovation, or one of stagnation and decline. He was built for a time in which America had to choose between the power of treating each other as individuals — and no one on earth treats people as individuals more than Donald Trump does, I’ve seen him do it — and treating people as members of oppressor or oppressed classes.
Yes, Donald Trump has plenty of flaws. So did Noah. Check out the chapters after the flood.
But when the flood is coming, you need a man who bucks the strictures of a corrupt generation and builds a boat.
Trump builds the boat. And America is not only going to survive the storms, America is going to rebuild once the waters recede. And the waters are now beginning to recede.
These times require a middle finger. Trump is that middle finger. He has compared himself to Washington, Lincoln, and McKinley. But the man he most represents is another New Yorker, a garrulous, self-confident-bordering-on-pompous, audacious president: Teddy Roosevelt. It was Roosevelt who said this in 1910:
It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.
Now, let’s turn to the person who lost this race: Kamala Harris.
Here’s the thing about Kamala Harris: nothing.
Literally nothing. She was not “joy.” She was not “brat.” She was nothing. She’s always been nothing. She has never won a single vote outside of the state of California. She has never been subjected to the rigors of a serious public examination. She is a creation of a party machinery. She is an empty vessel. That was apparent every time she opened her mouth, and no amount of celebrity glitter could cover up that innate emptiness.
Which means that Kamala Harris’ loss isn’t about Kamala. And no, it’s not about Joe Biden, either.
It’s about the entire corrupt machine to which Donald Trump and the American people just threw out a double-barrelled f*** you.
Let’s talk about the machine.
The machine that says, at root, America is inherently racist, sexist, homophobic, and Islamophobic. That cities burning is just part of the bargain of coming to grips with our innate evil. That what America needs is an “intifada revolution.” That the story of America is one of a corrupt and evil nation requiring the harsh hand of elites at the top of government to correct them into the harness of equity.
The machine that says American innovation is a problem because it’s exploitative and that the job of the government is to create equality of outcome, to relieve people of burden of responsibility and virtue and hand them government checks instead. That families are little torture chambers filled with nasty, hackneyed values, and that churches are repositories of cruelty rather than community. That every human being is just a set of free-floating feelings and that it is the job of a cloistered elite to legitimize those feelings, such that boys can even be girls through the grace of government.
The machine that says American power on the world stage is somehow bad for the world and that our enemies have basically got it right. The machine that touts the virtue of spoiled brats on college campuses who shout about the evils of America while living off its spoils.
The machine that manufactures narratives that are overtly false, through the most powerful media mechanisms in human history — and then, unsatisfied, tries to crack down on those who disagree. The machine that lies to you: about the economy, about foreign policy, about social policy, about America, about the nature of reality itself. Because if you’ll buy the lie, then perhaps you’ll go along with their program.
That was the machine that lost last night.
That machine is ugly. It is hideous. And it deserves to die. And last night, it died.
That’s what Election 2024 was about, in the end. It was about a return to normalcy.
A couple of weeks ago, I did a debate with Sam Harris about Trump versus Kamala. And Sam kept saying Trump wasn’t normal, and somehow, Kamala was. And I’m sure Sam meant it; Trump says weird things, exaggerates, bloviates, and bulls***s.
But I pointed something out to Sam: When people say they want a return to normal, they don’t mean politics as usual. Because for most people, politics as usual is SNAFU: Situation Normal, All F***ed Up. What Americans are looking for is true normalcy: They want to take care of their families; they want to build wealth; they want to go to church; they want to get along with their fellow Americans, and they want to dream of big things together. They like Elon Musk’s rockets and they like truckers and they like church bake-offs and they like marriage and they like children.
They. Want. Normal.
And this is a flood generation. Nothing Is Normal. The only thing that has come to seem normal is that when the water levels rise slowly enough, it feels as though you’ve always been in water up to your neck.
But it isn’t normal.
We want normal. This was the revenge of normal.
Donald Trump is the instrument of that revenge. So is JD Vance. So is Elon Musk, Joe Rogan, and yes, us here at the Daily Wire. We want normal. Because normal is the American Dream.
And sometimes, it takes a man with a golden escalator, a wild hairdo, and a cartoonish speaking cadence — and more personal courage, toughness, and yes, patriotism, than any of his enemies — to make normal great again.
