The people have spoken and delivered a thumping victory to Donald Trump, repudiating all the lawfare, sabotage and demonization he’s endured over the past eight years.
A comfortable majority of voters saw through the lies to the essence of the man: a courageous fighter who loves the American people.
We saw it in a way that can’t be faked, that was captured in one iconic image when he was almost assassinated at his rally in Butler, Pa., in June.
He stood up with blood streaming down his face, raised his fist and said: “Fight, fight, fight!”
That was the moment Elon Musk threw everything into helping Trump win, because he saw what we all saw, a historical leader, exactly the man needed to lead this country back from the road to ruin.
His opponents threw everything they had at Trump.
They spied on him, faked the Russiagate smear, sicced the CIA and FBI on him, impeached him, indicted him, arrested him, called him a Nazi racist and almost got him assassinated, twice.
They even raided his Florida home, Mar-a-Lago, and sent FBI goons to rifle through his wife’s underwear drawer.
But he never lost his cool.
He even turned his mug shot into an epochal moment, with his fierce glare straight down the barrel of the camera and a sardonic turn of the mouth.
“I don’t care,” his expression seems to say.
“You’ll never break me.”
Repudiating the lies
Despite it all, despite being counted out a thousand times over, Trump won the 2024 election overwhelmingly and unequivocally: the Electoral College, every swing state, the Senate, probably the House and, incredibly, the popular vote.
It was a repudiation by ordinary Americans of every media lie and elitist scold.
Trump did it by attracting to the Republican Party a new coalition of voters who had been told he was their enemy: the working class, blacks, Hispanics, American Indians, the Amish, Jews, young people.
You saw a glimmer of the new coalition in the big crowds of young men and women at his last rally midnight Monday in Grand Rapids, Mich.
You saw it in the ethnic diversity of his truly joyful Madison Square Garden rally, people who kept their MAGA gear on as they happily streamed up Seventh Avenue afterward giving each other high fives and not at all embarrassed to flaunt their Trump allegiance for once.
It was the American people who defied the elite gatekeepers who scolded and demeaned them, who told them that they were sexist, racist, Nazis and garbage if they dared to even think of voting for Trump.
The Obamas told black men they were sexist, women were encouraged to lie to their husbands to vote for Kamala Harris and men to lie to their friends.
Lifeblood of haters
Abortion and hating Trump were the lifeblood of the Harris campaign, negative emotions that did nothing to assuage real-life concerns over inflation and illegal migration.
Over and over in Trump’s victory speech in the wee hours of Wednesday, he paid tribute to the men and women who delivered him a decisive mandate to rescue the country: “I want to thank the American people,” he said. “Winning the popular vote was very nice.”
But there was no frivolity or triumphalism from Trump and his family and closest staffers as they stood on stage at the Florida convention center, or earlier when they dined among friends in the glittering ballroom at Mar-a-Lago watching the results come in.
There were smiles and relief, but the mood was serious and resolute.
It was very different from the freewheeling joy of 2016, when we were all naïve about the true nature of the opposition to Trump and the Deep State power that would be weaponized against him.
No illusions
The Trumps have all been bruised and are under no illusion about the resistance forces that plagued his first presidency and tried to prevent his second.
As hard and grinding as Trump’s path to victory has been, he knows the next four years will be a grind like never before.
There will be no respite, no grace for Orange Man Bad, even if he is the resounding democratically elected choice of the people.
Trump’s enemies won’t give up and concede defeat.
Trump knew it at dinner, as he broke off from deep conversations with UFC boss Dana White and Musk to keep turning around in his seat and watch the grim faces of the CNN anchors on the big screen behind him.
Their misery at his triumph is the sign that there will be no soul-searching or contrition from the media for their lies and demonization.
The New York Times set the tone with its Day One headline: “America Hires a Strongman: This was a conquering of the nation, not by force but with a permission slip.”
On MSNBC, furious former Biden propagandist Jen Psaki blamed Musk, whom she smeared as a “disinformation propagandist.”
She ran through a litany of the disqualifying sins of Trump, “violent insurrection,” “convicted felon,” “authoritarian leader,” “anti-democratic force,” yada yada yada.
“It’s hard to digest,” she kept saying.
But she also laid out the outline of what would become the refrain of the disappointed and despairing Harris voters all the next day.
They would console themselves by mounting a permanent resistance to sabotage Trump’s second presidency just as they did to his first.
“I have every confidence that pro-democracy forces in this country will stand up and make their voices heard,” she said.
“That’s what we saw after 2016 as well.”
Yes, we know.
Turncoat chicken hawk Republican Liz Cheney tweeted out the same sentiment a few hours later when she exhorted fellow never-Trumpers to “do everything we can to support and defend our Constitution, preserve the rule of law, and ensure that our institutions hold over these coming four years,” as if Trump, whose first presidency was a success, poses some special threat.
The NY resistance
In New York, the Trump resistance announced itself Wednesday, as state Attorney General Letitia James vowed to “fight back again” against the evil incoming president.
Gov. Hochul simultaneously announced she had formed an “Empire State Freedom Initiative” to fight “threats” from the new Trump administration.
Harris, in her concession speech Wednesday, nodded in the same direction with the bizarre comment that: “While I concede this election, I do not concede the fight that fueled this campaign.”
What fight was that?
The fight against a mythical fascist?
Or the fight against the American people whom Democratic grandees like David Axelrod ranted on CNN are racist.
“There is racial bias in this country,” he repeated over and over.
On MSNBC, “Morning Joe” talking heads said Trump voters are sexists, too, especially Hispanics who “don’t want a black woman as president of the United States.”
It’s a terrible thing that Democrats and their media toadies do to their supporters, demeaning them and frightening them half to death with lies.
Traumatized with lies
Actress Christina Applegate is so deranged, she allowed her 13-year-old daughter to be traumatized with lies about Trump’s abortion policies and then boasted about it on social media: “My child is sobbing because her rights as a woman may be taken away.”
The New York Times quoted a Harris-supporting 79-year-old retired cabdriver from Washington, DC, who said he feels “afraid” about four more years under Trump because of the lies he’s been fed that Trump will cut Social Security.
“I don’t know what to expect,” he said.
“I depend on Social Security.”
But the beautiful thing about Election 2024 is that most Americans woke up and saw through the lies.
They kicked their “betters” in the teeth by choosing the man they were told was the enemy.
No other country in the world could produce a Donald Trump and reinvent itself whenever it needs to.
That’s what makes America great.
