Victor Davis Hanson sums up the efforts to destroy Trump
Victor Davis Hanson’s latest essay is a good read. Although it probably won’t tell you anything you don’t know, as a summary of the efforts to invalidate the results of the 2016 presidential election it’s a good reminder of the relentless drive of the self-proclaimed Resistance against Trump. It leaves out a lot of details, of course, but Hanson isn’t writing a book, he’s writing an article.
Excerpt:
When that did not work, celebrities and politicians hit social media and the airwaves to so demonize Trump that culturally it would become taboo even to voice prior support for the elected president. Their chief tool was a strange new sort of presidential assassination chic, as Madonna, David Crosby, Robert de Niro, Johnny Depp, Snoop Dogg, Peter Fonda, Kathy Griffin, and a host of others linguistically vied with one another in finding the most appropriately violent end of Trump—blowing him up, burning him up, beating him up, shooting him up, caging him up, or decapitating him. Apparently, the aim—aside from careerist chest-thumping among the entertainment elite—was to lower the bar of Trump disparagement and insidiously delegitimize his presidency.
When that did not work, during the president’s first year in office, the Democrats and the media at various times sought to invoke the 25th Amendment, claiming Trump was so mentally or physically impaired that he was not able to carry out the duties of president. At one point, congressional Democrats called Yale University psychiatrist Dr. Bandy X. Lee to testify that Trump was unfit to continue. In fact, to prove her credentials, Lee edited The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump that offered arguments from 27 psychiatrists and other mental health experts. In May 2017, acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein met secretly in efforts to poll Trump cabinet members to discover whether they could find a majority to remove Trump from office—again on grounds that he was mentally unbalanced. According to McCabe, Rosenstein offered to wear a wire, in some sort of bizarre comic coup attempt to catch Trump off-guard in a confidential conversation.
When that did not work…
You can see the structure of the thing, the near-Biblical repetition of the introduction to each paragraph: “When that did not work…”
Hanson ends the piece with this:
The final irony? If the CIA, FBI, and DOJ have gone the banana republic way of Lois Lerner’s IRS and shredded the Constitution, they still failed to remove Donald Trump.
Trump still stands. In Nietzschean fashion what did not kill him apparently only made him stronger.
I understand what Hanson is trying to say, which I believe is that Trump seems stronger now in many ways than when he was elected. I’m not sure I agree, though. If he is stronger politically (which only the 2020 election will tell us), what’s the reason? Is it because these attacks have exposed the desperation and willingness to compromise American institutions on the part of the left? Or is it because of his accomplishments during his presidency so far?
And if Trump is stronger, another question is: stronger than what? Certainly stronger than the left (and some NeverTrumpers who used to be on the right) ever wanted him to be at this point. But I don’t think he’s stronger than he would have been without all this brouhaha, although of course I can’t know. If he’d just been left alone to be president without all the harassment, innuendos, and promises that any moment he’ll be revealed as a traitor, and the American public were allowed to merely evaluate him on the merits of what he’s accomplished, my guess is that he’d be stronger today politically than he actually is. So in that sense, the attacks haven’t made him stronger.
Or maybe they have. They may have done the almost impossible, made the president of the United States seem like an underdog.
[NOTE: When I was reading the comments to Hanson’s article, I noticed that someone had compared the repeated and failed efforts to take Trump down to the struggle to kill Rasputin. That’s an exaggeration, of course. But it struck me as apt nevertheless. The Resistance sees Trump as evil, and some of their imagery in one of the paragraphs I excerpted from Hanson is very violent and very much embodies their fantasy of killing Trump.
Rasputin was nothing like Trump, I hasten to make clear. He was the very opposite of a duly elected government office-holder and was not even born into the Russian nobility (au contraire). He was seen as illegitimately having usurped power (as the left sees Trump, or pretends to see him), and as crazy (as the left sees Trump, or pretends to see him), and a lot else:
The press, unshackled thanks to rights granted to them by Nicholas II in 1905, spread lurid tales about Rasputin both within Russia and abroad. Rumors about Rasputin’s influence over the Czarist regime spread throughout Europe. Petitioners, believing that Rasputin lived with the Imperial family, mailed their requests to “Rasputin, Czar’s palace, Saint Petersburg.”
Soldiers on World War I’s Eastern front spoke of Rasputin having an intimate affair with Alexandra, passing it off as common knowledge without evidence. As the war progressed, outlandish stories expanded to include Rasputin’s supposed treason with the German enemy, including a fantastical tale that he sought to undermine the war effort by starting a cholera epidemic in Saint Petersburg with “poisoned apples imported from Canada.” What the public thought they knew about Rasputin had a greater impact than his actual views and activities, fueling demands that he be removed from his position of influence by any means necessary…
The most well-known account of Rasputin’s murder was the one that Yussupov wrote in his memoirs, published in 1928. Yussupov claimed to have invited Rasputin to his palace to meet his wife Irina (who was in fact away at the time) and then served him a platter of cakes and numerous glasses of wine laced with potassium cyanide. To Yussupov’s astonishment, Rasputin appeared to be unaffected by the poison. A desperate Yussupov borrowed the revolver of the Grand Duke Dmitri, the czar’s cousin, and shot Rasputin multiple times, but was still unable to kill him. According to the memoir, “This devil who was dying of poison, who had a bullet in his heart, must have been raised from the dead by the powers of evil. There was something appalling and monstrous in his diabolical refusal to die.” There was reputedly water in his lungs when his remains were discovered, indicating that he had finally died by drowning.
Yussupov’s account of Rasputin’s murder entered popular culture…
…The autopsy reports do not mention poison or drowning but instead conclude that he was shot in the head at close range. Yussupov transformed the murder into an epic struggle of good versus evil to sell books and bolster his own reputation.
Maybe yes, maybe no. I certainly don’t pretend to know. But the legend lives on.
Oh, and the murder of Rasputin did not have effect the plotters intended:
To the dismay of Yussupov and his co-conspirators, Rasputin’s murder did not lead to a radical change in Nicholas and Alexandra’s polities. To the emergent Bolsheviks, Rasputin symbolized the corruption at the heart of the Imperial court, and his murder was seen…as an attempt by the nobility to hold onto power at the continued expense of the proletariat.
The rest, as they say, is history.]
At AmericanGreatness, Julie Kelly has a good piece entitled “The Same People who Pushed Iraq War Lies Pushed Russian Collusion” about the predictably ever-misguided Never-Trump neoconservatives such as Kristol and Boot, who seem incapable of ever learning anything.
Neo,
Doesn’t VDH’s story have the seasonal flavor of that Passover chestnut, Dayenu (“It Would Have Been Enough”)? In a sort of Bizzarro world sense, of course, one that only our home-grown wannabe taskmasters can fulfill.
Note: for those of you unfamiliar, the song Dayenu is often used to close out a Passover Seder, and consists of multiple verses praising G-d for his works to free the Jews from Egypt, with each miracle being enough to show His love and support. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dayenu#The_fifteen_stanzas
Julie Kelly has a good piece entitled “The Same People who Pushed Iraq War Lies Pushed Russian Collusion”
j e: I am not impressed with the “Bush lied, people died” canard from Trump people anymore than I am by Code Pink. I don’t care to run through all those arguments again, but the lies, as far as I am concerned, are mostly on the part of those who wished then, and now, to denounce the Iraq War.
“Is it because these attacks have exposed the desperation and willingness to compromise American institutions on the part of the left? Or is it because of his accomplishments during his presidency so far?” [Neo]
IMO they are not mutually exclusive but, perhaps complementary.
“And if Trump is stronger, another question is: stronger than what?” [Neo]
Perhaps better than the word “stronger” is “credible.” After all, credibility in politics is strength. One can tell and prove the truth, and one can be a consumate liar so that a lie successfully passes as truth. In either case they support the credibility of the politician. As to Trump’s credibility, his charges that the media are the enemy of the American people now have more credibility than they ever did in November of 2016. Likewise, Obama’s claim that one cannot simply wave a “magic wand” to improve the economy or drill ourselves out of oil dependency both have become increasingly un-credible to Trump’s benefit.
VDH supports Trump but he also staunchly backed the Iraq War at the time and since. In fact VDH took Trump to task for lying about the Iraq War. Happily I saved a link to this VDH article. Here’s a paragraph but there is more at the link.
_____________________________________________________________
No liberal supporters of the war ever alleged that the Bush administration had concocted WMD evidence ex nihilo in Iraq — and for four understandable reasons: one, the Clinton administration and the United Nations had already made the case about Saddam Hussein’s dangerous possession of WMD stockpiles; two, the CIA had briefed congressional leaders in September and October 2002 on WMD independently and autonomously from its White House briefings (a “slam-dunk case”), as CIA Director George Tenet, a Clinton appointee, later reiterated; three, WMD were only a small concern, at least in the congressional authorization for war, which for the most part dealt with Iraq’s support for terrorism in the post–9/11 climate, violation of the U.N. mandates, and serial genocidal violence directed at Iraq’s own people and neighboring countries; and, four, the invasion was initially successful and its results seemed to have justified it.
–Victor Davis Hanson,”Iraq: The Real Story”
https://www.nationalreview.com/2016/02/donald-trump-iraq/
Seriously, Trump does a damned fine job of destroying himself.
Seriously, Trump does a damned fine job of destroying himself.
How is he ‘destroyed’ right now?
Never-Trump neoconservatives such as Kristol and Boot, who seem incapable of ever learning anything.
Learning anything about what?
I found the Kelley article to be incredibly superficial. I doubt that she even followed what was happening then.
What the MSM and the rest of the left doesn’t understand and will never be able to learn, thanks be to God, is that when they’ve lied about everybody then nobody will believe them.
I could go directly to the op-ed the former chief news executive for CNN, Eason Jordan, penned for the NYT in April 2003 titled “The News We Kept To Ourselves” (search on those terms if you’re interested) but I prefer to link to the blog for all things Cuba.
https://babalublog.com/2011/12/13/flashback-the-news-we-kept-to-ourselves/
“Eason Jordan was formerly CNN’s “Chief News Executive”. In 2003 he wrote an op-ed piece for the New York Times entitled “The News We Kept to Ourselves”. In the piece Jordan confesses that CNN purposely kept stories about Iraq out of its coverage in order to keep its Bagdad bureau open.
‘Over the last dozen years I made 13 trips to Baghdad to lobby the government to keep CNN’s Baghdad bureau open and to arrange interviews with Iraqi leaders. Each time I visited, I became more distressed by what I saw and heard — awful things that could not be reported because doing so would have jeopardized the lives of Iraqis, particularly those on our Baghdad staff.’
So Jordan was “distressed” by “awful things” that “could not be reported”? I could end this piece right here and say well then if you could only report things from Iraq that weren’t awful weren’t you part of the problem in Iraq? Why maintain a bureau in Iraq if you could not report the truth?”
I don’t think you had to be in an intelligence service to know that CNN had basically whored itself out to the Saddam Hussein regime for the tag line, “This is CNN, Baghdad.” But being a Naval intelligence officer I had the advantage of knowing exactly what CNN was lying about. They were passing off unfiltered propaganda from the regime’s Ministry of Information (i.e. propaganda) and they did so gleefully. Eason Jordan wasn’t distressed; he was so gleeful to be Saddam Hussein’s prostitute that it wouldn’t be going too far to call him Saddam Hussein’s loving mistress.
How fitting then, that he chose old grey Red Army Camp follower to print his op-ed in. Which refuses to acknowledge that Walter Duranty won a Pulitzer for carrying an earlier dictatorship’s water.
So I knew he was lying to me. He was also lying about me. In 2005 at the World Econmic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, he said that the US military deliberately targeted journalists. To their credit, leftist Dem pols Barney Frank and Chris Dodd stood up for me (yes, I took it personally) and demanded evidence. Of course Jordan couldn’t provide proof. He tried to walk it back, claiming he really meant that the US military sometimes killed journalists as collateral damage. By definition collateral damage is the exact opposite of deliberate targeting. But it didn’t work because Eason Jordan had made the deliberate targeting claim in the years after we blew up the sweet deal the mistress had with his master in Iraq.
So he resigned.
But the thing is, I knew he was lying about me. I didn’t need Davos or Barney Frank (although I appreciate the fact he stood up) to tell me about it. Air launched munitions are expensive. So are artillery rounds. Small arms ammo is cheap as we in the US military buy in bulk. Even the Navy, which is by no means an infantry force, buys in bulk. I would be surprised if when you break it down a single round costs more than three cents. I wouldn’t be surprised if we’re talking a fraction of a cent.
No matter. I wouldn’t waste a bullet on something I can deal with by scraping it off the bottom of my shoe.
The hidden side of VDH. He’s taking his show on the road! 😆
2:16 and worth every nanosecond.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dG6d86iTOSw&feature=youtu.be
Trump is stronger now than he was at the start of his Presidency and, barring his assassination, I suspect he’ll grow even stronger when reelected. Three factors have made and are making him stronger, month after month.
The sheer hysteria and failed accusations from the Left.
Trump’s steadfastness in proclaiming what he believes to be true.
Those two factors result in the third factor. The GOP leadership’s reluctance to challenge Trump. If not enthusiastic support, the gradual lessening in resisting his initiatives. As example, Congressional republicans remaining silent, while letting only the dems object to funding the wall, in effect implies agreement with Trump. “Qui tacet consentire videtur (one who is silent is seen to have given consent).”
Seem like an underdog? Are you kidding. Of course, he’s an underdog. He faces unprecedented opposition, no president in history has faced. Watergate began with a crime. With the Mueller Probe, we have had an investigation that has lasted nearly the lengthy of his presidency to date in search of a crime, with a media more dishonest than it has been in the history of American journalism propagating lies and specious nonsense.
As to making him stronger, it may well have made him stronger so far as the 2020 election. By the time it begins in earnest, there won’t be a charge left to lodge against Trump that hasn’t already failed to be substantiated. Only those so deranged that no amount of evidence can dissuade from believing there was collusion will believe the election cycle clap trap. Those that might be influenced one way or the other will see that every effort for the length of his first term to show criminality has come up empty. Add to that lack of a viable candidate to beat him and I am of the mind that he’s sitting pretty. They couldn’t beat him the first time. Now, when he makes promises people know it isn’t just bravado.
Doesn’t VDH’s story have the seasonal flavor of that Passover chestnut, Dayenu (“It Would Have Been Enough”)?
donkatsu: VDH’s parallelism does bring “Dayenu” to mind, also something else on the tip of my brain.
Julie near Chicago’s link to a VDH YouTube, shows VDH’s ease with parallelism where he sketches out the entire Jussy Smollett scenario building up unlikely clause after unlikely clause in the manner of “The House that Jack Built.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dG6d86iTOSw&feature=youtu.be
Thanks, Julie!
(VDH pronounces Jussy as “Juicy.” I’m sure VDH did his homework. But that’s even worse than than the “hussy” sound I had in my head!)
I agree with Adrian, that it will make Trump much harder to beat in 2020. What charge can they come up with that hasn’t already failed?
If the economy holds, Trump will be near impossible to beat now.
Trump’s approval rating is holding steady (I knew this without looking it up, because I would have been told loudly if it were falling by the media — they really are that transparent). Obama’s approval/disapproval ratings in his fifth year fell to worse than the point Trump is at now, which is not something I would have guessed about St Barrack.
Three factors have made and are making him stronger, month after month.
It’s not him, it’s the sleeping American public. That’s a tiger and dragon the Deep State prefers to keep as dormant livestock.
Watergate began with a crime.
Nope, wrong.
FBI sub directors that didn’t get promoted decided to manipulate the media into telling the American republic that it was a crime for Nixon’s ex CIA and ex FBI COINTELPRO staff to do what the FBI has been doing all along on the basis of national security.
donkatsu on April 9, 2019 at 2:13 pm at 2:13 pm said:
Neo,
Doesn’t VDH’s story have the seasonal flavor of that Passover chestnut, Dayenu (“It Would Have Been Enough”)?
* * *
One of the speakers at the Republican Jewish Coalition’s conference, prior to Trump’s speech, uses precisely that phrase to recite the list of actions that the President took to support Israel, and has the audience chiming in.
He’s about the fourth speaker in (at 58:00); all of them are interesting in that they lead off with “I used to be a Democrat BUT…”
https://theconservativetreehouse.com/2019/04/06/president-trump-speaks-at-the-republican-jewish-coalition-2019-annual-leadership-meeting-in-las-vegas/
Steve57 on April 9, 2019 at 4:41 pm at 4:41 pm said:
What the MSM and the rest of the left doesn’t understand and will never be able to learn, thanks be to God, is that when they’ve lied about everybody then nobody will believe them.
* * *
It’s good to be reminded of Jordan and Duranty, but please note that the MSM has already lied about almost everybody, and some people still believe them (or at least pretend that they do).
PS Appreciated your comment about first-hand knowledge of the lies.
There have to be leftists who know they are reading lies, but one is always reminded of the Gell-Mann amnesia affect. Only a few people (Neo as prime example) start to wonder, “If they are lying about things I have knowledge of, what else are they lying about?”
Huxley,
Thanks for setting the record straight yet again about the lie that Pres. Bush lied in order to get us into the Iraq war.
Apparently this needs to be announced over megaphones throughout the land, every hour on the hour, until it sinks into the many thick heads that accept the lie.
Thanks also for the link to VDH’s piece on it.
P.S. Glad you enjoyed the video. I sure did! 😀
I supported the Iraqi war, but was a bit unhappy at the after-war peace. The Abu Ghraib fiasco, with the US gov’t supporting ‘torture’ was a huge media issue over a real, but also relatively small, lousy training of guards issue.
Hazing is hardly torture. Water-boarding, leaving no physical scars, is psychological torture, but less bad than the rapes and other brutalities the Saddam guys were doing.
Bush decided to do nation-building, but the US is not good at nation-building for other nations. Young democracies are very prone to corruption and voter disappointment, or else cults of personality. Getting Saddam and going home was an option not taken.
Trump continues to complain about Bush going in, which should make those who fear Trump’s wars look foolish, but somehow doesn’t. In Iraq the Kurds should leave, and form their own state. … But that hugely complicates relations with Turkey, who continues to oppress the minority Kurds in Turkey (15-20 mln?).
VDH supported good nation building but Bush did mediocre work, and Trump, like most Dems, and Libertarians (like Rand Paul), oppose the whole war.
The war was hugely promoted by the WMD fear. Saddam was required to show that he didn’t have them. He didn’t show that. It seems that many of his generals thought that he had some program, but with some other general — and it was not something to talk about. He violated 16 different UN SC resolutions.
Real law requires real enforcement. Whether at the US border, or with a Syria Red Line, or with UN Sec. Council resolutions. No enforcement, and it’s not real law. (my definition). On most US highways, most of the time, the “real speed limit” is about 10 mph over the listed limit — the limit that is enforced is the “real” limit. Bush was trying to enforce international law.
Before a country can function well with democracy, it needs to know how to function with a market economy. A market economy can function even under a dictator, like Lee Kwan Yew in Singapore, but it allows private property and the development of a habit of choosing among “goods”, which is best for you today. The free market is more important for most people’s lives than democracy.
I disagree with Trump’s demonizing of Bush over Iraq, but because it echoes that of the Dem media, it has a lot of traction, and is likely to allow many independents and even Dems to instead vote Rep. And there’s nobody proposing an obviously superior Mid East Foreign Policy. I’m glad about Jerusalem and about the Golan Heights; and even support more Israeli expansion based on continued attacks by the Palestinians. If they see each attack costs them 10 sq km (or some other amount), this will be an incentive for them to stop the attacks.
After silly Obama, Trump looks much much better on the ME.
VDH does a fine rhetorical job of pointing out all the attacks on Trump. So, since Trump is innocent of collusion, if there is no recession, he gets re-elected. In the meantime, he will be fighting about building the Wall. And maybe some indictments of McCabe, Comey & deep state criminals (I do hope).
I don’t think the Dem drift to socialism was because of Trump, but it helps make it clearer how insane the Dem activists are.
People are under the impression that Bush II declared war on Saddam. He did not. Because the US was already at war with Iraq.
Just like the issue with North Korea. There’s a cease fire. It’s not a peace treaty.
The American normals and average people, believe what they are told from the media.
One should also recall that the FBI, State Department, and others with an alternative agenda on Iraq and nation building, were gunking up the words. If VDH had the number of Deep State advisers or idiots, that Bush 2 employed, VDH would not be doing a very good job either, farming or otherwise.
Bush II failed to purge Washington DC in the same fashion that Trum failed to get rid of Hussein loyalists in the CIA/FBI/NSA etc etc. Because Americans, for whatever reason, are gullible and believe their government loon goon boys are somehow patriots or loyalists, instead of downright traitors. Bush 2 actually got angry that someone compared one of his admin boys to that general in the civil war that pretended to fight the Southern Demoncrats because he was hoping Lincoln would lose the election if he lost a few battles.
“Trump doesn’t want to stop cancer”,…no, that not been pRoven,
Joe Biden says, “Trump doesn’t want to stop cancer”,…no, that has not been proven,
“Trump dislikes Jewish people”,…no, that has not been proven,
“He hates Muslims”,…no, that has not been proven,
“He hates immigrants and Mexican immigrants”,…no, that has not been proven.
Wow, when most of the Democrats can’t beat Trump, in politics, or beat Trump in elections, they just lie their heads off, hoping that someone will believe them, and do what they want.
Nine year olds can see through these lies and falsehoods.
No court has proven that Trump has done these things.
Wow. The Democrats used to be “the party of no”.
Now they are- “THE PARTY OF LIES”.
That is such a pitiful way to behave.
[Just so readers will know- when I say, Democrats, in this post, I mean, most of the Democrats].
Just like the issue with North Korea. There’s a cease fire. It’s not a peace treaty.
There is a pretty good argument that Schwarzkopf was snookered by the Iraqis in the cease fire. He had no diplomatic help and let them keep helicopters, which they used to make war on Shiites and the “Marsh Arabs.”
There is a pretty good argument that Schwarzkopf was snookered by the Iraqis in the cease fire.
Schwarz later said he was backstabbed by Powell though. Schwarz wanted to interfervene and was ready to decapitate Saddam and save/invade Shia Iraq.
Powell was… doing what Powell does in Washington DC. Schwarz was overruled as Powell was his superior. They both knew it was a political, not a military decision, to to let Saddam do what he wanted and to put up no fly zones (way too late).
Half of America is fighting the other half of America, but Americans think they are fighting foreign rag head dictators like Saddam. In actuality, most of the time, America’s major losses were inflicted by internal American traitors like that goofball Benedict.