No matter what we may think of Donald Trump personally, I think we have to marvel about his resiliency and his inner fortitude to conquer all the adversity he has suffered in the last 10 years. His personal journey on his path to the White House three times has been dotted with several hazards and a vicious persecution that nearly cost him his life. This is not meant to be a political commentary but a chronicle of a deeply flawed man whose love of freedom has been an inspiration to millions of Americans. As I once told an atheist friend from my radio days that his helping his mother around the house was the work of sainthood, Trump’s persecution rivals many of our modern saints.
I have no compunction in saying this about Trump’s journey into history. In the nearly 10 years since he rode that escalator down to the first level in Trump Tower, one I have ridden dozens of times, he had a spiritual transformation, in that he never lost faith in his family, his country nor himself. After the shooting in Butler this past July, I sensed a budding faith in the power and majesty of Almighty God.
As Jesus put it, let he who is without sin, cast the first stone. Donald Trump has had enough rocks thrown at him, since he first arrived on the political scene in 2015 to build a wall across our Southern border. He was never my first choice for president but he had a few special traits that set him apart from all the others. He knew how to fight and he was not a quitter. This has been a rarity in the Grand Old Party of my father.
As author James Stewart wrote, politics is indeed a Blood Sport and most Republicans have not had the stomach for it. In 2016, Senator Ted Cruz of Texas was my first choice but when Trump took an unkind but not cruel shot at his wife, Cruz nearly came unglued. Right then, I reasoned that if Cruz could not parry such an easy slight, how could he survive a much worse treatment from a Democratic broadside?
Trump’s problems began in earnest with the bona fide Hillary Clinton Conspiracy, supported by the Obama FBI that accused him of collusion with the Russians. Under the code name Crossfire Hurricane, the FBI investigated the Trump campaign for conspiring with Russian agents. This led to a special counsel, Robert Mueller, whose investigation lasted from 2017-19. His report did not find any Russian conspiracy but wasted the president’s and the country’s time, not to mention its squandering $32 million in U.S. funds.
There was never an investigation of the Clinton Conspiracy to steal the election from Trump. Hillary’s Fusion GP, an opposition research and strategic intelligence firm based in Washington, hired former counterintelligence specialist, Christopher Steele to find dirt on Trump. It resulted in the Steele Dossier a 35-page report that had nothing but faux acts of the crudest kind and unverifiable accusations of misconduct, conspiracy and cooperation between Trump’s presidential campaign and the Russian government prior to the election. Steele’s report was completely devoid of any truth yet it was supported by the Clinton camp and the mainstream media.
Trump’s lack of experience and personal foibles appeared as if on cue. He tends to be stubborn, petulant and perfect bait for sycophants. Praise him and he is your friend forever but criticize him, look out. Then there was the infamous Covid outbreak, from a mysterious lab leak in Wuhan, China which killed millions of people, including many in this country. I cannot help but believe that darker forces were at work in this accident.
It took Trump advisors such as the bureaucratic physician, Dr. Anthony Fauci years to admit that he fudged the truth on much of what he told the president. The government shutdown took the wind out of the Trump economy, but fortunately Trump had the foresight to eventually reverse it. The shutdown of our school system, save the Catholic schools, which stayed open without incident, showed the contrast. Millions of public school students had their education setback many years.
President Obama had weaponized several executive departments during his two terms in office. James Comey the FBI director, was especially troublesome for the novice president, until he fired him in 2017. But a number of Obama appointees are still there. The Democratic Party had no intention of letting Trump’s stay in the White House be a pleasant one. Two phony impeachments followed, mostly for show. His legislative program was reasonably successful, despite the Democrats’ doing everything in their sizable power to block it.
Ironically, Trump, who was pro-choice in his Hollywood Days, fulfilled his promises of appointing conservative jurists to the Supreme Court. I was not surprised that the Democratic Senators forced each nominee to suffer his or her own barefoot walk along a line of hot coals. With them on the Court, Clarence Thomas and others had the votes to overturn the most sinister and false Supreme Court decision in the books, the infamous Roe v. Wade decision from 1973.
Many Catholics, including myself had been praying, marching, and donating to the repeal of Roe which we never thought would happen in our lifetimes. In many ways it was his crowning achievement and the one he has been most hated and vilified for. Unfortunately, the Pro-life Movement and many attendant Church officials did not have the funds or in some cases, the dedication to have prepared adequately for the prochoice onslaught to amend their state constitutions. This is reflected in the fact that of the ten states with such amendments, seven embedded abortion in their constitutions. In this case our democracy failed to protect the truth.
Trump ran for reelection in 2020. His strategy in the swing states was now on the Democratic radar. The election was also compromised by the Covid pandemic and the sanctity of the private vote had many flaws in it. When Joe Biden was declared the winner, Trump voters were convinced that the election had been rigged. In the wake of his loss, I think his anger had gotten the better of him. Trump made a series of unwise decisions about the vote counting, especially in Georgia where his meddling probably cost the Republicans the Senate.
While it is difficult to completely defend Trump’s behavior during the aftermath of the 2020 election and January 6th, it is important to first understand the context that will help one explain it. Trump had been persecuted since his escalator trip with a variety of Democratic and media interference in his election.
The most notable interference in 2020 was the media’s silence on the Hunter Biden laptop, which implicated the Bidens in a series of questionable actions that amounted to influence peddling as millions of dollars flooded into their family bank accounts. The New York Post was the only newspaper to publish stories on this. Its pre-Musk accounts on Twitter were censored. Most voters knew nothing about this. The implications for the election created a haze of uncertainty over the entire election process. Had the laptop been common knowledge, it is not out of the realm of reality to believe this Biden scandal may have changed the people’s verdict.
Trump’s desperate attempt to influence his own Vice-President, Michael Pence was wrong and certainly not presidential. January 6th is regarded as a Day of Infamy for most Democrats. While Democrats condemned the march of Trump supporters in protest of their perceived stolen election, there is no way that they were seditionists or insurrectionists. They were unarmed as was the only person, who was killed, Ashli Babbitt, an Air Force veteran, shot to death by policeman Lt. Michael Byrd, inside the Capitol. The other five fatalities died from a stroke, a suicide, two heart attacks and a woman suffocated in the crush of the crowd.
As the full video of the protest shows, after the initial assault, it appeared to be a gaggle of unauthorized tourists rummaging through the Capitol. Compared to the Black Lives Matters riots prior to January 6th, where over 30 people were killed, it was a walk in the park. Despite the attacks on an FBI post and millions in government property burned to the ground, no one was ever imprisoned or were protestors even charged. I think the Democratic double standard is at work here as over 1000 Trump protestors have been in prison since then. I see this as a Democratic attempt to blacken the Trump presidencies forever.
There is a backstory to this that never was fully made public so the Democrats could use this day to condemn all of the protestors. In his speech the President had told them to protest the vote. Trump knew his voters were angry and they could get out of hand. The out-going president asked for National Guard troops but was refused by Nancy Pelosi, though there is still some debate about this. No matter! Pelosi and Chuck Schumer bear the responsibility for the overwhelming of the capitol police and their lack of proper preparation.
To most Democrats Trump’s innate ability to weather all the attacks and win a third shot at the presidency shocked them. A year before the 2024 election they tried every trick in the book to deny him the nomination. They produced a new bag of dirty tricks. The pundits called it Lawfare, the use of the law as a means of political warfare.
Almost overnight, the legal systems of three states, Georgia, New York, Florida, plus the District of Columbia had launched their plans to bankrupt, incarcerate and eliminate him from the presidential race. The plan was to convict him and if that failed, they would bankrupt him with millions of dollars in legal fees.
The most serious charges were the machinations in New York City which magically transformed 31 misdemeanors into felonies. Each one came with a long prison term. Judge Juan Merchan’s reading of the jurors’ rules was so complicated, it was easy for him to sway the jury to find Trump guilty of each charge. The Republicans’ candidate for president was now a convicted felon. The Biden camp took pleasure in including this at every opportunity.
It later came out that the Biden DOJ had sent federal prosecutors to New York to work on the case and the lead prosecutors from each venue had made a number of visits to the Biden White House to chat about these politically motivated charges. The Democrats tried every trick in the book to remove Trump’s name from several state ballots. Trump’s resiliency defeated all their attempts. All this sounds like election interference.
Unsurprisingly, still bitter about his stolen election, Trump wanted a rematch with President Biden. Thus, the American people witnessed one of the strangest elections in its 236 years of electoral history. This election included, not one but two assassination attempts on the former president. During the first one Donald Trump nearly became the first president assassinated since John Kennedy in 1963. (See my essay The Bloody Ear)
This was followed by Joe Biden’s 30 minutes of a blank stare during their lone debate. It was then that the Democratic powers behind the throne, Barack Obama, Pelosi and Schumer acted quickly by forcing the president to remove himself from the ticket. Instead of opening it up to other candidates in an open primary at their Convention, they anointed vice-president Kamalya Harris as their candidate whose rejection might have cost them heavily in the black community.
The American people are still digesting the results of Trump’s surprise re-election. The country will still stay seriously disunified because just like the last prior elections, even before the advent of Donald J. Trump our country had been cleaved into two distinctive parts, the Gnostic elite of the Left, who uttered, such pejoratives as clingers to their guns and Bibles, as well as a basket of deplorables and Biden’s garbage.
These offensive statements, which showed a disdain of religion, working people and millions without a college degree, came from the campaigns of former president Barack Obama and presidential candidate Hillary Clinton. These politicians, who tried to send the nation on a Woke journey to national disaster, are still resolute in their intentions.
My biggest fear continues to be that others will attempt to kill President Trump before, during or after he is inaugurated. This fear has greatly intensified with the news that Iran had planned his assassination before his predicted defeat at the polls as revenge for killing one of their leaders during his presidency. Now that he is president again, they will alter their strategy.
As of now there is no proof that these threats were linked to the attempts to kill him in Pennsylvania and Florida. But with all the hate speech hurled on the president these past many months and the prevalence of a new mental illness, TDS, Trump Derangement Syndrome, I would not be surprised if the many Democrats who prayed that the next shooter will be a better shot, finally get their devilish wish.
