Who's Worse -- Trump or His Enemies?

I admit, without apologies if that matters, that I’m one of those people who if not exactly obsessed with the president’s personality, am bothered by it.  It grates on me.  He grates on me.  And I’m old school.  I think character counts when we’re talking about the most important elected official in the country and one of the most powerful people in the world.

Yes, I like the Trump economy, the low unemployment, the upward trajectory of the stock market.  But I can do without so many other Trump things, like his crudeness or his need to belittle political opponents. And it’s more than his dishonesty; it’s that he tells lies about all sorts of things big and small so effortlessly. You can’t trust people like that.

But – if you’re still with me those of you who don't share my thinking on this -- I believe now more than ever that the president’s enemies are at least as bad as he is. I may not like him but I don’t like his hyper partisan antagonists either; and there are plenty of days when I dislike them even more.  If I haven't exactly crossed the Rubicon, I'm pretty close to the other side of the river.

Let’s start with the fact that I’m not a big fan of anything even vaguely resembling a coup attempt against a democratically elected president.  And it looks like that’s what's going on.  His enemies couldn’t defeat him at the ballot box so they’re looking for other ways to throw him out.  Maybe coup is too strong a word.  Maybe it isn’t.

Democrats – and not just the unhinged far left – have wanted him out of office from the moment he was sworn into office.  So have their allies in the media.  They all figured he would never win and when he did they had one great big nervous breakdown. It was like Jonestown without the Kool-Aid.

It’s a lot more than the positions he takes on the issues that bring on the hysterics. They don’t like him.  They don’t like anything about him.  They’re repulsed by his lack of sophistication, his ties that are too long, his hair, his New York wise guy accent that sounds like he ought to be talking to Tony Soprano and not ordinary law abiding Americans.  And as much as they don’t like him, they loathe the people who do. (More about this shortly.)

For two years Democrats – not all, of course, but a lot of them --have been telling us that Donald Trump has to go because he was colluding with the Kremlin to throw the 2016 presidential election.  When he said he was innocent, Democrats didn’t believe him.  Fair enough.  Why would he admit that he was a Russian asset?  Besides, he lies a lot.

But this time he was telling the truth.  And Robert Mueller and his team of mostly Democrats, some of whom contributed to Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign, agreed with the president, concluding, as we all by now know, that there was no evidence that he or anyone in his campaign conspired with Vladimir Putin or any other Russian.

So then, they said, he has to go because he obstructed justice.  Yes, the president did some stupid things – or tried to anyway – seemingly to impede the investigation, like telling the White House lawyer to fire the special counsel (the president says for conflict of interest reasons). Who knows why he does half the things he does.  But let's not forget that if he was trying to impede an investigation, it was an investigation into a non-existent crime of colluding with Russia.  Is this a legitimate reason for impeachment?

Yes it is, at least as far as a bunch of progressive Democrats and their media wingmen and women are concerned, even if Nancy Pelosi isn't on board -- yet.  Get him out, he’s unfit to be president is the battle cry of the Resistance – and do it by any means necessary.

No one in Congress has been more critical of the president’s supposed illicit relationship with Russia than California Democrat Adam Schiff.  For two years, Schiff has been telling anyone with a camera or a microphone that there is compelling evidence that the president colluded with the Russians. We still haven’t seen it.  And even after Robert Mueller found no conspiracy between the Trump campaign and the Russians, Schiff told the Washington Post, “Undoubtedly there is collusion.”

A mind is a terrible thing to waste, and more than a few Democrats have lost theirs.  A lot of them have been in full meltdown mode since the election.  From the tolerant contingent in the creative community that preaches inclusivity and diversity we got: Robert De Niro saying he wanted to punch the president, Kathy Griffin wanting him decapitated, Mickey Rourke calling the president "the biggest scumbag on the planet," Madonna thinking about blowing up the White House, and just one day after he was inaugurated between 3 and 5 million women taking to the streets, many wearing vagina hats, in what was the biggest single-day demonstration in U.S. history. And there were a lot of less famous, run of the mill liberals worrying  that he would start a nuclear war.

Mr. Trump’s victory two years ago burst the comfortable bubble they had been living in.  And like a child who doesn’t get his way, they threw a tantrum.  A lot of Democrats won’t rest until he’s impeached, resigns, or at absolute least until his presidency is rendered impotent, the result of endless investigations.

If being needlessly nasty and dishonest, even about small things,were impeachable offenses, then Donald Trump would have to go. But acting like a schoolyard bully is neither a high crime nor a misdemeanor no matter how much liberals in Congress and pundits at CNN, MSNBC and the New York Times wish it were.

Donald Trump, with his many faults, may be a threat to civility and decency, but not to democracy, despite what progressive Democrats say -- or how many times reporters who behave more like stenographers than journalists simply repeat the progressive talking point.  But if Democrats somehow get away with a coup (or whatever they want to call it), then no president will be safe.  Mr. Trump is right about that. So who’s the real threat to democracy?

There’s a new book out called White, by Bret Easton Ellis (the novelist writing his first non-fiction book), in which he describes a dinner he had in Los Angeles in the spring of 2017 with two wealthy liberal friends he hadn’t seen since the presidential election, friends who if you haven’t guessed detested Donald Trump. The Trump bashing began over drinks and continued on after that. Here’s a passage:

“Later, after both men opined that Trump actually hadn’t won the election, I mentioned the Electoral College – and they immediately shot back that the Electoral College shouldn’t count, either.  One of them said the Electoral College was ‘bullshit’ and that Los Angeles and New York should determine who ‘the f-ing president’ is.  ‘I don’t want any goddamn know-nothing rural hicks deciding who the president should be,’ he growled.  ‘I am a proud liberal coastal elite and I think we should pick the president because we know better.’”

Ellis says his “blood froze, or at least I went cold when I heard this.”

Make no mistake, these two insufferable snobs are hardly alone. There are many just like them – wealthy, well-educated, white liberals whose moral superiority along with their hatred of Donald Trump knows no boundaries.

These are the real deplorables, the ones who don’t simply think they’re smarter than those “hicks” in rural America, but believe they’re better, more decent human beings. Conservatives – especially the ones who live in Blue states -- know people like this.  Their sanctimony is suffocating.

That’s why, as bad as Donald Trump is – and he is -- his partisan liberal enemies are just as bad, probably worse.