In my last piece for 19FortyFive, this observer outed himself as a Trump fan. There followed a respectable number of comments (14 as of this writing, one of them my own), all of them negative. Most commenters were left/liberal, or at least anti-Trump and they have strong opinions about the article and the author. Thank you, left/liberal commenters, for not letting me down. A few Trump fans had things to say too.
One commenter argued that the GOP establishment is trying to ‘stamp out’ Trump. This is absolutely true and has been true since Trump descended the golden escalator in 2015. The GOP Establishment doesn’t like Trump, and Trump doesn’t like them. In 2016, then-House Speaker Paul Ryan and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell seemed to greet Trump’s victory with a disappointed shrug. Ryan and McConnell showed little enthusiasm for Trump’s priorities like the border wall. Forgive this Deplorable for suspecting Ryan and McConnell would rather have worked with Hillary Clinton.
After Trump took office, Congress seemed somnolent. McConnell and Ryan pushed through the Tax Cut and Jobs Act of 2017, admittedly a fine piece of legislation, and a half-hearted effort to repeal Obamacare, which Senator John McCain (for whom I voted in 2000 and 2008) killed with a last-minute vote. But there was little congressional action on the border wall, the trade imbalance, and ending foreign wars. Trump acted on these issues virtually alone via executive order. After the 2020 election, most of the GOP, save a few stalwarts, was content to let Biden take the White House unchallenged.
There, I said it
Most Trump supporters reading this article think Joe Biden’s 2020 victory was at least questionable. Many will say the Democrats stole the election outright. Officially Joe Biden received 81 million votes in 2020. Do you really think old and slow Joe Biden got twelve million more votes in 2020 than the talented and inspirational Barrack Obama got in 2008? Do you also think Jeffrey Epstein killed himself? Maybe I can interest you in cryptocurrency investment or perhaps some Arkansas real estate opportunities.
At least answer this question. Why did Detroit, Atlanta, Milwaukee, and Philadelphia need days to count the votes when Texas, Florida, and Ohio only needed hours? For that matter, why can Canada, Britain, Australia, and Italy hold an election and tell us who won that night, and why can’t America do the same? By the way, click here for a detailed description of how Canadian elections are run. Compare and contrast with, say, Philadelphia. The 2020 election stinks.
Time for MAGA to Move on
And it doesn’t matter anymore, my fellow MAGA hats. It’s time for us to talk.
We scoff and laugh at Biden’s official 81 million vote total. Okay, so what’s Biden’s actual vote total then? Did Biden still win the popular vote? Did Trump win the popular vote outright? Did Trump lose the popular vote and win razor-thin majorities in Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin like he did in 2016? Trump got 74 million votes in 2020. So let’s say for the sake of argument that Biden got 72 million votes. That is, 72 million people voted for the Democrat after a summer of leftwing riots that cost the nation $2 billion.
Worse, Joe Biden has never been an interesting or dynamic candidate. The man had to drop out of the presidential race in 1988 for plagiarizing Thatcher-era British Labour leader Neil Kinnock of all people. Biden’s campaign in 2008 went nowhere. That year Obama asked Biden to be his vice president allegedly for his foreign policy chops, but more likely because Biden was a non-entity who wouldn’t distract from Obama.
There can only be one sun in the sky. The 2020 primary was the first in which Biden won a state. During the 2020 general election, Biden largely stayed at home and could barely fill a parking lot with supporters as he read from a comically large teleprompter. On the campaign trail, Biden looked old and very often confused. The Democratic National Convention felt like a schoolboard zoom meeting. Despite these many, many drawbacks, here we are about to begin the third year of the Biden presidency.
The hated GOP Establishment knew how to win
But, but … Trump holdouts will say, the entire press was supporting Biden and biased against Trump. The coverage wasn’t fair! So what? The press was against George W. Bush, George H.W. Bush, and Ronald Reagan too. This is the natural election environment for Republicans. Despite a press stacked against them, the above-mentioned Republicans won. Even George W. Bush beat John Kerry by nearly three million votes in 2004. That’s winning. If George W. Bush, long loathed by us MAGA hats, could win a clean victory against the Democrats, why couldn’t Trump?
Let’s put it another way. Trump couldn’t wipe the floor with Joe Biden in 2020. What makes MAGA hats think Trump can win in 2024?
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William Stroock has been a history teacher and an adjunct professor of history. He wrote Pershing in Command: A Study of the American Expeditionary Force, Israel at War and Her Enemies, and over a dozen novels including the World War 1990: Series and The Austrian Painter: What if Germany Won the Great War?
