The new Never Trumpers

Johnny Cash’s last hit was a cover of Nine Inch Nails’ Hurt. He did such a good job that AP reporting on a concert said Nine Inch Nails did a cover of his song. Things are not as they seem when you don’t know all the facts.

The key lines in the song are:

And you could have it all
My empire of dirt
I will let you down
I will make you hurt

The people who let us down are the hardest to forgive. I observe that people hate the Never Trumpers more than they do Hillary’s supporters because we expect the wolves to attack us. But the people who are revealed as Judas goats — animals that lead the sheep to slaughter — commit a betrayal that becomes almost unforgiveable.

When National Review posted an Against Trump edition in January 2016, I knew instantly the magazine was done. I wrote, “National Review Hoists White Flag, Defiantly Rows To Outcast Island.” A magazine that prided itself in standing athwart history, yelling Stop finally met the freight train. Conservatives should not stop history; we must make history, as Reagan did in dispatching the Soviet Union to the dustbin of history.

My argument was National Review-approved conservatives let the voters down time and again. I wrote, “Trump has not always been pro-life and pro-guns, but he is now and that is what counts. He also is unapologetically politically incorrect, to the point of being rude, but being polite has not gotten conservatives a damned thing. Trump is bringing Democrats, independents and unregistered people into the party. Losing just to meet some conservative purity test is a luxury Republicans no longer can afford.”

Seven years later, a new group of Never Trumpers emerges. The argument is the same. Trump is impolite and cannot win the general election. The only thing different — the only thing new — is these Jonah Goldbergs are not whale sized.

Scott Moorefield at Townhall calls himself and the rest of his claque Team Reality. He defines this as journos both left and extremely left who questioned the covid response. Other than that, he said he shares little in common with them. Sure.

He wrote, “Interestingly, one thing we all agree on, almost to a person as far as I know, is that Donald Trump DOES NOT deserve another bite at the apple as POTUS. We saw what happened in 2020 and how that laid the foundation for all that was to come. We covered it. We fought against it. We were censored and banned from social media. We lost friends, family members, jobs, and even churches because of our ‘controversial’ stands on these issues. We lived and breathed it every day for years and, in the end, we were proven right.”

Agreeing with a lefty is the first sign of political atrophy.

He went on, “Some of us, like me, came early to this fight. Others came later and pivoted when they saw enough to be convinced. At least they came. DeSantis began with lockdowns and vaccine pushing and ended, after a careful analysis of data, by renouncing it all and ensuring via strong legislation that history never repeats itself. Trump, on the other hand, still insists that a ‘vaccine’ that has likely been responsible for hundreds of thousands of deaths worldwide actually ‘saved hundreds of millions’ of lives. His ego won’t let him admit he was wrong on anything, and so even to this day he continues to double and triple down, hoping enough people will forget to allow him to win the presidency anyway.”

Trump’s covid response was lousy, but America has moved on from covid because we have no choice because those responsible for devastating the economy will never be tried and convicted — particularly that horse’s elf Fauci.

What matters now is stopping the injustice of criminalizing the opposition to the deep state. Kurt Schlichter tweeted, “Trump can’t win because 53% of Americans will never vote for him and he will lose the key states he needs to win the electoral college.”

That’s not true. He won in 2016 with 46% of the vote, which meant 54% voted against him.

Schlichter also wrote, “Trump presents problems and we need to face them. We owe Trump nothing. He’s a politician.”

I agree that Trump presents problems and we need to face them — but the problems he presents are that the federal government is too large, is out of control and is out to ruin anyone who objects.

Those who question the counting of votes behind closed doors are labeled insurrectionists.

Mothers who object to indoctrinating kindergartners into LGBTQQIAAP2S+ are labeled terrorists.

Those who are pro-life or support the Second Amendment are labelled white supremacists.

Allowing the bastards to win by not defending and standing by President Trump is like signing your own death warrant. You cannot defeat DC without him.

The indictment and prosecution of Donald Trump is unconstitutional. In a series of tweets, Will Scharf, a candidate for attorney general in Missouri, explained:

“I am a former Assistant U.S. Attorney, worked on two Supreme Court confirmations, and clerked for two federal appellate judges.

“The indictment and case against President Trump is outrageous and shocking.

“But let’s get into the details.

“Here are my 6 key points on the case:

“Interplay between the Espionage Act and the Presidential Records Act.”

SNIP

“The Presidential Records Act sets up a system where the president designates all records that he creates either as Presidential or Personal Records. A former president is supposed to turn over his Presidential Records to NARA, and he has the right to keep his Personal Records.

“Based on the documents I’ve read and his actions that I’ve read about, I believe that Trump viewed his boxes as his Personal Records under the PRA. There are statements he made, quoted in the Indictment, that support that view. If Trump considered the contents of these boxes to be of purely personal interest, hence his designation of them as Personal Records, did he knowingly retain National Defense Information?”

Scharf makes many valuable points that are too lengthy to quote in this column. The tweets are here.

The legalese arguments matter not to me. The appointment of a crooked lawyer named Jack Smith to prosecute is all that matters.

Scharf tweeted, “I follow law stuff pretty closely. I’m a huge nerd. I knew who Jack Smith was before this, and the specific case he is most closely associated with in the public eye was the prosecution of Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell.

“Remember that one? Using a very aggressive interpretation of the scope of federal bribery and honest services fraud statutes, Smith nuked the career and life of a popular Republican politician, before having all his convictions overturned by the Supreme Court in a 9-0 opinion.

“You read that right, all nine Supreme Court justices smacked Jack Smith down for an overzealous, legally defective prosecution of a Republican politician. SCOTUS gutted him so badly that DOJ didn’t even try to re-try the case. They just dropped it.

“And his wife is a leftist filmmaker who produced a hagiography of Michelle Obama.

“And he currently lives in the Netherlands. Didn’t they have anyone else good on this side of the Atlantic?”

Know the enemy — and the enemy of the people now is the state. That is how totalitarian governments operate.

The federal government has created an open hunting season on The Deplorables and I can see why writers like Schlichter and Moorefield are bailing. They have necks they want to save when the deep state wins again — or so they think. Other conservative writers make just enough money to be affordable for liberals to buy. In the case of the Bulwark, it is buy one, get one free.

Which brings me back to the Nine Inch Nails/Johnny Cash song and Schlichter and Moorefield.

I never wanted their empire because I knew it was made of dirt. And they never let me down because I never trusted them — which is why I don’t hurt. I learned from National Review’s sellout. I trust we all did.

TRUMP 2024.