Bad news is not popular. Lincoln’s “House Divided” Speech haunted him politically for years. Churchill was shunned for his warnings about Nazi Germany. The saying “Don’t shoot the messenger” exists for good reason.
Yet we must steel ourselves for what is about to unfold in 2024. The happy-talk diversions we are fed daily—Gutfeld! and “owning the libs” and “Bud Light is reeling”—are about to be blasted to bits. If 2016 was the Flight 93 Election, 2024 is the Gulag Election.
This year, the American ruling class will send a message to the Trump half of the country every bit as powerful as that sent by the assassination of the Gracchi brothers and the disembowelment of William Wallace to the rebellious masses of their day. It is all there before us, plain as day, for those who have eyes and honesty to see. The Left and its agents are about to complete the destruction of a great man, President Donald Trump. They will do this to cow his followers, tighten their grip on power, and amuse themselves.
Trump won’t say this—and surely is trying his best to escape this fate—but it is coming. Our lives are going to change. As an experiment in self-government, this republic will not survive the spectacle of one of the greatest populist leaders in world history defeated by any means necessary in a national election, convicted of felonies in a stacked trial, and sent off to prison (to await even more trials). Barring a series of miracles, however, that is what will happen. It will force us to confront the new leftist totalitarianism that defines our era.
The Election
Assuming Trump wins the Republican nomination (virtually a done deal), it’s admittedly not impossible for him to win the general election. His victory in 2016 was the greatest presidential election upset since Truman defeated Dewey. Perhaps he can pull another rabbit out of a hat. He surely has earned another term as President. For now, in fact, Trump leads slightly in the polls.
Yet Biden and his team are right to be quietly confident. Economic trends that have undercut Biden are dissipating. Inflation, Trump’s biggest weapon against Biden, has grown at only 1.9 percent for the last six months. Ten months from now voters likely will feel and acknowledge this improvement. Soon interest rates will start to decline. The Federal Reserve pledges “at least” three rate cuts in 2024 (ruling-class election interference, anyone?). Gas prices are down. Accordingly, public confidence in the economy is ticking up. Biden’s approval numbers are bad but so are Trump’s. An iron law of politics is that, all things being equal, incumbents are heavily favored to win reelection.
As an experiment in self-government, this republic will not survive the spectacle of one of the greatest populist leaders in world history defeated by any means necessary in a national election, convicted of felonies in a stacked trial, and sent to prison (to await even more trials).
We find even less reason for optimism in the results of recent elections. The Democratic candidate for President has won the popular vote in seven of the last eight elections. The sole exception was George W. Bush after 9/11 (in 2016 Trump lost the popular vote but won the Electoral College). We might skip past this recent history had Conservative, Inc. not also promised us illusory “red wave” elections in 2020, then 2022, then 2023. For the last two cycles, Democrats bucked the typical off-year election doldrums and emerged victorious in major races nationwide. In 2022 they improved their statewide margins over those of 2020 in swing states such as Arizona, Georgia, Michigan and Pennsylvania.
They did so largely by deploying a newly augmented superweapon: support for abortion rights. The overturning of Roe v. Wade means those rights are now fair game if Republicans win elections. In 2022 and 2023, pro-life forces lost every state ballot measure on abortion rights, from swing states such as Michigan to deep-red states such as Kentucky. These direct public votes proved tragically but conclusively that during the half-century it took to overturn Roe, the hearts of most Americans hardened towards the unborn and their political advocates.
At best, 2024 will be a close election. And as we saw in 2020, close elections these days have a tendency to be settled by creative vote-counting, questionable get-out-the-vote practices, and miscellaneous skullduggery for the other team. This time the GOP won’t even have lawyers to contest whatever artifice is cooked up. The Fake News will dismiss it all as the “Big Lie 2.0.”
The Lawfare
Then there’s the lawfare against Trump. So corrupted by leftist politics is our legal system that Biden’s agents were able to arrange four sequential criminal trials of Trump in an election year.1 Let that sink in. Yes, those dates may be altered. But as explained before, there will at least be one or two trials this year.
The federal January 6 case is before a robed fanatic, Judge Tanya Chutkan. She previously complained from the bench that Trump hadn’t yet been prosecuted, then refused to recuse herself when such a criminal case materialized and was assigned to her. Chutkan later greased the docket to set Trump’s trial the day before Super Tuesday. She clearly relishes the chance to send him to federal prison. Given that Trump is the alleged ringleader of the J6 “insurrection,” how can he not receive a prison sentence at least as severe as those doled out to other prominent figures in the event? Henry “Enrique” Tarrio was handed a 22-year sentence. Stewart Rhodes was given 18 years. Only an act of clemency based on Trump’s advanced age could logically account for a lighter sentence. Even if two of the four criminal counts against Trump are eventually gutted by the Supreme Court (which is possible), the remaining two will be enough to do the job. If the J6 trial is postponed, the New York felony trial of Trump over hush money payments will go in March instead.
Polling shows that any felony conviction will knock Trump’s support below Biden’s. For all of Trump’s amazing courage and bravado, the odds of his running this rigged legal gantlet and escaping with no criminal convictions are pretty much zero. A conviction will carry dire political consequences. For the five recent polls that compared Biden’s and Trump’s standing before and after a Trump felony conviction, the average swing in support to Biden was 7.6 points. A Reuters/Ipsos poll recently showed Trump losing 13 points of support post-conviction but it didn’t retest Biden versus Trump. The Washington Post notes gleefully but accurately, “only one presidential election in the 21st century has featured a popular-vote margin larger than 4.5 points. And although Trump leads nationally in most polls right now, each national poll indicates he would trail after a conviction.”
Keep in mind these polls are being conducted today, not six or nine months from now. By then the likely improvement in the economy will be more noticeable. And there remains the lawfare denouement: Trump’s incarceration. Human nature being what it is, voters will unfairly but inevitably recoil from and penalize Trump for being “perp walked” and humiliated behind bars. The Reuters/Ipsos poll found 62 percent of Americans would not vote for an incarcerated Trump. If Judge Chutkan has her way, this will undoubtedly happen sometime before votes are cast.
Even Trump haters acknowledge that attempts in certain states to disqualify Trump on Fourteenth Amendment “insurrection” grounds may fail. Even so, that he is fighting merely to keep his name on the ballot against such absurd objections underscores his vulnerability in the courts.
This is to say nothing of the looming blows to—and potential dismantlement of—Trump’s business empire. That case now rests in the hands of a leftist New York judge less polished than Chutkan but just as vicious.
Polling shows that any felony conviction will knock Trump’s support below Biden’s.
Finally, in the unlikely event Trump wins, he will be under siege immediately just as he was during his last presidency. Other than Trump’s eyes being wide open this time to the entrenched corruption he will face, nothing will have changed, and the establishment opposition will be far more dug in and schooled at how to sandbag and torment him. But even this comparatively rosy outcome is dwarfed by the more likely scenario of defeat.
This historic takedown will send a message that is not subtle: If we can do this to Trump, a billionaire and former President, we can do it to you.
The Democratic Left has mastered lawfare, which is proving decisive. More Democratic presidencies mean more leftist judges appointed, judges who hate us and what we stand for and who dominate a judiciary that has the final say on everything. All that Republican leaders have to offer in response is sputtering, changing the subject, retreating, and trying to save their own hides by winning reelection.
The Future
Hope is integral to our lives and one of the three Pauline virtues (“faith, hope and love”). Still, we can’t allow undue hope fueled by public figures for their own self-interest to continue to distract us while our shackles are being forged. In recent years we’ve seen January 6 defendants treated like Soviet dissidents, social media behaving in a totalitarian fashion, and many other signs of tyranny congealing. Conservative writer Rod Dreher has attracted a large and grateful audience for being among the few to warn of and document these trends in the woke West. Few others are even bothering to sound the warning siren.
What can be done at this late stage? Put that question first to Republican elected officials. It is their paying job to solve this problem. Start there and don’t let them change the subject.
For my part, I offer without pretense three simple but essential steps as a starting point:
1. Accept there is a deep-seated problem that can’t be solved overnight.
2. Teach our children well. This will be a long struggle.
3. Support one another.
There will be much to sort out following this subjugation. Our lives, careers, freedoms on the Right will not be the same. Cancellation of dissidents, two-tiered justice, suppression of free speech and violations of other civil liberties, indoctrination of children in various lies and perversions—all of this is becoming normal fast, and all of it and more will grow. Real leaders of vision and patience will be needed and eventually will emerge, as they have for other oppressed peoples throughout the ages.
The silver lining to this apocalypse is slim indeed and personal only. As the ranks of the canceled grow, I find myself joined by other conservative ex-lawyers (as well as similarly displaced former professors, politicians, priests, etc.). For us there is some benefit to the collective pummeling, as our lives become less marginalized and misunderstood. For everyone else on the Right, including my own children, there is nothing to mitigate or sugarcoat the gathering darkness.
May we execrate forever the RINO leaders who sold us out, and may we resolve to endure, cast off this yoke, and rise again.
The prosecutor’s proposed trial date of August 2024 is pending in Georgia.
Well, that was certainly depressing and worrisome but I feel it is unfortunately all too accurate.
God help us. Pray your hearts out!