(The Daily Signal)—Donald Trump seems likely not just to win the Electoral College but also the popular vote to return to the White House, delivering a massive rebuke to Vice President Kamala Harris and the Left more generally.
Trump’s genius—in raising his fist amid an assassination attempt, donning the apron of a McDonald’s fry cook, and riding shotgun in a trash truck—carried the day. However, the Left’s slings and arrows against the former president also helped propel him to victory by exposing how cynical and conniving his opponents were.
The Left committed at least six massive political miscalculations that also amount to transgressions against America’s political order. These moves helped Trump win, but they also exposed the forces he will face in a second term.
1. The Lawfare
Left-leaning prosecutors brought multiple civil and criminal cases against Trump, most of which revved into high gear last year after he announced in November 2022 that he would run for president again in 2024.
New York Attorney General Letitia James, a Democrat, campaigned on the prospect of prosecuting Trump, and her office began investigating the Trump Organization in early 2019. She sued in September 2022, alleging that Trump had violated the law by exaggerating his net worth, though none of his business partners claimed to be victimized by this alleged exaggeration.
Presiding Judge Arthur Engoron demanded Trump and his companies fork over more than $350 million to the state in February. Engoron initially ordered Trump to post $454 million bond, but an appeals court agreed to lower the amount to $175 million.
In March 2023, a Manhattan grand jury indicted Trump on 34 felony counts of falsifying business records to pay pornography star Stephanie Clifford, known by her stage name Stormy Daniels, “hush money” after the 2016 election. Michael Cohen, Trump’s personal attorney at the time, gave Clifford $130,000 in October 2016, and Trump reimbursed Cohen in a series of payments after Trump entered the Oval Office in January 2017.
On May 30, a jury convicted Trump on all 34 felony counts. His sentencing hearing has been scheduled for Nov. 26, though the former president has appealed the verdict in light of the Supreme Court’s immunity ruling.
Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, a Democrat, argued that Trump had interfered in the 2016 election by altering business records after the election.
Improperly appointed special counsel Jack Smith led an investigation into Trump for alleged lawbreaking regarding his challenging the 2020 presidential election results and inspiring the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol.
In August 2023, a grand jury approved an indictment against Trump. U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan scheduled a trial to begin March 4, but Trump appealed to the Supreme Court. The high court ruled July 1 that the president has “absolute” immunity from charges stemming from “core constitutional powers” and “presumptive immunity” for all other official acts.
Smith launched another case against Trump regarding his alleged improper retention of classified documents after his presidency ended Jan. 20, 2021. Smith, whom President Joe Biden appointed in November 2022, charged Trump with 40 felonies in the case. U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon dismissed the case in July, ruling that Smith’s appointment as special counsel was unconstitutional.
Smith is reportedly wrapping up both prosecutions in the wake of Trump’s election victory.
Biden later confessed that he had improperly retained classified documents from his years as vice president and U.S. senator, yet he faced no charges. Special counsel Robert Hur investigated Biden and interviewed him, ultimately declining to bring charges in part because a jury would find Biden sympathetic as an “elderly man with a poor memory” and because his “diminished faculties” made it less likely he intentionally violated the law.
Republicans demanded that the Justice Department release the audio of Biden’s interview with Hur, since the special counsel’s report cast grave doubts on the president’s ability to carry out his duties.
Each of these legal cases arguably represented a political attack on Trump through the legal system, often on trumped-up charges. Trump became the first former president convicted of a felony, yet the partisan nature of these attacks led Americans to suspect that the Left was abusing the system to prosecute its top enemy. The lawfare almost certainly backfired, as well it should have.
2. The Ballot Challenges
In a similarly egregious political attack, activists and Democratic officials moved to strike Trump from state ballots on the claim that he had incited an insurrection on Jan. 6, 2021.
The Supreme Court definitively (and unanimously) ended this argument in March, ruling that the 14th Amendment to the Constitution does not disqualify Trump from appearing on ballots. (Trump had never been charged with insurrection, much less convicted of it.)
At a time when Democrats were running as the “party of democracy” and warning that Trump would end democracy, they also sought to disqualify the former president at the outset. This effort also backfired.
3. The Nazi Comparisons
Throughout this election cycle, Biden, Harris, and others on the left have suggested that Trump represented a threat to democracy. They condemned him as racist and authoritarian. They continued to do so even after he faced multiple assassination attempts.
Yet the most absurd moment arguably came toward the end of the campaign, when Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, Harris’ running mate, noted that Trump would hold a rally at Madison Square Garden in New York City. On the day of that rally, Walz said, “Donald Trump’s got this big rally going at Madison Square Garden. There’s a direct parallel to a big rally that happened in the mid-1930s at Madison Square garden.”
Walz was straining to connect Trump’s rally to an American Nazi Party rally in February 1939. Not only was there a gap of more than 80 years between the two rallies, but Madison Square Garden’s location physically moved in both 1926 and 1968. The Madison Square Garden that hosted the pro-Nazi rally is not even the same building that hosted Trump.
Furthermore, Madison Square Garden hosted multiple Democratic Party events, from Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s last 1936 campaign speech to the Democratic National Convention in 1976, 1980, and 1992.
The idea that Trump echoed Nazis simply by choosing a venue—which had been twice rebuilt since the 1939 event—is ludicrous on its face.
🚨IT'S REAL: MSNBC did indeed include the chyron "TRUMP'S MSG RALLY COMES 85 YEARS AFTER PRO-NAZI RALLY AT FAMED ARENA."
This echoes Tim Walz's attack on Trump, citing the rally. Yes, pro-Nazi Americans rallied at Madison Square Garden in February 1939. Does this taint… pic.twitter.com/rg2hIvWRQn
— Tyler O'Neil (@Tyler2ONeil) October 28, 2024
4. Hiding Biden’s Decline
The fact that Biden was no spring chicken—even in 2019 and 2020—should not be lost on anyone, but for most of the 2024 presidential election, the White House, the legacy media, and the Democratic establishment brushed off concerns about the sitting president’s declining mental acuity.
None other than Kamala Harris repeatedly insisted that Biden was A-OK.
“Our president is in good shape, in good health, and is ready to lead in our second term,” Harris said in February. She praised him as “vibrant.”
WATCH: Over 6 minutes of Kamala Harris covering up Joe Biden's cognitive decline.
For years, she said Biden is "very bold and vibrant" and is "tireless in terms of working." Kamala claimed Biden "is gonna be fine," and said he "is in good shape, in good health."
Kamala LIED. pic.twitter.com/d2domPIUOA
— Steve Guest (@SteveGuest) July 7, 2024
Despite his disastrous performance in the June 27 debate with Trump, Biden repeatedly insisted he would remain in the race. Only after former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and former President Barack Obama leaked that they had met with Biden, pressuring him to withdraw, did the president finally announce he would leave the race and back his vice president.
Early Wednesday morning, CNN hosts Jake Tapper and Anderson Cooper tried to bring up any counties where Harris was “outperforming Biden in 2020,” but not one county showed the vice president winning 3% or more votes than Biden did four years before.
🚨NOT. ONE. COUNTY.
Anderson Cooper and Jake Tapper bring up CNN's interactive map showing if there was any county in the country where Kamala Harris outperformed Joe Biden by 3% or more.
Were the Democrats smart to swap out Biden at the last moment for Kamala Harris?🤔 pic.twitter.com/kJYm0gEQZp
— Tyler O'Neil (@Tyler2ONeil) November 6, 2024
5. The Kamala Switcheroo
Speaking of Kamala Harris, who, exactly, is she? That’s not a rhetorical question.
There’s tough-on-crime prosecutor Kamala, whom she sometimes plays on TV. There’s radical-Left activist Kamala, who briefly got a voting record score to the left of Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt. Then there’s cackling Kamala trying to be bubbly, as she briefly was for the “joy” and “vibes” election the legacy media tried to foist on Americans when the Democratic elites propped Harris up as the savior early in her brief campaign.
Finally, there was angry, scolding, Trump-is-a-fascist Kamala, who also wiggled out of taking any policy position that would differentiate her from the sitting president while she was running a “change” election.
Is it any wonder Kamala Harris never won a primary in the 2020 Democratic contest?
That’s right—the last-minute switcheroo that was going to “save democracy” from Donald Trump involved someone who didn’t win a single Democratic primary in 2020 or 2024. It involved someone who claimed she wasn’t Joe Biden but never created any daylight between her policies and those of Joe Biden.
Worse, it involved a candidate who branded her opponent a fascist when she herself had the record of trying to prosecute pro-life journalists, demanding donor information from conservative nonprofits, and demonizing fellow Americans for disagreeing with her radical stance on abortion.
Democrats chose a nominee who had been tasked with solving the crisis over illegal immigration, even though it got worse on her watch. They chose a nominee whose answer to every question was “I grew up in a middle-class family.” They chose the garden goddess of word salads, whose grand achievement was explaining that Ukraine is a country in Europe.
🇺🇦🇺🇸KAMALA: “Ukraine is a country in Europe.
It exists next to another country called Russia.
Russia is a bigger country.”
Glad we cleared that up.
Source: Morning Hustle pic.twitter.com/IEXrjUJkgj
— Mario Nawfal (@MarioNawfal) March 24, 2024
What does Harris’ duplicity have to do with her awkwardness and her lack of primary victories? Just this: Americans knew she was being foisted upon them under false pretenses, and Tuesday’s election results suggest that they really didn’t like that.
The Biden-Harris switcheroo suggested that the real power behind the administrative state wasn’t the man sitting behind the Resolute Desk but a shadowy network of elites pulling the strings behind the scenes. Perhaps someone should write a book about that. (My book on this exact subject, “The Woketopus: The Dark Money Cabal Manipulating the Federal Government,” is available for pre-order now and releases on Jan. 21, 2024.)
6. The Closing Argument
After all this, Harris delivered a “closing argument” packed with lies and predicated on demonizing her opponent.
Yet the legacy media seized on comedian Tony Hinchcliffe’s remark at Trump’s Madison Square Garden event that Puerto Rico was an “island of garbage,” and Biden revealed his disdain for Trump’s supporters by responding: “The only garbage I see floating out there is his supporters.”
By calling Americans who oppose his chosen successor “garbage,” the sitting president of the United States sent a clear and chilling message—even if Biden attempted to clarify it later.
Trump, always the showman, defused the insult with his comedic charm. He donned the orange and yellow reflective vest of a garbageman and sat in the front of a garbage truck. He spoke about it at his rallies, remarking that the safety vest made him look thinner.
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On the one hand, Americans saw a Democratic puppet who couldn’t present a genuine personality, and on the other hand, they saw a man who isn’t afraid to get his hands dirty (metaphorically, of course) by working at McDonald’s and getting into a garbage truck.
The idea that this man—who faced unprecedented criminal charges, disgusting attempts to remove him from the ballot, and assassination attempts—represented the true threat to democracy just could not stand.
Rather, the entire campaign revealed the exact opposite. Only one political party tried to disqualify its opponent from the very beginning of the race. Only one party fanned the flames of hatred despite assassination attempts against its target. Only one struggled desperately to change the playing field at the last minute after lying to the American people the whole time.
Trump won this election, despite every norm the Left broke to try to take him down.
Now, he has to make sure his victory sends the appropriate message: that the elites can’t force their way on the American people. That struggle has just begun.
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