Trump for Dummies

Years from now, the question will go something like this, “where were you when you first realized the media was lying to you about Trump?”

Me, I was watching Trump speak at Mount Rushmore in 2020 just as the COVID lockdowns had abruptly ended to make way for the largest protests in American history. They said it was about systemic racism, but I knew it wasn’t. It was about Trump and all of the forces at play to remove him from power.

Yes, even the protests.

Trump was the first person of any kind of prominence to call out the madness of “cancel culture,” the burning of cities, the violence the media suppressed, and he vowed to do something about it. I didn’t agree with everything he said, but I realized then and there that he was not who I thought he was.

At least half the country has been trapped in a mass delusion for ten years, maybe longer. What else can explain what has happened to so many of them, how they could be so consumed by hatred that they would go along with any punishment enacted upon Trump, or whomever the next person in line behind him will be. Elon Musk? JD Vance?

We joke that it’s TDS or Trump Derangement Syndrome, but I think that’s being too kind.

The good news is that more and more people are waking up to what has been done to us all in the name of preserving the American utopia built under the Obama administration. Trump had to represent racism because how else could they sell him as an “existential threat” to the country?

Says Adam B. Coleman:

I try to remember when it started, this idea that America was under an urgent threat of rising racism and “white supremacy.” It happened around the time of the Tea Party’s founding, the only grassroots movement I’ve ever seen coming from the Right.

For most of my life, the Republicans were the establishment party. After the 2008 Wall Street crash, the Tea Party began mobilizing and forming a powerful coalition that must have worried many in our establishment government.

Just arguing class or economics or dismantling the bloated administrative state would not have convinced hearts and minds to turn on them. They had to be so toxic Americans would never want to associate with them, help them, support them, or even listen to them.

How easy, then, to turn it into a story of racism. They were white men who were angry at the nation’s first Black president. And it worked. I believed it. I was one of those people who saw the Freedom Caucus as the backlash to Obama.

Not many people have tracked it critically. The stories about racism in the Tea Party are mostly Operation Mockingbird style. They back up the idea that they are only pretending to care about taxes, income inequality, or the size of the government. No, it has to be about the Black president. Reason-TV’s Michael Moynihan was the exception. He made this video:

The Obama administration built its empire alongside Wall Street and Silicon Valley under what Vivek Ramaswamy calls “Woke Capitalism.” It was a way out of the mess of 2008. We began building an American utopia, or “Woketopia,” not unlike America after World War II. But to maintain their power, they needed a threat to deflect from their failings after the bank bailouts.

When Trump entered the scene, it was just as these ideas were taking root in the American psyche on the Left like a low-frequency hum that would get louder over time. The Obama birther story was floated as oppo for Hillary Clinton back in 2008, but she declined to use it. Trump then picked it up to damage Obama heading into the 2012 election.

Around 2012, critical race theory began spreading throughout public schools and universities. Black Lives Matter would mobilize not long after that. By 2016, the threat of Trump ballooned into the threat that racists were coming for our democracy.

The birther story is like so many other things in our society now. Whether you see it as racism depends on who you are. Trump supporters know Trump is an equal opportunity attacker and would have used the birther story against any opponent, no matter their skin color.

But for the Left, it was seen as “othering” Obama, and that sparked a war between the two men, taking us all the way up to today, their final battle between Trump’s America and Obama’s.

It shouldn’t be that surprising that now, they’re trying to turn Trump’s trolling of Kamala Harris and whether or not she ever worked at McDonald’s into another birther type of story. And the cycle begins anew. Don’t vote for the racist, they will say.

The campaign against Trump and MAGA was so successful that violence against Trump supporters barely made the news or became a big story. They believed it was justified. They probably still do.

Once Trump won, things got even uglier. If you were on the Left, you had to believe that millions of votes had just elected a racist. You then had to conclude that half the country was also racist, and that meant it was time to draw the line between us vs. them, just as they did during the Cold War.

But it was all a lie. It is horrifying that we have become a society where one wrong word, one bad joke made, one Halloween costume or one defense of a Halloween costume could cost you everything.

That no one in the mainstream media cared enough to dismantle the ongoing hysteria meant it would escalate. And now we see where it all went, what our government did to Trump and his supporters after January 6th using “spectral evidence” that they were motivated by racism. How bad will it get should Kamala Harris win the election in two weeks?

The Real Trump

When I interviewed with Glenn Beck back in 2022, he asked me if I liked Donald Trump. I told him you can’t watch Trump’s rallies and come away not liking him. So why had I spent the previous five years hating Trump with a white-hot passion?

It was a combination of tribalism gone wrong and a media/social media feedback loop that kept fanning the flames of hate and rage. Most of us were helpless against it.

Like so many others who have emerged from the mass delusion sold to us by the media and the government, I have wanted to explain to those still trapped inside that the only thing they have to fear is fear itself. That’s easier said than done when the voices they trust and the media they read keep pumping them full of it.

The ideology is so baked in, the certainty that Trump is the Greatest Evil the World Has Ever Known, or as my mom likes to call him, “That Monster,” it is impossible to explain to her that Trump isn’t who she thinks he is.

There is panic in her voice, as if I am telling her something she can’t accept or hear coming out of my mouth. I am now what she has been conditioned to hate. But I’m also her daughter.

Put a little love in your heart

When Trump visited McDonald’s in an arranged photo op on Sunday, he put on the uniform, made fries, handed them out to his supporters, and won the day, and the news cycle. It humanized him. For some, it might have even broken the spell. Maybe they saw Trump's compassion. Maybe they saw how nice he was to the employees. Maybe they started to thaw out a bit where Trump was concerned.

That might be why it became Defcon 1 for the Left and the media.

That alone should wake many people to the lies they tell, the bitterness they cling to, and their unwillingness to humanize Trump, even when he does something this endearing.

But don’t listen to me. Listen to one of his supporters tell it.

Surely, by now, they must be wondering why everything they’ve done to Trump has backfired. Each of their ridiculous, overblown attacks has become a chapter in the greatest story ever told, about how one man went up against the machine and triumphed. It’s the hero’s journey, and for those of us who have been along for the ride, we’ve had the time of our lives.

The Democrats could have stopped Trump by doing one thing: offering the people something better, but to do that, they had to allow the country to evolve, to change, to end the Obama era, and move on to the next thing. But we know they can’t let go. They’re out of power for a generation the second they lose.

So they need Trump. They need him to sell fear. They need him to keep their voters helpless and full of irrational hatred toward those they share this country with. But look at what it has done to them. Look at what it has done to all of us.

Trust in the media is at an all-time low. No one wants to watch their movies, late-night comedy, or cable news. It’s all slipping through their fingers.

The Democrats could still win this election. It was one hell of a PR campaign they’ve fooled the public with. There’s a chance there could still be an October surprise, like the Gretchen Whitmer kidnapping before the 2020 election and the Paul Pelosi break-in before the 2022 midterms.

What they need is a “forever January 6th” to vanquish not just the Trump threat but all of MAGA, to tarnish them and exile them from the mainstream. If, by some chance, there isn’t a catastrophe between now and Election Day, there is a good chance Trump will win. Then the question becomes how bad it will get.

It’s already bad enough with a Gen-X hippie picking up a rifle and trying to shoot Trump to “save Democracy.”

Mark Halperin has said it would cause a massive mental health crisis in this country. But he also urges both sides to prepare for the worst, that their candidate might lose.

Trump for Dummies

What Trump offers all of us is a chance to be seen as human beings again, not ranked and categorized by our gender or our skin color, and not punished and exiled for thought crimes.

He will advocate for merit and protect children from the grips of the cult that has already captured too many young American minds. He will take us into the next generation without deciding that the only path forward for Black Americans is equity. He can praise Elon Musk rather than ignore his efforts, as Joe Biden did. And who knows where Elon will take us next?

Trump promises a brighter future, and, if nothing else, a stronger economy and a safer country. Make America funny again. Make America united again. Make America sane again. Make America free again.

Mostly, though, understanding this moment in history means realizing that we can’t convict people in our courts or the Court of Public Opinion based on what we think might be in their minds or hearts.

I look around at the MAGA I know, and I see all kinds of different people: Black, white, Brown, gay, married, single, rich, poor. What they see in Trump is not defined by hatred. And I promise you, to understand MAGA, all you have to do is see Trump through their eyes.

This election will be over in two weeks. It will be bittersweet for me. This has been one wild ride with some of the best people I’ve ever known. It’s not over yet. So, let’s leave behind our worries for now and have one last dance.

The Trump dance: