Why I'm voting for Donald Trump, part 2

A slightly reframed version of last night's argument

Well.

Fair to say a lot of Unreported Truths readers are happy with me this morning (a few are not, so be it. You can’t please everyone and you shouldn’t try).

Last night’s piece endorsing Trump¹ has received almost 2,000 likes and 500 comments here, and my post about it on X looks to be going viral. Fox News picked it up too.

—

(Support free speech, whether Kamala Harris likes it or not.)

—

But I know that many undecided voters remain legitimately worried about Trump’s apparent authoritarian tendencies and his rhetoric. The elite media has fanned those flames, regularly calling Trump a “fascist” and a “dictator” and, yes, comparing him to Hitler. As the New York Times wrote last week:

Amid Talk of Fascism, Trump’s Threats and Language Evoke a Grim Past

As I wrote yesterday, Trump’s rhetoric disturbs me too.

But here’s why I decided voting for him is ultimately the less risky choice.

First, many of the same people said many of the same things about Trump in 2016. But he governed essentially as a moderate Republican, cutting taxes, appointing anti-abortion judges to the Supreme Court, and standing against China and Iran. He hardly touched the administrative state.

Trump’s rhetoric is angrier this campaign, certainly. And as the mutual fund ads warn, past performance is no guarantee of future results. But even this year, Trump has hardly tried to subvert the rule of law - he willingly subjected himself what can only be called a show trial in Manhattan, leading to his criminal conviction on charges that even now can hardly be explained.

—

But suppose Trump actually DOES mean what he says.

Suppose he is serious about trying to weaponize the Department of Justice and using the military against illegal immigrants, for example? I hope he isn’t. But suppose he is.

The last eight years make clear that what Nate Silver calls the “indigo blob” and I have begun to call “the uniparty” will rise against him.

The blob encompasses nearly the entire American elite: the media, academia, philanthropy, Hollywood, public health, most of medicine and law, blue state governments and prosecutors, and much if not most of corporate America.

As he attacks the administrative state, Trump is sure to face investigations and lawsuits that hamstring him from the moment he takes office. Yes, he is likely to be more aggressive this time around, but the opposition will be as well.

The reverse is NOT true.

The uniparty will stand with Kamala Harris, as with Joe Biden. That’s why the Biden Administration faced so little resistance to his highly aggressive use of the administrative state - from forcing mRNA shots on adults to opening the border to canceling student debt to regulations that will sharply reduce the number of gasoline-powered vehicles. These all represented major expansions of government and executive authority without Congressional approval.

Yet the media and other elites raised no questions about them, and in fact cheered them on.

—

(I learn slow but I learn good. Stand with me, and against the uniparty, as I fight for the truth.)

—

I understand that Democrats are frustrated they can’t just pass all the law they want - notwithstanding the fact they have enacted several major bills since 2008, including Obamacare and the “Inflation Reduction Act” (from the Orwell School of Naming).

But they, not Trump, are the ones who have pushed the Constitution to its limits of late. They’ve just done it to support policies the uniparty likes.

—

(If you missed yesterday’s piece)

—

Indeed, elite coordination has reached unprecedented levels in ways large and small.

It’s visible even in unexpected ways, as when the mayor of New York, Eric Adams, was indicted on federal charges that mostly involved his taking free business-class upgrades on flights to Turkey (I kid you not, read the indictment). Adams is black. In years past the woke media would surely have raised the question of whether he was being unfairly prosecuted for his race. Not anymore; MSNBC and the Washington Post and Democratic politicians all sing from the same hymnbook, and for whatever reason, they have decided Adams is an embarrassment and must be sacrificed.

So, again, voting for Trump is arguably the less risky course. He talks big, but he didn’t govern like a dictator last time, and if he tries next year he’ll face sharp resistance.

The alternative is an elite that has decided it knows what’s best for America - and is going to give it to us good and hard.

1. Annoyingly, Saturday night’s piece has a mistake: the New York CIVIL verdict in which Donald Trump was ordered to pay almost $500 million for "fraud" on loans that he repaid in full was issued by a Manhattan judge, not a Manhattan jury. (The criminal verdict was a jury verdict.)