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Doral, Florida - Donald Trump already had exceptionally successful careers as a real estate developer and media personality when he launched his presidential campaign in June 2015. He did not need to go into politics in order to earn more money or get more publicity, because he already had plenty of both. Instead he campaigned to “Make America Great Again,” in opposition to the woke progressive revolution besieging America. This is the right reason for him to enter politics - - to serve the republic, more than to serve himself. This was the same motivation as great Presidents like Washington, Lincoln and Reagan. Trump fits with their motivation.
In addition, however, Trump is no angel and is a bit of a scoundrel. He is often criticized, even by his political supporters, for his uncouth manners and self-aggrandizing rhetoric. Nevertheless, these negative qualities are part of the whole person, and to some extent may be required to do his job. Let us review what commentators have written about this situation:
Insights from England
Horace Walpole was a member of the Whig Party in the British Parliament from 1741 to 1769, during the reign of King George II and the beginning of the reign of George III. He put it this way in his Memoirs of the Reign of King George III: “Nations are most commonly saved by the worst men in them. The virtuous are too scrupulous to go to the lengths which are necessary to rouse the people against their tyrants.”
The line often repeated today is a later paraphrase, not Walpole’s exact words: “No great country was ever saved by good men, because good men will not go to the lengths that may be necessary.” Walpole’s point was not to praise lawlessness or boorishness, but to point out that good men hesitate at the rough methods that actually break a tyranny or stir a republic.
Insights from Chicago
Joseph Epstein is a retired Humanities teacher at Northwestern University and an essayist based in Chicago. He has published at least three Wall Street Journal opinion pieces this year that discuss President Trump. The tone is the same throughout: he dislikes Trump’s manners and wants him off the stage, while granting that he has been very effective in his presidency, and rejecting the charge of antisemitism.
1. In his first essay, he admits that: “Love him or loathe him, Trump is a world-historical figure,” Epstein writes that he does not care for Trump’s vanity, bragging or immodesty, but that few Americans have compiled a more striking résumé—developer, author, media star, twice president, and now, in Epstein’s telling, “slayer of tyrants.” He credits Trump with removing Venezuela’s Nicolás Maduro and killing Iran’s Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and many associates, and says that other tyrants should take note. He called Trump “a tyrant-slayer who looks like a tyrant.”
2. In his second essay, Epstein points out that President Trump “has been accused of everything from fascism and monarchism to simple wretched taste. The one thing one can’t justly accuse him of is antisemitism.” He notes Jewish grandchildren via Ivanka and Jared Kushner, and says Trump has done more than any other American President to benefit Jews—moving the embassy to Jerusalem and backing Netanyahu.
3. In his last essay this year, however, Epstein proclaims that: “I don’t wish to see him impeached or humiliated, just gone.” This is the most directly anti-Trump of the three essays. President Trump praises police, soldiers and factory workers as amazing—then, Epstein says, the speech turns into self-praise. The essay’s request is not prosecution or disgrace; it is that the Trump era end.
Epstein treats President Trump as historically significant, credits him on standing with Israel and removing foreign tyrants, denies that Trump is an antisemite, but still finds Trump vulgar and exhausting. He says, in so many words, that he wants Trump gone. But if Trump were gone, who would do his good works? Epstein fails to account for that, thereby showing that he is not the type of man who would save our country.
Insights from Elsewhere
A recognizable essay type this year treats Trump as personally unfit and still historically distinguished—vain, coarse, self-absorbed, sometimes reckless and also the only figure who, in these writers’ view, reversed open borders, broke progressive taboos or attacked tyrannical regimes. The template for this essay type is to admit the flawed character: bragging, revenge, flattery, taste, overreach and such; and then argue that those same traits, or the energy behind them, produced results that “good men” would not attempt.
1. Victor Davis Hanson is a fellow at the Hoover Institution. His earlier book, The Case for Trump, had cast Trump as a tragic reformer who gets blood on his hands. His new book this year, The Counter Revolution, says that the “eccentricities and rudeness” that were supposed to doom him made Trump more formidable; MAGA is a rescue from progressive and Marxist “nostrums.” The praise is for the movement’s effect, not for the manners.
2. The magazine The Atlantic, a woke progressive publication, interviewed people who separate the man from the job: “I don’t like him as a person, but I like him as a president.” Another said that he is not “all the time, great,” but “fighting for everyone right now.” They treat Trump as a defender of their values, not a model of them—blue-collar work, border security and institutions that the left broke.
3. Joel Kotkin, a center-left demographer based in California, wrote: “The good, the bad and the ugly of Trump 2.0” is the mixed ledger in one piece: border control as a real achievement; but ICE tactics, Iran war, self-enrichment and lost political consensus as the ugly. That is “saving some things, wrecking others,” not praise for Trump.
These essays say that Trump is not a gentleman and may not be a constitutionalist, but he did things that needed doing—deportations of illegal aliens, energy production, standing with Israel, liberating Venezuela, denying Iran nuclear missiles, cultural pushback—that a timid Republican would not have done, and that is why people call it a rescue.
Conclusion
The United States Supreme Court represents an American institution that has shown little courage to oppose the woke progressive program. Consider the following opinions:
1. Approving ObamaCare as a tax in 2012.
2. Approving birthright citizenship earlier this year.
3. Blocking the Vote-By-Mail restrictions proposed by the United States Postal Service under instructions from the Trump administration.
The three progressive Justices stand together, but only Justices Thomas and Alito consistently vote for the conservative position. Chief Justice Roberts puts political expediency above the rule of law, and the three Justices appointed by President Trump - - Gorsuch, Kavanaugh and Coney Barret - - are inconsistent in their conservatism. Justice Coney Barret appears to have been affected by the threats of violence after the reversal of Roe v. Wade, and has gone from voting conservative in 80% of the cases to 50%.
President Trump, on the other hand, stands firm for conservative American principles. He defends America from the likes of the baby-killing pagan harpies in the Lindsay Clancy jury. For American conservatives, Trump may be an asshole, but he’s our asshole!
