No Reason for Trump and Biden Both to Retire

by Conrad Black

The Democrats and the Republican Trump-haters (Never Trumpers) have staked their futures entirely on their ability to put across the fraud that 2020 was a pristine election. Many respectable people who know better, from Bill Barr to Brit Hume to the editors of the Wall Street Journal, are squandering their credibility every week with the reassertion of this falsehood.

It’s true that Donald Trump disserved himself with the absurdly miscalibrated legal attacks of Rudolph Giuliani, and, as only he could do, with preposterous claims about having won the popular vote, and with the absurd call for a new election. Having presciently warned of the dangers of ballot harvesting, he didn’t prepare adequately to combat it as the voting and vote-counting rules were changed, often unconstitutionally, in the swing states, ostensibly to promote voting during the pandemic, but also assuring that millions of votes were potentially unverifiable and passed through hands that could not be identified between being marked and cast. The courts refused to judge any of these constitutional cases on their merits. In these circumstances, as in 1960 (John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon) and 2000 (George W. Bush and Al Gore), a candidate was inaugurated, but we will never know who truly won.

All polls indicate that despite the massive media effort to suffocate any serious discussion of the legitimacy of the 2020 presidential election results, the great majority of Republicans and a substantial minority of other voters have serious doubts about the authenticity of the result, as they should. As long as Trump can legitimately claim to have had a genuine grievance about the validity of the election result and the failure of the judiciary to consider the serious cases, it will be impossible to impute to him an illicit or even inappropriate motive in the events of Jan. 6, 2021. He had a grievance and called for peaceful protests, but the political destruction of Trump requires that this be obliterated from memory so he can be portrayed as a dangerous loser with no regard for the Constitution and who was prepared to counsel insurrection. The failure to sell a grotesquely exaggerated version of the gravity of the Jan. 6 events causes the familiar walls to “close in” on the anti-Trump arguments and reduces his enemies once more to hurling vitriol at him as a recidivistic lawbreaker and dangerous extremist.

This is nonsense and it’s wearing very thin now, and especially as the Biden shambles unfolds in every policy area, people do recall that Trump eliminated unemployment, illegal immigration, oil imports, and made great progress in shaping up NATO, resuming the progress of peace in the Middle East, containing Iran and North Korea, and ending the extreme one-sidedness of relations between the United States and China.

The ramshackle anti-Trump coalition that went on a binge of festive thanksgiving following the last election, amplified after Jan. 6 into a righteous crusade against insurrectionism, is changing color like a chameleon again. For a time, the Trump-haters were satisfied that the orange monster had been banished and that they would go back to their charade of periodic changes of party in power in Congress and the White House while the 95 percent of Washington that is Democratic continued to take the country to the left. Two nasty revelations intruded: Trump was not going away or being deserted by his followers, and the person they had put in his place was not the likable, moderate, patriotic backslapping man that they had known for nearly 50 years who could innocuously preside over de-Trumpification.

Various prominent commentators began excoriating Republican aspirants to high office because of their fear of the Trump vote. This theory was blown to pieces by the success of Trump endorsees in the Republican primaries. By the beginning of July, it was clear that President Joe Biden’s approval rating was negative by nearly 20 points; the administration was widely deemed to have botched every major policy area, and Trump’s hold on the Republican Party was getting stronger and not weaker. A new playbook was required, which of course meant recourse to the old playbook. No one was paying the slightest attention to the disgraceful mockery of an impartial inquiry into the events of Jan. 6, 2021, being conducted by the House of Representatives select committee of rabid Trump-haters, wallowing in carefully rehearsed overwrought fulminations.

There was nothing for it but to return to the main script and have the Justice Department section of the dirty tricks division of the Democratic National Committee do another raid: on the former president’s home in the historic mansion of Mar-a-Lago, Palm Beach. This already looks like another vintage FBI political operation—an inexcusable, nonsensical, blunderbuss misuse of that bureau for rank and illegal partisan ends. The customary torrent of leaks took the place of any plausible explanation for what the administration thought it was doing. There were a few revivals of the tired pieties of encroaching walls as the leakers scrambled from expedient to expedient to explain what they thought they were doing rummaging through Melania’s clothes (and under-clothes) and the former president’s private office over a matter of documents that is almost impossible to contort into a plausible criminal action.

The real effort has been to change the conversation from the endless depressing failures of the Biden administration: inflation, millions of illegal immigrants and horrifying quantities of lethal drugs, skyrocketing crime, unclear objectives and exit strategy in Ukraine, an insane green energy policy, failed COVID-19 policy, the Afghan debacle, failure to deter Iran from deploying nuclear weapons, and the evident erosion of foreign respect for the United States. Public attention has to be deflected from these inconveniences to retain any chance of avoiding a debacle at the midterm elections.

A rickety argument was formulated that Biden was in full recovery: A supremely ugly duckling of a bill misrepresented as an anti-inflation measure, which doubles the size and avarice of the IRS, raises taxes on the successful, and increases funding for the green terror, was claimed by Biden’s chief of staff to have made him the greatest friend of the disadvantaged since Roosevelt, the greatest builder of infrastructure since Eisenhower, the greatest nominator of judges since Kennedy, and the greatest friend of minorities since Lyndon Johnson. Dream on.

Biden has cut the approval deficit in the polls to about 14 percent, and in the last few weeks there has been a mass movement by the anti-Trump forces to the hackneyed, geriatric, Hansell and Gretel story that Trump and Biden are both over-aged, punch-drunk relics who live by attacking each other and must be sent out to pasture together.

Biden is a mediocre and inattentive veteran of 50 years in the rotten borough of Delaware. He hasn’t achieved anything noteworthy and is an almost completely incompetent president. Trump accomplished more before he was president than anyone in the history of that office except those instrumental in founding the country and those who led great armies to victory in just wars (Washington, Jefferson, Madison, Grant, Eisenhower), and despite unprecedented and illegal harassment of him through the corruption of the Justice Department and the intelligence services by his enemies, his was one of the most successful single terms in presidential history, after the first terms of Washington, Lincoln, Nixon, and the first and third terms of FDR, and Polk’s term.

Trump’s enemies would have banished him if they had presented a serious presidential candidate in 2020. They are now in a battle that they cannot win unless Trump loses it for them.

First published in the Epoch Times.

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8 Responses

  1. Conrad Black is a liar and propagandist. Numerous government, media, and academic organizations have debunked the lie that fraud took place in the 2020 election, which he shamelessly continues to spout.

    As for who is responsible for the Capitol attack, one need only read the speeches of The Demagogue and his associates that day, which were full of the most thinly veiled of incitements, and watch the many hours of video taken by the attackers themselves.

    There’s only reason Conrad continues to spew this worthless nonsense: there’s a demand.

    _________________________
    “In the four years since, Fox viewers had become even more accustomed to flattery and less willing to hear news that challenged their expectations. Instead of understanding his narrow win in 2016 as the upset it was, they were told forecasters were going to be wrong again. Me serving up green beans to viewers who had been spoon-fed ice cream sundaes for years came as a terrible shock to their systems.”

  2. Conrad Black is RIGHT ON THE NAIL about both the 2020 election and the Jan 6 Capitol protests.

    The “massive media effort to suffocate any serious discussion of the legitimacy of the 2020 presidential election result” is itself an indictment. A large majority of the Democrat party believed that the 2016 election was rigged and participated in violent demonstrations (remember “not my president”). A similar majority believed the 2000 election was stolen. Both these elections were debated at nauseam at the time, and you are still entirely free to discuss them on social media. But the instant vitriol poured on anyone attempting to discuss the 2020 election as anything other than “the fairest election ever”, and the mass censorship of this topic on social media speaks for itself. What have these people got to hide? (A simple example: the public have a right to know exactly how the $400 million+ ‘Zuckerbucks’ were spent, but this subject is steadfastly ignored in all mainstream media.)

    As for the capitol protests the same level of blanket censorship exists. But you can’t hide the whole truth. We know a request for extra security was turned down. We know Ray Epps & his team were present in advance of the main group of demonstrators to “clear the ground” and were subsequently filmed inciting people to “go into the capitol” (lucky old Ray was later demoted from “most wanted” to totally uninteresting by the FBI). All the public needs to make up their own minds is the complete security camera footage of the capitol and the ‘selfie’ videos taken by demonstrators (many of them grandparents) which has been so ruthlessly censored by YouTube.

    When you see this level of censorship & misinformation it makes you wonder who is trying to hide what. And think Soviet Union, Nazi Germany & CCP.

    1. The media also doesn’t talk about the Holocaust being faked, the flatness of the earth, and chemtrails. Clearly evidence of conspiracies.

      Your claims about the Democrats are idiotic false equivalencies.

      Your claims about the Capitol riot (some of which are contradictory) are laughable conspiracy theories. Your demand for the “complete security camera footage”, which will supposedly show what really happened, is grasping at straws.

      What kind of delusional person would believe that some grainy security footage is going to somehow refute many hours of high definition video from the attackers themselves? Oh no, it’s going to show that those masses of people punching, shoving and pepper spraying police officers were really just hugging, kissing, and frolicking in circles with them.

      _________________________
      “In the four years since, Fox viewers had become even more accustomed to flattery and less willing to hear news that challenged their expectations. Instead of understanding his narrow win in 2016 as the upset it was, they were told forecasters were going to be wrong again. Me serving up green beans to viewers who had been spoon-fed ice cream sundaes for years came as a terrible shock to their systems.”

      1. You’re correct. Those old conspiracy theories are passé. The media is much more into bombarding us with modern real world conspiracy theories: such as Trump is a “Russian asset”, The Hunter Biden laptop was “Russian disinformation”. Trump hid nuclear secrets in his wife’s underwear after he left the White House. And good old fashioned lies: “you absolutely cannot contract or transmit covid if you’re vaccinated”. Even our fully vaccinated, multiply boosted, cardboard cut-out president was taken in: “You won’t get covid if you take these vaccinations” he pronounced. And then he got covid. Twice!

        P.S. KOOLAID WARNING: readers should note that “Arthur.c Is A Big Dummy” is just a pseudonym of our resident government troll, “Koolaid”, trying to create the impression that he is not alone in his idiocy.

        1. Thank you very much Mr. Arthur for warning us about this. I for one would never have figured out that these comments are all from one and the same person. Please share with us how you were able to make this incredible deduction.

          _________________________
          “In the four years since, Fox viewers had become even more accustomed to flattery and less willing to hear news that challenged their expectations. Instead of understanding his narrow win in 2016 as the upset it was, they were told forecasters were going to be wrong again. Me serving up green beans to viewers who had been spoon-fed ice cream sundaes for years came as a terrible shock to their systems.”

      2. If the “grainy security footage” is so useless why withhold it from public scrutiny? What possible reason can there be? However poor the quality, if we are to believe what we are told it would support the “armed insurrection” narrative & be another nail in the coffin for the “insurrectionists”.

        As for personal videos, YouTube and other social media platforms ruthlessly removed protesters’ videos within hours of it being posted. Why? If it was all so awful it would surely support the favoured “armed insurrection” narrative. Game over for the “insurrectionists”. But for some reason it is still censored on the big platforms so we, the public, may not view it and make up our own minds. Why?

        That leaves the “many hours of high definition video from the attackers themselves” you refer to. I guess this has been provided by Ray Epps & his team? How convenient!

        P.S. KOOLAID WARNING: readers should note that “Arthur.c Is A Big Dummy” is just a pseudonym of our resident government troll, “Koolaid”, trying to create the impression that there are multiple Koolaids out there.

    2. PS. Thanks for the personal attacks in response to my comment pointing out that some of Armando’s links actually say the exact opposite of what he’s trying to argue.

      Shows you ain’t got nothin’ else.

      _________________________
      “In the four years since, Fox viewers had become even more accustomed to flattery and less willing to hear news that challenged their expectations. Instead of understanding his narrow win in 2016 as the upset it was, they were told forecasters were going to be wrong again. Me serving up green beans to viewers who had been spoon-fed ice cream sundaes for years came as a terrible shock to their systems.”

  3. “many hours of high definition video from the attackers themselves…provided by Ray Epps & his team?”

    This is some “the moon landings were faked” level stupidity. Drink less Koolaid bud.

    _________________________
    “In the four years since, Fox viewers had become even more accustomed to flattery and less willing to hear news that challenged their expectations. Instead of understanding his narrow win in 2016 as the upset it was, they were told forecasters were going to be wrong again. Me serving up green beans to viewers who had been spoon-fed ice cream sundaes for years came as a terrible shock to their systems.”

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