Conrad Black On The Return Of Trump

Only Trump Can Drain The Swamp

Does it say something about the state of the country that a generally very perceptive observer of politics like Conrad Black believes that our future may hinge on a, frankly, elderly man like Trump? Yet that is Black’s claim in a thought provoking article that first appeared in The Epoch Times. I’ll link to the version that appeared this morning at Zerohedge:

The Swamp Must Be Drained

I don’t agree with all of it, and disagree vehemently with some of it—especially Black’s endorsement of Trump’s pursuit of a “vaccine”. Surely that was Trump’s biggest mistake, with devastating effects that we’re still experiencing. Nevertheless, even after criticizing Trump (for making things too much about himself), Black maintains that Trump is the only one who can drain the Swamp. In the process, he provides a considerable amount of food for thought.

What’s especially interesting is that Black wrote this article before the revelations about Hillary’s central role in the Russia Hoax, which came out at the Sussmann trial yesterday. Of course that was hardly news, in the usual sense, but if anyone is able to appreciate the impact of such confirmations of what we knew, the impact on public political consciousness, that person would be Black. I think it’s fair to infer from some of his remarks that, had he known of Mook’s devastating testimony against Hillary, Black would have seen this as playing into the current national mood of profound dissatisfaction with the Swamp. Certainly his remarks about Trump’s appeal point in that direction.

Black begins with common sense observations that are reflected in all polling and which also can be seen everywhere on social media:

The Democrats are increasingly desperate as the return of Donald Trump becomes more likely each week.

They are muddling the sequence of events that got us to the present impasse: Trump ran against the corrupt back-scratching, log-rolling society of the OBushintons—the Clinton pay-to-play schemes, the Biden sales of influence and access, the semi-disguised socialist racism elitism of the Obamas, and the flabby sameness and ineffectuality of the Bush–McCain–Romney–McConnell–Ryan Republicans. Trump sensed the people were dissatisfied with the bipartisan Swamp, and he ran as strenuously against the Bushes and McCain and Romney in 2016 as he did against the Clintons and Obamas.

The anti-Trumpers of both parties, in the most legally questionable presidential election in U.S. history, eased Trump out ...

In 2020, the Washington establishment demonstrated the accuracy of Trump’s claims of how corrupt and unscrupulous it was, and Biden has demonstrated that it’s even more incompetent at government than Trump alleged.

The Swamp must be drained, and distasteful though he might be in some ways, probably no one less formidable in his egocentricity and demagogic talents than Trump could drain the Swamp. The Republicans between Reagan and Trump were all inducted into it themselves, and the Republican “Never-Trumpers” are as fierce in their animosity toward the former president as toward the Democrats, and as the Democrats are toward Trump. Only Trump can finish the job.

I omit here Black’s characterization of what’s going on in the Pennsylvania primaries.

The walls are closing in on the Democrats, to use one of their favorite, completely dishonest phrases about Trump when they were trying to sell the gigantic fraud that he had colluded with the Russians in the 2016 election.

That gigantic fraud is the point of what Durham has accomplished in obtaining confirmation of Hillary’s managing role in the Russia Hoax. The truth that the Russia Hoax was an enormous fraud will, I’m confident, ultimately become accepted political knowledge. And that leads to Black’s simple statement of fact, which is also destined to become common knowledge:

... [Election 2020] was the most dangerously illegal assault on the integrity of the election process and on the constitutional balance of powers in the country’s history.

The problem is not that both 2020 candidates are now too elderly. The problem is that 2020 and the run-up to it demonstrated that the Swamp is as venal and self-interested and corrupt as Trump said in 2016, and they are back. If we go back to business as usual—a stronger Democrat than Biden and a compliant consensus Republican—the rot of 2016 accelerates.

At this point Black levels his most serious criticism of Trump. How fair it is, I leave to readers to judge. Black maintains that Trump is at fault for failing to take effective steps to counter the fraud that was coming. In his defense, Trump was president, not Attorney General.

... The authors of the perfidious fraud of the 2020 election were rescued by Trump’s inept response and the abdication of the judiciary.

…

The House of Representatives committee to investigate Jan. 6, stuffed with pathological Trump-haters of both parties … will excavate a new low in malicious partisanship and will televise its hearings in June. No one believes them and no one cares; Jan. 6 isn’t the point and wasn’t an insurrection.

...

The Democrats have tried to distract the country with the abortion question, but it isn’t working any more than the country believes that Russian leader Vladimir Putin and the oil companies are responsible for the highest gasoline price in American history. Their latest gambit is to try to whip up hysteria one more time on COVID-19, but that won’t fly either. ...

Some on the Left are seeing this. That, I think, is the meaning of the NYT editorial yesterday, in which the Grey Lady urged Dems to cut their Ukraine losses as best they can and run. It’s a recipe for foreign policy collapse on a, perhaps, never before seen scale—but at stake is domestic political control. The Ukraine disaster is now unavoidable as a matter of foreign policy, and so the only option is to try to minimize its effects on domestic politics—so, blame the Ukrainians! For their part, many in the GOP’s Trump hating wing have not internalized what we’re learning from the primaries, and are even—maddeningly—standing behind the Zhou regime’s latest Ukraine Hoax. Nevertheless, as Black notes, many if not most of the incoming Reps and Senators will, to one degree or another, owe their positions to Trump. They will surely have been elected to bring about an end to much of post Cold War politics. That, in essence, is what MAGA is all about—make America great again by getting out of the Clinton-Bush-Obama rut.

The Trump-haters of both parties who rattled the windows of Washington when they heaved a sigh of relief at Trump’s departure are only now emerging from denial that he’s about to run over them with a steamroller much larger and more fueled by righteousness than the one they drove over him.

Woke, 1619 revisionism, racist disinformation, and violent protest: All have to be torn up, root and branch. But if Trump does return, he must give less ammunition to his enemies. American history and public policy are not all about him, ...

He will return to that office and do better in it if he’s less needlessly abrasive and self-obsessed.

...

It remains that much can happen between now and November—not to mention November, 2024. That’s the problem with Trump’s age. It’s reassuring in that respect that there appear to be younger Republican governors who, while not perfect, are learning from the Trump experience.

Now, Black is, of course, in a real sense part of the Establishment. Some of the governors are a bit closer to the ground and have experienced real successes by discovering and tapping into issues that are close to the daily lives and concerns of likely voters. Don Surber yesterday presented some polling results that should restore some faith in ordinary people, who may be waking up to Woke. Considering the source of the polling I’m inclined to accept the results at face value:

New poll devastates CRT and LGBT classes

Overwhelming majorities of Americans oppose teaching kids in grade school about CRT and LGBT, according to a new national University of Massachusetts Amherst Poll.

86% OPPOSE a teacher showing kids in grades K-6 a picture of their same sex wedding. 40% oppose this in any grade.

82% OPPOSE a teacher asking kids in grades K-6 for their preferred gender pronouns. 53% oppose this in any grade.

85% OPPOSE teacher telling kids in grades K-6 they are gay. 53% oppose this in any grade.

75% OPPOSE assigning kids in grades K-6 a book about a person who is transgender. 43% oppose this in any grade.

73% OPPOSE assigning kids in grades K-6 a book about a person who is gay, lesbian, or bisexual. 39% oppose this in any grade.

68% OPPOSE assigning kids in grades K-6 a conversation about different sexual orientations. 34% oppose this in any grade.

Put another way, only 14% to 32% want LGBT being taught to kids in school before they reach puberty.

Americans get what is going on. The LGBT classes are indoctrination, not education. The perverts want to get them young.

As for Critical Race Theory, 76% OPPOSE teaching this in grades K-6. 45% oppose this in any grade.

30% of black people oppose teaching CRT in any grade.

There’s more at the link.

This is all a product of the Swamp. Politicians who understand this and build a campaign around it will not regret it.