From Conspiracy Theories to Conspiracies

Not all conspiracy theorists are unhinged paranoids—even when they insist there was a loosely organized if not sometimes incoherent effort to destroy Donald Trump’s candidacy beyond the bounds of “normal” politics and later a renewed and unprecedented endeavor to abort his presidency.

After all, did anyone believe that in the year 2017 the losing side in an American election would immediately dub itself the “Resistance”—channeling the World War II nomenclature of the guerrilla campaign against the Nazi occupation of France? Or that the defeated candidate Hillary Clinton would formally embrace the imagery of liberationist patriots fighting a Nazi-like Trump’s occupation of the United States?

One ingredient for removing a president would entail a nonstop effort by the opposition to use the courts, the legislative branch, the investigatory agencies, and the administrative state to discredit, undermine, and remove an elected government. In modern terms, that might entail opponents suing to challenge the legitimacy of the election, perhaps by charging in court that according to “experts,” voting machines were dysfunctional and thus some state tallies were null and void.

The effort might embrace trying to subvert the Constitution by pressuring state electors not to honor their constitutionally defined responsibilities to vote in accordance with the popular vote in their respective states. It might also include an effort to introduce articles of impeachment in the House.

A resistance might sue under the 25th Amendment to find the president non compos mentis, accompanied by a popular campaign to clinically diagnose the president as mentally unfit or physically decrepit. Or a resistance might use the courts to seek the removal of an elected president on grounds he was a rank profiteer and had violated the Emoluments Clause of the U.S. Constitution—or to file suits with cherry-picked liberal judges to delay and stop the president’s executive orders. On the petty side, an organized effort to discredit a president would range from boycotting the Inauguration to deliberately holding up and delaying confirmation of his appointees.

In fact, in just Trump’s first year we have seen all these things and more.

Pop Culture Provocations
Any “resistance” aimed at removing a president would also involve the proverbial street and popular culture. A good way might be to implant to such a degree the idea of killing or harming the president that it would become something more than just a sick fantasy, but become contextualized as an act of near patriotism across the broader culture. Celebrities accordingly might dream out loud at rallies of blowing up the White House. Or a movie star might announce to his audience his hopes for a repeat of a John Wilkes Booth-style assassination. Or a state legislator might post hopes that someone would kill the president. Or a rapper might release a video in which the president is shown shot. Or a comedian on camera might hold up a facsimile of the bloody severed head of the president. Or a New York troupe might perform public plays in which the president each evening is ritually stabbed to death.

We might also see and hear ad nauseam from actors and other celebrities expressing desires to beat him to a pulp, or hang him, or shoot him—all the insidious efforts not of those easily disregarded as unhinged, but of those with public personas, and with the effect of incrementally normalizing violence against the president. Late night comedians might vie with each other in their profanity and scatology, ridiculing the president with references to him fellating a foreign leader. Who knows, a secret service agent might even post a brag that she would not be willing to “take a bullet” to defend the likes of this president. Or a left-wing zealot might think shooting Republican congressmen was doing his part to thwart the evil Trump agenda.

All that, too, transpired in Trump’s first year.

Blue, anti-Trump states might seek to nullify federal law, in the fashion that the states of the Old South insisted that they were not subject to federal jurisdictions. California, for example, might declare itself a sanctuary state, a declaration that would forbid federal immigration agents from enforcing fully the law. Or the states might incessantly sue the president’s administration on everything from immigration to environmental policy—such that every two weeks California is ritually filing a new suit in a friendly court to curtail federal government jurisdiction over state residents. The California governor might declare the president an immoral agent who had no fear of God, as grandees in his state talked of Calexit, a secession from the president’s United States. Or the California legislature might dream of subverting the new federal code curtailing state tax deductions in adolescent ways that would earn any taxpayer who tried such a con an IRS indictment.

In fact, in just Trump’s first year, we have seen all those efforts transpire as well.

Control the Media, Control the Narrative
In historian Edward Luttwak’s semi-serious
Coup d’état: A Practical Handbook, control of the media is essential to abort a leader’s term. Ideally, a resistance should hope to so influence or enlist popular television, radio, electronic media and print journalism to ensure that 90 percent of all coverage of the president would be classified as negative. Reporters would issue fake news reports, ranging from stories that the president deliberately phoned a foreign leader and threatened invasion, or in racist fashion had insulted minorities by removing the bust of a black civil rights icon from the West Wing. Some reporters would use on-air obscenity and scatology in expressing their hatred of the president, in efforts to normalize the once abnormal. The more theoretical would ponder the need to jettison disinterested reporting, claiming that the danger of Trump justified biased coverage. The deep-state media might brand as believable a fake-news, tell-all book about the secret and private lives of the Trump inner circle.

All of that happened in 2017. And it’s still happening.

What better way to derail a presidency would there be than to allow a blank-check special counsel to search out alleged criminal activity on the part of the president? We have seen FBI Director James Comey confess that he deliberately leaked, likely illegally, confidential notes of a meeting with president Trump to the media, with the expressed intent of creating a “scandal” requiring a “special counsel”—a gambit that worked to perfection when Comey’s close friend, former FBI Director Robert Mueller was appointed.

To facilitate those efforts, the counsel would appoint to his team several attorneys who despised the very target of their investigation. In fact, many special investigators have given generously to the campaign of Trump’s past political opponent Hillary Clinton and in at least one case had worked previously for the Clinton Foundation. Note that after nearly a year, the Mueller investigation has not indicted anyone on collusion charges and is unlikely to. Rather, in special counsel trademark, low-bar fashion, it is seeking to indict and convict suspects for not telling the whole truth during interrogations, or violating other statutes. As Peter Strzok—once one of the FBI’s lead investigators in the Mueller investigation—concluded of the “collusion” allegation to his mistress Lisa Page: there was “no big there there.”

The FBI itself would have earlier trafficked in a fraudulent document funded by the Clinton campaign to “prove” Trump and his team were such dangers to the republic that they required surveillance under FISA court warrants and thus should surrender their constitutional rights of privacy. The ensuing surveillance, then, would be widely disseminated among Obama Administration officials, with the likely intent that names would be unmasked and leaked to the anti-Trump press—again, in efforts to discredit, first, the Trump campaign, and later the Trump transition and presidency. A top official of the prior Department of Justice would personally consult the authors of the smear dossier in efforts to ensure that its contents would become useful and known.

In fact, all that and more has already transpired.

Subversion as Plain as Day
Key officials of the prior government would likewise weigh in constantly to oppose the subsequent Trump agenda and demonize their own president. Samantha Power, Susan Rice, and Ben Rhodes would warn the country of the threats posed by their successor, but fail to disclose that they had previously requested to view FISA surveillance of the Trump team and to unmask the names of U.S. citizens which predictably soon appeared in media reports. Former Secretary of State John Kerry, according to the Jerusalem Post, assured a prominent Palestinian government leader, “that he should stay strong in his spirit and play for time, that he will not break and will not yield to President Trump’s demands.” Kerry reportedly further assured the Palestinian representative that the president may not be in White House for much longer and would likely not complete his first term. In sum, the former American secretary of state all but advised a foreign government that his own president is illegitimate and thus to be ignored or resisted in the remaining time before he is removed.

If any of these efforts were undertaken in 2009 to subvert the presidency of Barack Obama popular outrage might well have led to criminal indictments. If Hollywood grandees had promised to do to Barack Obama what they boast doing to Donald Trump, the entire industry would have been discredited—or given the Obama investigatory treatment.

Indeed, in many cases between 2009-2017, U.S. citizens the Obama Administration found noncompliant with its agendas became targets of the IRS for their political activity or monitored by the Justice Department. The latter included reporters from the Associated Press and James Rosen of Fox News. Many a journalist’s sources were prosecuted under the Espionage Act of 1917.  In another case, a filmmaker had his parole revoked and was scapegoated and jailed to advance a false administration narrative about the death of four Americans in Benghazi. Still others were surveilled by using fraudulent documents to obtain FISA court orders.

Everyone should be keen to distinguish conspiracies from conspiracy theories. The above are real events, not the tales told by the paranoid.

In contrast, unhinged conspiracy theorists, for example, might obsess yet again over the machinations of multibillionaire and leftist globalist bogeyman George Soros, and float wild yarns that he would fly to Davos to assure the global elite that he considers Trump “a danger to the world,” while reassuring them that the American president was “a purely temporary phenomenon that will disappear in 2020—or even sooner.” . . . 

Content created by the Center for American Greatness, Inc. is available without charge to any eligible news publisher that can provide a significant audience. For licensing opportunities for our original content, please contact licensing@centerforamericangreatness.com.

About Victor Davis Hanson

Victor Davis Hanson is a distinguished fellow of the Center for American Greatness and the Martin and Illie Anderson Senior Fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution. He is an American military historian, columnist, a former classics professor, and scholar of ancient warfare. He has been a visiting professor at Hillsdale College since 2004. Hanson was awarded the National Humanities Medal in 2007 by President George W. Bush. Hanson is also a farmer (growing raisin grapes on a family farm in Selma, California) and a critic of social trends related to farming and agrarianism. He is the author most recently of The Second World Wars: How the First Global Conflict Was Fought and Won, The Case for Trump and the recently released The Dying Citizen.

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496 responses to “From Conspiracy Theories to Conspiracies”

  1. The “sooner” is the 2018 midterm elections where a Democrat retake of majorities coupled with a Mueller recommendation to impeach will oust 45.

    • Same guys who said Trump would never win the nomination and Trump could never beat Clinton , and the stock market would crash.

      • And yet Bob Mueller still shows up for work as Special Counsel with no end in sight…

      • Trump is the opposite of everything the Tea Party was supposed to represent.

      • * Conservative justices on SCOTUS
        * Less government regulation and interference in our lives
        * Defensible borders
        * A strong military
        * An end to PPACA
        * Tax reform
        * …and still more

      • TEA Party was against higher taxes. Trump actually lowered taxes. Do you never get tired of being wrong all the time, or are you wrong all the time on purpose?

      • They were also against trillion dollar deficits and 1.5 trillion dollar “infrastructure” boondoggles. And of course Congress lowered taxes, not Trump.

      • Everything? Really?

        TEA is an acronym, Dave. What does it stand for?

        After you look that up, explain how everything Trump’s done is the opposite of what the Tea Party represents.

        Show your work.

      • Mueller still has a job because Trump and everybody else knows he has hung himself. Trump is just letting him reel out all the rope he desires until he finds himself at the end. Totally embarrassed. And then Trump will gloat on Twitter. Trump knows he has him checkmated and it is just a matter of time before the end game is upon the Mueller investigation.

      • Put your hope in one hand and hold out the other for me.

      • And yet Mr. Mueller still shows up for work with no collusion identified.

      • And never will, because collusion is a criminal act defined in Anti-Trust law….

      • It’s over when they release the incriminating memo. Then it’s our turn.

      • Who is the our you reference?

        Also, release of the memo, does nothing. At best, the FBI will then get to investigate the FBI or the DOJ prosecute the DOJ – good luck with that.

        Last, I voted for and gladly contributed to Trump. Don’t be a donkey and assume – I gave a possible outcome.

      • Normal people’s turn. I don’t believe for a second you voted for Trump. I actually think its kinda psycho to go online and claim you did.

      • I didn’t ask for your belief PhuqNutz – My Phuq tank is on empty for you. GFY. The American Drinker is more like it.

      • And he still hasn’f found shit, because, as everyone with a functioning brainstem knows, the entire “Russia Dossier” was nothing more than a creative writing exercise…. one which would make most college sophomores cringe.

      • Yet someone is allowing him to show up for work every day…

      • Hey donkey, don’t assume I wished for anything – I did not. You’ll get whatever you come for shatbag.

    • You guys forget that the investigation into Trump “collusion” and tampering with the election started in 2016 — we’re approaching two years, and not one hint of a crime or misdeed to lay at Trump’s doorstep. But of course, if the “investigation” drags on for five more years, the liberal mantra will be, “Well, no he hasn’t been PROVED to be guilty of anything — but we know in our hearts that he still is!”

      • I’m not a liberal nor a donkey, but thanks for updating me on their mantra.

    • @NY32311

      I predict Trump will be forced to drop out in October…. Jan, 2016 at the latest.

    • The moment you use a word like “phuqtards” is the moment I stop listening to you. Permanently.

      • I know you are not worth my attention. – realize this before or after you spent your attention on your reply to me. Rhetorical. dgaf. Have a nice day.

  2. I saw a ‘Clinton/Kaine” bumper sticker on a car parked on my street. Of course, I live in DC.
    Thank heaven for Professor Hansen!

  3. Wow. When seen in entirety, what has been and is being done to the president is sickening. Committed by sick individuals.

    • …and a very sick, America-hating Democratic political party.

      • Did you have the same outrage when these things were done to Obama?

      • BHO received more sycophantic blind-eye “coverage” than any politician in modern history. The scandals of The Obama Error make Watergate appear as child’s play by comparison.

      • Seriously. Democrats and media alike *instantly* glued their lips to Barry’s posterior. I predict it’ll be mid-century before they un-glue ’em.

        If then.

      • And your lips remain tightly wrapped around a nearby area of Trump’s anatomy, regardless of what he does. That’s what God would want.

      • If QAnon is right.. The left will all be crying soon

      • BHO… BHO… would that happen to be a way of suggesting that Obama was muslim? Maybe one who wasn’t born in the US, ergo not a legitimate president? Et tu, DisgustedwithElitism. Et tu.

      • I did not name him, his parents did.

        BTW, using an acronym began with TR and was good enough for FDR, HST, DDE, JFK, LBJ, RMN, GRF, JEC, RWR, GHWB, WJC, and GWB,

        GFY.

      • Right. And since the J stands for Jefferson it stands to reason Bill hates himself as only he could hate a former slave owner.

      • Obama himself started that rumor when his book publisher listed his country of birth as Kenya.

      • As freakin’ if – there was never any point where Obama was even close to ‘vetted’.

        Think the public would have elected a guy if it were public knowledge his closest associates were actual bomb-throwing leftist domestic terrorists?

        Obama was elected for one reason – and one reason only. And we all know what that was…

      • It’s his legacy. America’s first mulatto President.

      • There’s nothing hateful about anything he said. Being the first not-completely-white president is his legacy. Trump’s already done away with the rest of his legacy so that’s all that’s left.

      • Must have been a hate filled old racist, same as everyone else around here.

      • There’s an old saying to describe your reaction.

        Trust hurts doesn’t it?

      • You say that like it’s a bad thing.

        Actually, you say that like someone who says it three or four times a week. Usually at anyone who disagrees with you or points out inconvenient facts that you wish to ignore.

        In the past year, how many times have you yelled “Racist” at the TV/screen when video of President Trump played?

        Don’t lie now. Once a day? Once a week? A month? Admit it, at least once, isn’t it?

      • Constantly my friend. Most Mexicans are rapists? The KKK is full of decent folks? Obama isn’t American? Give me a break.

      • Had the enemedia spent a tiny fraction of the time they spent stalking Sarah Palin’s family in the hopes of digging up some dirt on them on actually looking into Princess Barry, he’d have been back community organizing instead of infesting the White House for 8 years.

      • He was inspirational figure who had an undeniable track record of success at the highest echelons of America’s meritocracy?

      • If you think these things were done to Jug Ears, then produce a document like VDH and demonstrate them. Otherwise STFU Snowflake and go get your diaper changed.

      • And you are ignorant and stupid. As for me I am highly educated, highly trained, alert and informed. And unfortunately for your ilk, agile, versatile, mobile, hostile and a motivated American thanks to the United States Army. You know, that organization that keeps shits like you alive and free. No Charge sunshine.

      • Appropriate net handle. If there is any justice, Obama will be sitting in Old Sparky for the treasonous acts he committed, although I’d prefer to see him hanging from a rope.

      • Obama hanging from a rope is about as nice as it gets. You don’t want to hang? Don’t commit treason.

      • do you honestly not see how your comments work against what the article is saying? “Liberals are engaged in an unprecedented campaign to normalize violence against a conservative president” sounds a lot less convincing when conservatives are calling for violence against a liberal president FIVE INCHES AWAY.

      • Don’t care. He is the devil. If anybody deserves it, it’s that commie bhastards. And based on the actions of his administration, the word commie fits like a glove.

      • Most of the media was fawning over The Exalted 0’Jeebus, The One, The Chocolate Jesus Himself.

        So many would practically swoon and then go into convulsive orgasm when they got to cover him.

        It was hilarious. Poor bastard child.

      • Obama didn;t have Bush and his former cabinet, the FBI and DOJ all colluding for a coup against him did he?

      • Almost the entire media, including SNL and major comedians, came to his defense. Where is that now? Is that “the same”, too?

  4. None of the things that VDH writes about were secret and almost none of these things were illegal. So there is no conspiracy. VDH is just filling up space with verbiage. It must be a slow news day.

    As for Obama, VDH ignores the birther nonsense, supported by none other than Donald Trump, and therefore indirectly by VDH himself. Talk about hypocrisy!

    • ‘The “Born in Kenya” certainly spices up the bio and that may have been the sole reason for Obama to alter his birthplace. After all, his goal at this point was to sell books. What’s a little stretch or exaggeration compared to the greater good of launching his writing career?’

      from “Obama Was the Original Birther” (www. americanthinker. com/ articles/ 2016/09/ obama_was_the_original_birther.html#ixzz55Zv8xdsz)

      The “born in Kenya” claim was an unforced error advertised by the HRC campaign.

      ‘Instead it was Obama’s Democrat primary opponent, Hillary Clinton, who picked up on the birth issue. Not Donald Trump who was busy building hotels and hosting reality shows at the time. Mrs. Clinton’s surrogate Sid Blumental was pushing the Obama birth story so hard that McClatchy sent a reporter to Kenya to investigate. And don’t forget the now famous photo of Obama in Muslim garb distributed by the Clinton campaign in 2008 as, “A last-ditch battle to keep her hopes of the White House alive”.’

      …and it was in her next campaign, ’16, that HRC and her minions arranged for the malignant Steele “dossier.”

      …and the photograph of BHO posing with Louis Farrakhan in 2005 was finally released for publication last week. Alan Dershowitz said of the photo, if he had known of it he would not have campaigned for BHO.

      • None of that is any reason to BELIEVE the birther nonsense.

      • The “nonsense” stated by the own man in his autobiography? Oh, that’s right — the man lies about everything, so we should calmly accept that this was also a lie. Makes sense — to a liberal.

      • Yes, you are right. I should have mentioned that in the past Trump supported the Clintons.

    • Excuse me? The probable abuses of the FISA court and unmasking to spy on ones political opponents are absolutely illegal. If true -it will turn out to be the greatest abuse of power in American government history. On top of that Comey has lied under oath and leaked classified documents. Kerry looks guilty on the famous Hatch act that the lobbies were throwing around when they though Republicans had negotiated with foreign governments as private citizens.

      • Absolutely amazing that nobody has brought up this Hatch Act about him that they were all over Trump and his team about – when he was the President -elect! I couldn’t care less about Kerry getting indicted but it just shows the ridiculous double standard.

    • You consider it legal for a government law enforcement agency to accept trash generated by one political party, use it under the guise of government intelligence, and deceive the FISA court judges into using it as the basis of warrants to spy on the opposition party? You consider it legal for that same agency to use that trash as reason to spy on the opposition party, and to “leak” to the public the names of those being spied upon, as if they were convicted criminals? Oh, that’s right, you’re a liberal: legal is anything that supports your political agenda.

      • Yeah, make up lies and then ask me if I think they are legal. OK. But the biggest lie of all is the one constantly spread by Trump trolls is that all opposition to Trump is from liberals.

    • Every part of the government that attempted to subvert the election and continued to subvert the results after the election was and is illegal.

    • How does VDH “indirectly” support Trump’s birther mischief? You need some lessons in thinking clearly.

  5. This is what the death throes of a malignant ideology looks like.

    The America hating radical Marxist left has been driving toward America’s destruction from within for over 50 years and even got their Messiah elected twice.

    Hillary was the Queen of the Left who was to finally abolish America as it had always been known forever.

    Then by Divine Providence Donald Trump came along and vanquished her.

    Now decades of leftism is being ripped out of our government and culture root and branch. All of their ‘progress’ is being reversed. And the left is VERY unhappy about it.

    God Bless President Trump and may God continue to Bless America.

    • If HRC represents Peak Feminism the movement has been a century-long F-A-I-L-U-R-E.

      • So what does having a womanizing serial sex pest (generously) as president say about the state of modern feminism, a cause which you find so important?

      • WJC was replaced by GWB on January 20, 2001. Try to keep up.

      • Haha your name is ‘disgusted with elitism’ and you support Trump and his billionaire friends? What a joke. You should be disgusted with yourself.

      • We live in a world governed by elitists and not elites. There is a very big difference. Look it up.

      • Trump is not an elitist. That does not mean that he’s against high achievement. He’s against people who think that the rest of the country owes them power and privileges due to granddaddy having gone to Harvard or Yale, when those schools were little more than “finishing schools” (and in fact, they still are little more than finishing schools, as demonstrated that the philosophies which come out of them are incoherent and directly at odds with observable facts).

      • Luckily for you, you will never have to live with what Hillary had planned for America. She doesn’t care if America dies tomorrow as long as she will be able to wield power and can spend her stolen money. She has not done a good thing for anybody in the 30 years she professes to have worked for America. She portrayed a young victim of rape as having mental issues and sexual fantasy regarding rape, yada, yada, yada. She is a foul, loathsome creature.

      • IDK, what did having Bubba Clinton and his enabling harridan wife say about the state of modern feminism?

      • It’s all about the Clintons, eh? Impeach Clinton because he lied about a blowjob. What hasn’t Trump lied about? It’s all about the double standards with you guys.

      • Clinton is a serial rapist, a liar, a thief, and likely a serial murderer along with his sociopathic wife.

        And don’t forget he’s also a traitor and fraud, but other than that..he’s a terrific American.

      • This is according to infowars, the voices in your head or Russian bots? Why not link the sources for your conspiracy theories, chum?

      • NO,actually the GIVING of American technology to the Chinese. He should have been executed.

      • Everyone forgets that what wild bill did was to commit perjury. That’s why he lost his law license as a convicted felon. It wasn’t “just sex”, it was the serious felony of perjury. Of course, libtards like aranby feel that lying is just a normal part of discourse!

      • Dems firmly believe that lying is the ONLY part of discourse.

      • He lied about rape and sexual assault. Yes, he also got caught taking advantage of a barely legal age intern.

      • Trump lied about rape and sexual assault too. And you voted for him and you continue to support him. What am I not getting here? Oh ya, Trump supports your white nationalist fundamentalist agenda! You sold your soul and any moral authority you have for him.

      • BJ Clinton lied UNDER OATH. That’s against the law. There was forensic evidence in the form of DNA splattered on the blue dress.
        Trump never did anything close to that.
        Dems have no credibility to even mention moral authority, much less pretend they get to determine who has any.
        Go abort some babies or kittens because that’s what Dems are about when they’re not battering, groping, and raping women or leaving them to drown slowly at Chappaquiddick.

      • You don’t get it. We don’t care what you say. We have moved on now from persuading you to defeating you.

      • You signed a deal with the devil to advance your agenda. No crystal ball here, but there’s a good chance that putting right radical trash in the Whitehouse will catalyze a dramatic shift to the left. I suggest you wait three years before declaring anything like a victory, though you’ve certainly done permanent damage to the international standing of the US. Why do you think Putin backed Trump (as Trump ally Pompeo just recognized)? Think Putin is trying to MAGA? In this world there is plain dumb, then there’s Republican dumb.

      • He lied UNDER OATH and that’s the only part that mattered.

      • Actually it is about media matters and the 20,000 paid filth such as yourself. It is very sad that some POS pays people to write garbage such as the garbage you write.

      • BJ Clinton was impeached for lying UNDER OATH. He should also have been sanctioned for workplace sexual harassment after pressuring a young intern to service him; it’d be a slam dunk because BJ left his DNA splattered on the blue dress. He also used her lady parts to ‘flavor’ his cigars because women are mere objects of sexual pleasure to him. That’s all good with Dems though.
        Of course the very plausible and believable accounts of him battering and raping women should have been investigated. But compared to Kennedy actually driving a woman off a bridge and leaving her there to die slowly waiting for help while he went home to bed, all that raping, battering and the rest was easy for Dems to embrace.
        Every time Dems talk about standards I stop and realize that MaryJo Kopechne isn’t available for comment. Scummy Dems make my skin crawl.

      • What may or may not have happened in the past has largely become moot. Society isn’t what it was 10, 20 or 30 years ago. This is called progress, clearly a concept you aren’t familiar with.

        If I recall correctly Trump was quite chummy with Bill C back in the day, when Trump was a Demtard Cuck. Perhaps they swapped tips and techniques on sexual assault? Seems quite likely.

        Lies are Trump’s bread and butter. The web he has spun may well be his undoing and that of his party.

      • … happened in the past has largely become moot. Then quit harping on what Trump may or may not have done 10 years ago. What he has done since he became POTUS has been amazing. His reversal of so-called progressive policies gives me hope for my children’s and grandchildren’s futures… and he’s only just begun.

      • Don’t kid on that you care about the future, a dystopia of environmental degradation and moral emptiness. America’s role in the world is shrinking. If only Trump’s deceit, nastyness, incompetence and ignorance had ended 10 years ago I might have a more positive outlook.

      • Lots of crooked pols licked Grump’s boots to get campaign money; that’s the corrupt system Trump beat to become President.
        Pattern and practice are relevant when assessing behavior. Lumbering, drunken Hilly is still protecting molesters and predators just like she protected Bill and Harvey Weinstein.
        It’s who they are.
        BJ likely offered the same tips BJ gave his good buddy Epstein, but Trump was disgusted. Trump has never treated women so badly as battering BJ and drunken, hateful Hilly have all along.
        Obama told the worst, most damaging lies of any President in my lifetime. I didn’t keep my plan or my doctor or save $2,500. I now pay more for worse insurance thanks exclusively to corrupt Dems. Obie armed and funded ISIS and imported terrorists like the San Bernardino shooter and the Boston Bomber and a handful of other terrorists, because Jihadi Obama wanted to inflict more of his violent, murderous homies on us.
        WORST PRESIDENT EVER.

      • Trump’s campaign was born in the racist lies of birtherism and had only gotten worse. The guy is a cancer plain and simple. Let’s give it a couple of years and let history be the judge. Maybe he’ll open up some concentration camps and fulfill your wet dream.

      • Drunken lumbering Hilly started the birther rumor. Trump picked it up three years later but the people who said I’d keep my doctor and my plan are such liars that they blame Trump.
        Jihadi Obama was cancer, putting criminal illegals ahead of citizens and leaving more people on Food Stamps when we finally flushed him than when he was inaugurated.
        You have wet dreams over Pelosi, MadMaxine, and crazy Bernie. Of course you drool over your wishes for concentration camps.
        Sick, you’re just sick. Typical proggie though. Gruber bragged about how Dem voters are too stupid to know how to vote in their own best interests.

      • Nothing Bill Clinton did is a defense of anything Trump has ever done, nor does pro-Clinton hypocrisy justify pro-Trump hypocrisy such as yours. They are both pigs. There is a crucial difference, however -only one of those pigs currently occupies the Oval Office.

      • Yes, but Trump is OUR pig. And he’s doing so many great things (rolling back regulations, nominating conservative judges, the tax cut, etc.) that I can forgive anything he may (or may not) have done in the past. As long as he doesn’t repeat those things in the Oval Office, I’m good with him.
        Now to clean the swamp–which has only just begun!

      • No, both Clintons and most of their associates are pigs and that’s being kind. We have plenty of evidence and then there’s the DNA. Conyers is a pig and Weinstein and most other Dems are pigs, sure. You see pigs everywhere because of the scummy Dems you choose to be with. Apparently that’s who you are.
        BJ Clinton used a young intern’s lady parts to flavor his cigars. You sound like someone who thinks it’s cool to harass a young intern into that. Lumbering, drunken Hilly demeaned and harassed his victims to protect help her access to power and wealth and she’s been consistently hateful toward women ever since. You seem fine with that, again that’s who you choose to admire and who you are.
        .
        They’re all less odiously evil than the ISIS animals who burn people alive in cages but that’s all the good things you can honestly say about Dems.

        Trump is no different and certainly no worse than the millions of honest, hard-working Americans who finally have some decent representation in the corrupt fetid, festering, sewage that is D.C.

      • “They’re all less odiously evil than the ISIS animals who burn people alive in cages but that’s all the good things you can honestly say about Dems.”
        ______

        Except that the evil ISIS would not be around to commit evil if Hillary and Obama had not taken Gaddafi out for no good reason other than Blumenthal saw money making opportunities for Hillary, himself and their pals. They would not have been around to kill anyone if Obama had not removed our troops from Iraq and created a power vacuum, as he was told would happen. Nor would they have created the mayhem they did if Obama had been even half serious about defeating them and let the generals fight them.
        It all goes back to Democrats and Hillary and Obama. ISIS was their tool. They are responsible for them which makes them far more evil than ISIS.

      • Excellent points. I regret my inaccuracy in grossly understating their overwhelming evil. My bad. Enabling ISIS out of greed is beyond heinously and horrifically evil.
        Dems are a massively despicable lot and getting worse/diving lower by the day.

      • Boy, you sure enjoy repeating the sordid details of Clinton’s escapades, don’t you? I understand – who can resist a juicy sex scandal? But I wish you’d admit you just relish (get off on?) talking about cigars and “lady parts” (how playfully coy!) and contemplating all that dirty, dirty “splattered DNA,” than continue to pretend you have some kind of coherent argument or intelligible point to make about morality, sexism, hypocrisy, or anything else for that matter.

      • Dems talking about morality, sexism, hypocrisy or any related aspects of human behavior outside of the gutter or their pants is laughable.
        Weinstein and Conyers and Clinton and Kennedy are Dem big shots. Only Weinstein is held in anything less than hero status, and most Dems would be quick to ignore his victims for big money donations from him if they could keep the donation secret.
        .
        Dems are still lionizing woman-killer Teddy Kennedy and look who gave the Dems SOTU response — a Kennedy. MaryJo Kopechne was unavailable for comment.

      • Trump didn’t leave a young woman to drown in a car. ‘Nuff said..

      • “‘Nuff said.”

        Only if you don’t mind not making a lick of sense.

        I was comparing Trump and Bill Clinton, not Trump and Kennedy. Call me back when Ted Kennedy is elected President.

        Is this really where you set the bar for Trump’s personal character? “As long as he doesn’t commit manslaughter”?

        To the extent people on my side can be accused of hypocrisy by supporting Ted Kennedy (which I didn’t) or Bill Clinton (which I didn’t) and opposing Trump, at least their hypocrisy is running in the right direction, from excusing horrible behavior to condemning it. Your side’s hypocrisy is running in the wrong direction, from condemning the disgusting behavior of Bill Clinton to excusing the disgusting behavior of Donald Trump. (Of course simply yelling “Clinton did it!” Is no excuse at all.)

      • Here’s how it goes moron if you’re seriously not trying to be willfully obtuse – Clinton signed into law a statute that allowed someone making an accusation of s e xual harassment to bring up the defendent’s s e xual history. And as it turns out Buba was accused of harassment by Paula Jones of harassment. Yeah, that’s right dip$h!t, being the Governor of a State and asking an employee to kiss his pecker is by legal definition harassment. So when he was questioned under oath about his history he lied, in blatant violation of a law he signed. I don’t give a flying flip if Buba had consensual relations w/ someone who was NOT a subordinate.
        So why don’t you pull your head out of your leftist partisan @$$ since this isn’t about double standards, but the rule of law. You don’t like the law? Then go tell the feminists and other leftist hacks who insisted on this law that you want it changed. And then GFY.

      • >Impeach Clinton because he committed perjury and subornation of perjury.

        Fixed that for you, you mendacious twat.

      • Watch trump testify for Mueller and you will have perjury beyond any shadow of a doubt, along with obstruction of justice. Or does it only count if it’s a Democrat that lies? You do realize Republican credibility is gone and US credibility is going with it? If I’m a twat do I have to worry about Trump grabbing me?

      • Whyever would Trump testify for Mueller? What has Mueller done?

      • Checked out your Disqus, aranby … props to you for not conveniently making it private.

        32 comments in the past two days, every one a snarky Trump slam, usually of a sexual nature (talking point?) Before that, nothing for two weeks. Before that, nothing for two months.

        Are you just waiting for the checks to clear?

      • No I actually have a life, a family, hobbies and a job. It must be hard for sad-sacks to appreciate that not everyone can spend their lives in a comment board. The odd time I get linked to a particularly ludicrous article via realclearpolitics that demands my response. So I comment, inevitably incurring the angry response of the troglodyte hoard.

      • Put Trump under oath, like he says he’ll do for Mueller (although he may be lying, like the times he said he would release his tax returns). Trump is going to lie – that’s all he does. Let me guess, though, you won’t care?

      • You’re so into pointing fingers you fail to see the flaw in your own argument dude. You cannot escape the fact that while your side DID the same things we now do you stood about and did nothing other than to cheer your side on. Now that the shoe is on the other foot you don’t like it. Now that’s just too bad. This is America dude. Here we lead by example and the example was don’t do as I do do as I say. That example was set by you clowns on the left over twenty years ago. It has now returned to haunt you and rightly so.

      • That is YOUR opinion, not based in any fact. You are just more of the lies and subversions of the Left. We don’t care what Donald Trump did as a powerful, rich, single man. He is walking his talk through and through. A much better alternative to the corrupted moral pandering of the Left.

        You don’t care a bit about women’s dignity or rights! You debase, immoralize and exploit women and say it is in the name of freedom and self-expression. As a woman, I am SO on to your methods and so are many of my sisters.

        You are evil.

      • I debase women? Not the proud genital grabber in the Whitehouse? And didn’t trump bang the porn star three months after little barron was born? You’re not telling me the wee fella was born out of wedlock? Not to a moral authority like trump? You and women like you are a blight, a cancer upon society. Now that you get a little taste pig reality you can go back to your steady diet of curated lies.

      • I love it when the left reaches for the moral high ground. Especially since they’ve done nothing but trash it…until now. Gee, We wonder why lol!!!

      • Really, what would a Trump supporter know about moral high ground? What would you know about class or decency? None of you are any better than the trash you elected. You support bigotry, greed, division, anger and isolation. You support groping and extramarital sex and the rape pig the environment. Please don’t claim to occupy the moral high ground. You sold your soul for this joker.

      • Lol!!! Hey dude, we just got tired of being called prudes. Decided to act like you guys for a change. I see that now you’re trying to act like we did. Well have at it you pusillanimous prude.

        Oh BTW, we’ll keep the gov’t while you’re at it.

      • There you go again (to quote Ronaldus Magnus), projecting.

      • Hey di*kbreath, sorry but most of the perverts, degenerates Hollywood rapists, rape enablers like the odious Mrs. Clinton are leftists like you. You have no argument . You’re a vile deranged pissant

      • Thank you for your thoughtful reply. There have been and are degenerates on both sides. You differ in that you voted for and continue to support a known serial degenerate, Trump, and you support child molesters such as Moore in Alabama. This is how you have become known as the party of scumbags. Republicans will stoop to any low to advance their agenda. Call me names as you please, you must understand at some level your own repugnance and corruption.

      • you need to follow the advice of Abraham Lincoln who said, “It is better to remain silent and thought a fool than to speak out and remove all doubt.” Or, more simply: when you have dug yourself into a hole, the best thing to do is to get out, not dig deeper.

      • Maybe you should share your little wisdom-nugget with Trump.

      • You are in the hole you dug. Stop digging it deeper and get out.

      • You got a big thing for holes, don’t you? As the great DJT once tweeted, “the hole is the goal”. Be it a porn star, a Russian prostitute, an unwilling associate, Ivanka or even Melania, Trump is all about the hole. That’s true class.

      • You are a disgusting human being who gives legitimate liberals a bad name. Slither back into the gutter from where you came.

      • Haha why don’t you slide back to your hole? When Trump gets recorded talking about grabbing non-consenting women’s genitals it’s all good; when some anonymous guy in a comment section says something vulgar your tender sensibilities are suddenly triggered? Once again proving there it’s nothing so hypocritical, nothing so soft, nothing so dumb as a Trumpette. Don’t you have some innocent people to slaughter like your little second amendment MAGA hat friend?

      • Wow, you really hate women, don’t you? Get help. Half the world is female. It is not healthy to be at war with that many people.

      • You having a stroke or something? Or are you just that into Trump? No wonder you guys believe everything you here, you can’t even follow a conversation.

      • We don’t care. We finally have somebody willing to punch progs in the mouth. That’s all that matters.

      • It’s all about beating the opposition, preferably with a nice violent analogy. Nothing about making the world better, nothing about helping people, nothing decent or positive. A cheap, vulgar sentiment from a cheap, vulgar person. I’d say you sold your soul for this POS, but frankly I don’t think you had a soul to sell. An abomination.

      • I really do not know. You would have to ask Bill and Hillary to find the true answer to your question.

    • …and the best (by far) is yet to come, as the swamp’s bloodless coup attempt gets revealed in glorious detail (naming names) mere days from now when #ReleaseTheMemo happens. It will give gory details of the swamp’s vast, complex CRIMINAL CONSPIRACY against a fairly elected President and his administration, and will also name the MSM fake news “journalists” who have been paid by the Democrats/DNC and the Clinton Foundation. Stay alert, people … it’s far bigger, more far-reaching and far more insidious than anybody has yet implied or revealed. If John Grisham or John Le Carre had written what is about to be revealed nobody would read it, because fiction has to be plausible and what has truly been happening verges on the UNbelievable. Democrats will be doomed for a decade … only a decade because America’s ‘political memory’ is too short.

      • Wow.., you “know” soooo much!
        Most of us don’t “know” what Devin Nunes partisan memo opines. But.., you do “know”.., did you help write it.., or does this information just come to you naturally ?
        “Verges on the Unbelievable” [sic].., indeed!

      • Only if leftist clowns like you understood the truth of the Dossier

      • Well.., I’m a Conservative. Which makes you just someone who makes assumptions based on very little information. No surprise there!

      • Then you should know the truth…Watch better news sources

      • Sure you are-just like little billy kristol. Have fun with your delusions.

      • You are [both] confused and ill-informed. Confused.., because this discussion is not about the so called “Dossier”.., it is [instead] about Devin Nunes’s continuing attempt to muddy the waters with a partisan opinion memo, likely to reveal “sources” and “methods” to the Russians and others, intended [only] to obstruct Mueller’s progress in determining the extent of Russian involvement in supporting Donald Trump’s effort to win the presidency and govern our country.
        And ill-informed because I am a Conservative, not a so called “leftist”.
        The notion that those of us that suspect Trump is a Russian puppet is not limited to “leftist” only!

      • Once again you make quick ignorantly founded assumptions; assumptions made in an unsuccesful effort to deflect from intellectually addressing my specific rebuttal to your mistaken “Dossier” comment – LOL.
        Indeed.., as I stated.., I am a Conservative. As I did not previously state, I am not presently a Republican.
        You assumed.., something you excel in..,, (LOL).., that., I was a Republican.
        In fact.., when the Republican Party became a Republican Party in name only, a party that increases our deficit, a party that unfairly implements a tax plan hurting the working class of highly taxed states, like New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, California and others, a party that refuses to retaliate against Putin’s attack, a party benefited by Putin’s attack.., when the party went from Lincoln’s party to Trump’s party.., I resigned from the cancer stricken party.

        Accordingly.., by calling me a “rhino”.., you are once again “confused and ill-informed”. Conversely.., if you are a registered Republican in support of a golden headed con man landlord from Queens New York, you might find that particular creature, the “rhino”, in your bathroom mirror – LMFAO!

        As to your cryptic while unintelligible “red pill is coming” comment.., a “red pill” to be consumed by who I don’t know.., keep in mind, regardless of who consumes the “red pill”.., when the white dove, in the blue sky, flies over the green oak tree.., it will be time out for the brown beaver.
        Thanks for affording me a good orange laugh this grey afternoon.

      • Billy Crystal, George Will, Erik Erikson are people that I lost all patience for long ago and I have no time for you. You’re on the wrong side of history and if you don’t know what the red pill is look it up.

        goodbye

      • I am in your debt for putting me in the same sentence with those gentlemen. I would be even more in your debt if you modified it by adding John McCain to the list.
        Thanks!
        And.., if.., by chance.., the “red pill” – to which you crypticly refer – is the previously super hyped Nunes/White House partisan memo, released earlier today.., I could best research it by goggling, not “a red pill”..,but.., instead.., “a fart in a hurricane” – LMFAO!
        Let’s talk again during the “impeachment” next year.

      • I hope you understand that this memo is only 10% of what will be released. And you still haven’t a clue of what I’m really talking about or what will be happening in the future. Never trumper’s are always caught flat-footed

      • Oh.., I understand now.., this Republican Party Partisan Opinionated Memo is only 10% of what is to be released.., and you know more, by virtue of supporting Trump, than I do, because I don’t.
        Well.., I will not argue about your grandious claim to be “clairvoyant”.., but.., I will agree that there is likely 90% more information to be released, some info in The Dem’s memo, presently prevented from release by the WH lackey, Nunes.., but most reliable info to be released by The Honorable Robert Mueller III – a Republican!

      • If democrats had done any one of hundreds of things trump has done you would be having a field day. If Obama used campaign funds to pay off a prostitute days before the election you would justifiably have a meltdown. Trump does it and it’s no big deal. Republicans have become the party of greed, meanness and above all hypocrisy. Let history be the judge. Generations will shake their heads at the way you people sold your souls and besmirched your nation to advance your radical right agenda.

      • Obama did far worse. He used tax payer funds and government agencies to attack his political opponents.

      • According to whom? Worse than what? Destroying America’s standing in the world and Americans’ faith in democracy?

      • How much is soros and media matters paying you????

      • Zero buddy. I’m part of the two-thirds who didn’t drink the Trump coolaid. Perhaps I’m smarter, perhaps I was raised better; I’m guessing some combination of the two.

      • You’re a pretentious moron using another phony number. If you like, I’d be willing to explain it to you in language you might understand, if you have a dictionary handy.

      • Hey my man, I have a smart phone, so I don’t need a dictionary (so 90s!). Fire away, you totally sane, stable genius. Hit me with cold, hard truths. Incorporate, if you will, some links ( that is links to a site on the world wide web, the ‘internet’) in your extremely erudite reply so I can see what kind of backwater sources you get your misinformation from. I thank you in advance!

      • Baloney. While Trump was at Davos, they treated him like a King. It’s only trolls like you who hate him.

      • You mouth a lie and then want to compare that with the crimes obama and hillary committed. Disgusting.
        History will truly judge your hypocrisy.

      • The anagram of your pseudonym says it all.

        wanker brays ill

      • An interesting take on things. Really says a lot about your state of mental health. Always interesting to see inside the mind of a Trumpster. So enlightening.

      • Andrew McCabe has just stepped down as Asst. Director of the FBI. This comes one day after FBI Director Wray was shown and read the memo. I’m wondering if the report that McCabe said, “first we’er going to F… General Flynn [which they did], then we’re going to F… President Trump” [which Mueller has been attempting for months] is true. Given the already released texts between Strzok and Page, it is certainly possible. To suggest the FBI/DOJ are biased is a euphemism.

      • I love the frothy mouthed response to two lover’s texts after the year of silence on uncovered lies about 20 Russian meetings between a dozen Americans on Trumps campaign and Russian intelligence. All lied about repeatedly.

        BUT THE TEXTS!!!!

        Reminds me of BUT THE EMAILS!!! (Not the ones between campaign Trump and the Russians, the ones from our State Department, that indicate no wrongdoing. The ones investigated by Republicans 6 times.)

        You guys are so credible. The 70% of America that isn’t Republican just takes you al SO SERIOUSLY.

        See you in November. #IMPEACH

      • You have no idea what is about to happen do you? Here is a hint. Dec 21st XO from President Trump

      • I’ll save you some tissue for November. Because Nov 2018 will be a replay of Nov 2016 for the crybabies.

      • There is NO Democratic Party, it doesn’t exist. It has been completely overrun by socialists and communists. They are at BEST the American Socialist Party. They are broken, immoral, corrupted and bankrupt.

        They don’t exist. We all know it, they are dead.

    • “Then by Divine Providence Donald Trump came along”

      I always felt during the election that this was what was going on. I just thought that with all of the opposition and scandals in the media, God had to be pushing him along because no mere mortal could survive everything that was thrown at Trump as many times as it was thrown at Trump.

      I still believe that, but let me throw out another scenario.

      What if that was all a psyop? Whoever knows how to pull the media strings, and these people are brilliant, has done it in a way to simulate divine intervention. Is it possible? Can people be good enough and smart enough to pull something like that off? Who knows?

    • In the last year we have had proven how our federal bureaucracy has been turned into a fascist state apparatus attempting to rule the country. We knew the IRS had been used by Obama as a political tool against opposition. We knew the DOJ had been subverted to selling guns to Mexican cartels in Fast and Furious. We knew the Supreme Court had been subverted into making Obamacare legal. We knew the EPA was being used to stop the growth of the economy in service to the profit of the environmental oligarchs. We knew that law had been turned into a plaything of the powerful to be ignored for the convenience and profit of the oligarchs. However all this did not prepare us for how that government bureaucracy would attempt a coup against a duly elected President Trump. Even more challenging to comprehend is how deep the rot of fascism has steeped into the fabric of American culture. The entire propaganda ministry of the country that we call the entertainment industry has been co opted into serving that bureaucratic coup.

      • 1. ‘Occupy’, ‘Progressive’, ‘Medical Marijuana’ etc. were subject to the same IRS scrutiny as Tea Party and so on. It’s been debunked. move on.
        2. What environmental oligarchs? And it’s the economy, stupid–what president looking to seize power would inhibit growth?
        3. The 20th century would have been a lot prettier if bureaucrats had stood up to certain elected officials. Not that I’m actually comparing trump to Hitler or Mussolini–they were good at their jobs.

      • “It’s been debunked, move on”. That’s old news, move on. She’s still not president, move on.

      • 1. Fake news has done a job on you.
        2. It took effort to hold the US economy down to less than 2% economic growth for 8 years. Examples: no pipe line, reject fracking on government lands, Force closing coal plants and all those costly inefficient windmills and solar panels are a few of the ways taxpayer funds were funneled to the oligarchs like Buffett and Immelt.

      • More so were burdensome regulations that strangled business.

      • You’re wrong and the courts have proved you so. The Tea party groups that sued won and received settlements. Why wouldn’t you know about that?

        “what president looking to seize power would inhibit growth?”
        I can’t believe you’re that uninformed. What do you think obama was doing during his eight year reign of terror. It sure wasn’t encouraging growth. He set negative record on everything, partly by gaming the numbers, by changing the definitions.
        You support a lying, murdering criminal and her serial rapist husband and have the gall to lecture us on morality? Pathetic. obama is the worst President we have ever had. Trump has done more in one year than obama did in eight and at a fraction of the human costs.

      • Recall fascists are right wing nationalists who round up ethnic minorities. Just like you.

      • There’s no such thing as “right wing” fascism. Fascism was authoritarian and statist. No different than communism, just another name for murdering dictators.
        “Right wing” is about individual freedom.
        How many “ethinic minorities” have been rounded up in the last year?
        Talk about paranoids.

      • Not too many yet. We know how much that disappoints the base, particularly your fine, upstanding KKK friends.

      • You don’t even know any racists because they are rarer than hen’s teeth in America except for the racists in your party. Yeah, the actual party of the KKK, democrats. So go GFY you racist POS.

      • So I’m racist but I don’t know any racists but I know lots of lefties who are, according to your ‘logic’, also racist. You are as stupid and ignorant as you are racist and nasty. You need chemo, you walking tumour.

      • You and your kind are racists but you just won’t admit it. So again, GFY!

      • Ah the KKK canard. Robert “Sheets” Byrd, the old Klansman, Bull Connor, Nathan Bedford Forrest, and the rest of the KKK/Democrats in hell must be having a good laugh at a stupid little apologist like you for their racism. You want to own all the blacks your Democrat forbearers lynched also?

      • Ah, ignorance is so cute. Fascism is a form of socialism. It was called the National Socialist party for a reason.

      • Mussolini even admitted that a lot of his ideology came from the left. One of the left’s greatest lies is that fascism all comes from the right. There are maybe a few exception (Middle and South America), but totalitarianism and authoritarianism overwhelmingly comes from the left. Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, Hitler. All leftists.

      • Leftists are socialists and socialists easily turn to murder to insure obedience. Socialists always know what people should do and will force them to live as they should. Today the ruling kakistocracy controls the socialist gangs of the Democrat party. If the elite lose control of those gangs, things will get very bad very quickly. Uncontrolled socialists are murderous as history has proven over and over in the 20th century.

      • That’s what the fringe right revisionists say. We will see how you feel when you get your yellow star, Goldstein.

      • Ok mate. I’ll be there for you or whoever else needs me when the roundup starts. Good luck!

      • Protecting individual rights, enforcing the law, reducing the size and scope of government, which group of fascists has ever done any of those right wing things?

      • Trump and friends, that’s who! You’ll be free to roam the small part of the desert wastelands that isn’t owned by corporations or billionaires. Private jails, private roads, private health care, a neutered and sycophantic media in an isolationist s-hole ruled by a megalomaniac and his butt kissing cronies. Sounds like heaven!

    • This is another Civil War – the Culture War. As Abraham Lincoln had to cycle through 5 other Generals to find the one who would fight, Ulysses S. Grant, so have we had to search for the man for the moment – Donald J. Trump. My support is firm. Fight on Mr. President, fight on!

      • Donald Trump is a womanizer! – NeverTrumpers
        I don’t care, he fights! – the rest of us deplorables.

      • Ah, the Bushes as our George McClellan. Good way to look at it.

    • Why do I feel the same way, just totally opposite? Something ain’t right here!

    • What an appropriate response to an article about conspiracy theories! Clinton is the Marxist queen of the left? She’s centrist at best – she just seems extreme from your fringe right fundamentalist perspective. There’s nothing divine about Trump. The malignant ideology is yours, with Trump as the primary stage 4 tumor. The credibility of the Republican party and the USA is a fading memory. Perhaps, with luck, we will see this mess catalyze the political rise of the true left. Hypocrites and liars make way!

    • Unfortunately the cancer of the left will never die. See the response of the marxofascist aranby to your post.
      We’ve had a century of abject failure and death of millions at the hands of these marxofascists and yet they still insist that they will prevail and bring about a human utopia here on earth.
      The only thing that will stop the aranbys of the world is a bullet when they come for you.

    • Totally agree, they are NOT going to go quietly. They can’t believe they are being exposed.

      They are demons straight from Hell and that’s where they will return.

    • Unfortunately, leftists believe that using any means possible to discredit, smear, or destroy those who don’t submit to them is just fine. And the pressituties provide cover for the leftists through their release of propaganda to protect the leftist ideology.

    • Wow. I think you are on the wrong website. This tripe belongs over at Fox

    • Just remember their favorite motto, and you know all you need to know about the “resistance”, and their favored politicians and celebrities.

      “By any means necessary ….”

      That was the same statement Lenin, and then later Stalin, used in 1917. By their works you will know them …

      The Democrats are who they’ve always been, since the early 1900’s.

    • You have thousands of worthless bureaucrats and government flunkies pillaging our wealth and subverting our freedom. They view Trump and the great unwashed as an existential threat to their useless lives . They won’t go down without a fight.

    • “This is what the death throes of a malignant ideology looks like.”

      Agreed. Hopefully ousting Trump after one term will pound the final nail in the coffin.

  6. Dr. Hanson is no hysterical, red-faced conspiracy monger. He has shown admirable restraint and reflection in the years I have followed him. This is all the more reason to heed the message of his article. There is a secret, determined and profoundly unconstitutional movement afoot to supplant the duly elected president of the United States. To an alarming extent, those institutions bound to defend the constitutional order have abdicated their duty and turned a blind eye. Likewise, the public is blissfully ignorant of a slow and remorseless coup d’etat unfolding before us. It is one thing to dismiss the corruption and venality of the Clinton crime syndicate that has operated in plain view for decades; it is another to remain passive while the presidency and the electoral process are willfully sabotaged. As in so many many matters. Shakespeare sought to put our dilemma in proportion: “If little faults proceeding on distemper shall not be winked at, how shall we stretch our eye when capital crimes, chewed, swallowed, and digested, appear before us?”

    • If you ever get to meet him, shake his hand. You’ll find it a “farmer’s hand”, large and calloused from doing an honest, long, and hard day’s work. He’s a good guy, and fun to talk with since he’s so intelligent.

  7. The comparison is stunning…the corruption in the Obama regime was completely buried by the media, and as outlined above, the media, the Hollywood elites, and the deep state have a terminal case of Trump Derangement Syndrome on steroids. As we are finding out, Obama and his cronies committed real felonies, while Trump is being falsely accused by Mueller and his team of political hacks who look for process crimes that don’t exist…we need a special council to investigate Mueller, the FBI and DOJ…pronto!

    • Trump isn’t being falsely accused by Mueller. If Mueller accuses Trump of anything he will have the FACTS. Be patient.

      • The only way to clean up the corrupted intelligence agencies (FBI, CIA, NSA & DOJ) is to offer “Full and Complete Immunity” (including protection) and “Large Cash Bonuses” to anyone within those agencies to come forward with information of wrongdoing.

        Plenty of “Good People” will come forward.

      • worthy idea, but insufficient.
        The nature of such organizations is that they inevitably will seek the continuance and ever-greater power of the organizations themselves. Along the lines of Dr. Pournelle’s “Iron Rules of Bureaucracy”. Think, for example, the term “Byzantine labyrinth”, or the Curia, for that matter.
        No. The ONLY way to avoid these issues is not HAVE these organizations at all, and certainly as continuing operations accountable only to themselves. For example, the FBI was sold to the citizenry as a investigative agency ONLY. Certainly not as a quasi Federal police force, which is what it has become. Just as the intelligence agencies have become a force in their own right, knowing that they can outlast any “mere” elected officials, such as Presidents. They are correct in that. And we know it.

        ABOLISH them! And de-weaponize the few remaining ones. For example, why does the Railroad Retirement Board employ heavily armed SWAT teams? Or the (unconstitutional to exist at all) Federal Department of Education?
        Happens, always and without fail, whenever government becomes a “they”. As in, “they” did this. “They” ruled against it. No accountability to We The People, and “consent of the governed” becomes a forgotten concept.

      • Are you a Russian troll? Oh wait that was a rhetorical question.

      • The If will never come as anything that is there about anything would have been leaked already. The Left just reeks of desperation as they see the drip drip drip of their fantasy dissolving in the harsh reality that is MAGA

      • Even his own team thinks that there’s no there there. The investigation has been a big pile of sham trying to placate the leftists like the guy who tried to murder the Republican baseball team, who’ve been so zombiefied by ‘The Narative’ that they genuinely aren’t able to reconcile Hilary’s loss with burning cars and shooting their political opponents.

        Thanks Ben Rhodes. Your echo chamber has done such wonderfull things for the country.

      • Thanks for reminding us of Ben Rhodes, who, in a moment of candor, admitted that most of the MSM were nothing but willing, clueless sycophants who would not question anything that Rhodes, as Obama Administration spokesman, told them even. The MSM have so discredited themselves that I think many of us regard them as basically useless or even worse, total partisan hacks for the DNC.

      • The *fact* is Mueller is more corrupt and unethical asleep than Trump is wide awake.

      • And yet Peter Strozok just said that in 10 months on the Council, has hasn’t seen one thing

      • A Special Council to even be called there has to be a crime. This illegitimate has no crime against Trump. It is a hunting trip and after the last year…There is still nothing

    • And Muller will drag this out through the Midterm elections so that just the hint of prosecution could swing ther House and then trigger a foolish impeachment political vote. This is looking more like a third world cout.

  8. On November 8th we get to see all the mush for brains howell at the moon.MAGA!

  9. This coup attempt will fail and America will be great again.

    • if the coup succeeds we get pence. some coup. think they want pence?

  10. All of these people high and low pushing for civil war should know that there are millions of other people like me who can hit a liver sized target at 300 yards every time.

    • I try to explain this to my liberal friends. They think they are going to win a civil war yet the right owns a healthy majority of the weapons and certainly has a monopoly on the skills to effectively use them.

      • But what course would the military take Rob? See my reponse to Red posted above.

    • I hear you Red but here’s the deal as this old codger ( 73 ) sees it. You can hit that target where you live but you and others like you are probably far away from the action which is on the liberal coasts. The other thing is, what would the US military do in case a real Civil War II did break out? Some would choose one side or another. The military could defeat an insurgency in any pitched battle. But, if you are talking guerilla warfare, something that would be spread out over many years, now you have a dynamic of a completely different nature.

      • A real civil war IS breaking out and it is being started by the liberal side. If it turned to armed insurrection, it will be the side opposing the elected government, not the side supporting the elected government. The answer to your question is obvious, the military would support the elected government.

      • It depends on the sentiment. In 1861 ( which is the only thing we have to go on historically ) the military split, some going north, others going south. And once again, most of the insurrection is happening on the coasts. A large portion of those opposing them are far away. Are they going to organize en masse and attack? These are questions not easily dismissed.

      • If Trump is impeached and removed from office the military will support President Pence.

  11. Yes, the witch hunt has been a long strange trip, and we do need a program to keep all the criminal actors straight. Funny how the only ones getting caught are the accusers. But that whole Barry Bunch were arrogant, lazy and incompetent. A very toxic combo.

  12. Like sore losing hanging chads, the Democrats desperately engage in civil disobedience and rebellion since they lost the election and are losing their ability to corrupt the nation’s finest institutions (FBI, IRS, etc.) with their unethical and possibly criminal machinations against political opponents.

  13. We can only hope and pray that any traitors to the United States within the Justice Dept using illegal means to subvert the President, along with any others responsible for weaponization of the Justice Dept, are identified and tried for sedition. Guilty verdicts will suffice, time in prison would be better.

  14. It is genuinely chilling to discover just what the liberal half of this country’s population consider democracy, government by the choice and consent of the people. The liberal left’s game has always been, “Either we play by my rules, or we don’t play.” Now they both threaten and attempt to throw over the card table altogether and rule by fiat. This country has always been more or less evenly divided between conservatives of one stripe or another and liberals of one stripe or another. Until now, there has been agreement that the party able to convince the greater number of citizens of the rightness of its platform would prevail. We have left that era behind, and now have one party that believes in government by the people through choice expressed in election, and one party that is so arrogant and certain of its moral superiority that it abandons all morals whatsoever and attempts to win by lying, coercion, fomenting, “resisting,” demonstrating, screaming down any opposition, burning and looting.

    • What is really tragic is the word liberal has been usurped by wannabe totalitarians who have no concept of what a liberal democracy should be, or if they do, have nothing but contempt for it. A true liberal adheres to the principles of fairness, equal protection under the law, equal opportunity (but not necessarily equal outcomes), living by the precepts of honesty and goodwill, and the rights of individuals to be individuals (not flotsam drifting in the great collective). Of course, our wonderful media holds these truths to be self evident for themselves being in their minds superior to noisy, slobbering proles. However, what these self-identified “elites” fail to realize is that those on top doing the kicking now will find someone else doing the later. They never learn.

  15. The Democratic Party – Government of the scumbags, by the scumbags, for the scumbags.

  16. Coup d’État: A Practical Handbook, semi serious. Wonder how many coups have been plan using this book?

  17. Spot on!

    But then again, what did anyone expect from the party and followers of our former first constitutional scholar President who once exhorted; “If they bring a knife, we bring a gun?”

    Exitus acta probat
    The Chicago way.
    The ends justifies the means.
    By any means necessary.

    Anyway one cares to say it, it all means the same thing. LAWLESSNESS.

  18. The Denial and Projection is big with Obamites and Clintonistas. I wonder why? Does anyone think that the Obama team could pull off a coup? Community Organizers are not known for their managerial success.

    Pay close attention to campaign fundraising. Obama starved the state parties for funds (dittos Hillary) and wiped out their bench. All this talk of ‘resistance’ is merely fantasy. The human capital of the left is at best marginal.

  19. Dr. Hanson is no hysterical, red-faced conspiracy fantasist. He has admirably resisted the impulse to indulge conspiracy theories i

  20. Let’s consider the silver linings: Affirmative Action is exposed as the liberal hoax that it is; The mask is pulled off both Black and Islamic racism; Militant liberalism is exposed as an empty suit; Sports and Hollywood are returning to their rightful peripheral places in our cultural orbit; Capitalism is also retuning to its rightful place in our cultural orbit; The Nomenklatura is exposed as greedy and dangerous, and the bureaucracy is being ratcheted back to their rightful place as civil servants rather than civil serpents… and there are more. MAGA.

      • it’s full of claims without discussing the full backdrop and other factors. he usually throws in some reasonable sounding counterpoints.

      • I don’t have the time or skills but one thing I believe it’s not a coup of pissed off snowflake hilary losers.though there are some hard core lefties like that. there are millions of Americans who are shocked that we could elect this guy. from the moment he insulted pows, judges, Mexicans, disabled he was out of bounds. he has a,history. David day Johnston book details how involved he has been with Russian mobsters foir financing. hello, Russians criminals! he had too many international business deals to be president in the first place but I guess we don’t have enough legal protection against that?
        not to mention he lacks knowledge and egages,in petty fights.a president has a,presidential ceremony function. yes there is an element of dirty politics too. its been that week for the last 16 years.

        vdh acts like it’s a,simple coup of people who want to turn USA socialist and I don’t agree and it sure,aint that simple.

      • Actually it’s that simple.
        The real socialists are a minority, but they control most of the press and media culture.
        They consistently whip up the low information masses to be enraged at Trump’s crude style rather than any of the substance.
        The acts of violence are real, as are the threats of the left to our republic and its Constitution.

      • And isn’t it hysterical the numbers of ‘millennials’ who *support* the concept of Communism. Apparently our schools no longer teach about the 100 million or so corpses it produced in the last century…

  21. Bravo Mr Hanson. You have articulately spelled out the unhinged (and sometimes illegal) acts of the left.

  22. Last night, I watched a talking-head show that featured David Frum, former Republican speech writer and rabid Trumper- he was almost foaming at the mouth, he was so outraged. He told the panel that ” the economy is doing no better now than it was during Obama’s last years”. The panel nearly fell over. I realized again that I voted for Trump to rid Washington of Republican grandees as much as the liberal nitwits of the prior administration.

  23. The most reliable hallmark of the conspiracy theory is the shopping list of disparate circumstantial evidence assembled without regard to relative importance or connection.

    It’s sad to see a once-impressive intellect in decline. Perhaps it’s time for his family to take a hand.

  24. Those willing to subvert our elections using their government positions have always been there and will always be present at some level. The difference has been that the under the Obama administration, upper management was chosen to allow or even support using the government as a political weapon. They believed that there was no risk to their futures because Hillary was such a shoo-in and would continue to provide cover to the rats in the system.

  25. Dr. Hanson seems to forgot which President was a guest on Alex Jones. Also, which President accused Obama of not being born here. As for the Mueller investigation-remember, it wasn’t the Democrats that appointed him.

    • President Trump may have made reference to Obama’s pastor…Reverend “GOD damn America” Wright or even to “Nation of Islam” Farrakhan or maybe the Communist Van Jones an member of Obama’s Administration. Michelle’s disgust of America is well known and finally played down but only as the end neared for Obama…..

      No Sparky…we’ve not forgotten.

    • There is only two requirements to be president, be 35 years old and be native born. There is only one metric required to meet this standard, a birth certificate. That Sparky wanted to troll America by not presenting one for three years is not Trump’s fault, its Sparky’s. I like that Trump forced Sparky to follow the law. Too bad no one else did.

      • The birth certificate was a phony copied and photoshopped. Watch the arpaio video for proof.

    • You forgot who “hanged out” with an unrepentant terrorist(Ayers), a subversive preacher and called those who did not voted for him bitter clingers. Hillary accused Obambi of not being born here in their bitter 2008 fight for the nomination.
      As for the Mueller investigation, remember it was based on a made up lie and a leak by the supposedly “loyal” CONmey.

  26. Let them stew in their “resistance” for the next seven years….

  27. Why would anyone believe this horses*t? Its pure Donald Trump testicle waxing!! The truth can’t be found on AG! Nothing but propaganda!!

  28. This is not a French underground ‘resistance’; it is much more akin to what the Nazi Werewolves did in Germany after they lost power at the end of World War II.

  29. Yes, all that happened–and more. But the unbelievable aspect is that the FBI and DOJ continue to attack and undermine the President, even though the AG is Jefferson Beauregard Sessions, III. The question is whether he is senile, an imbecile, permanently ensconced in a fetal position, or nursing a wild grudge against insults from the President.

      • Yeah. Letting the FBI and DOJ lie and stonewall Congress is what you call ethics. Telling Congress the text messages were “lost” by the FBI and then the Inspector General “finding” them a day later is what you call ethics. Writing an exoneration of Hillary before she was interviewed is highly ethical. Thanks.

  30. Look into the Judicial Watch ‘expose’ on Mueller – the imbecile who ‘ordered US law enforcement nationwide to cease surveillance and purge collected intel on domestic Islamic terrorism threats’.

    There ain’t enough Helium on the planet to get Mueller anywhere near a ‘moral or ethical high ground’ from which to ‘investigate’ anyone.

    • All of the Elites think he’s pure as the driven snow.

  31. The Demofacist party and its liberomarxist members are nothing but the bullies they proclaim others are.
    The complicity of the press and their willingness to impose and project on to this nation their collective hatred for US is what drives their very existence.

    Liberomarxists always know what is best for you and yours. In their arrogance they do not hesitate to bully us, all while proclaiming that they are the “true” victims.

    • Look up the word “bully” in the dictionary and you will find a picture of Rush Limbaugh. You have no right to lecture people.

      • idiot.
        and you spelled Carl’s name wrong.
        moron.

      • You don’t even know who your father is loser .

      • Mr. Sagan calls others ignorant; not so much. That liberal playbook wherein you are to be cudgeled into accepting politically “correct” dogma is a dog that just will no longer hunt.

      • Ha,ha,ha,lecturing people! Ha, ha, ha, Obambi did the same, did you tell him he had no right to lecture people? especially those who disagree with him politically?

        Or were you afraid to be called “racist”!

  32. Talk of “civil war” is overblown. Civil wars don’t begin until one side has concluded that

    1. the party in power is pursuing policies that threaten the socioeconomic system of those out of power

    2. the “outs” have failed to return to power via the ballot box, after repeated elections

    3. the “outs” see that demographic, social, and economic trends are working against them to improve the outcome in future elections

    4. although not essential, it can be important if those out of power are concentrated in contiguous geographic regions that can form the nucleus of a new polity.

    These four conditions lead the US into Civil War in 1861. As of right now, only point 1 above is present. The underlying problems that lead to the US Civil War existed for decades before the southern states seceded from the Union. The US has two groups that are at stage one. Both left and right believe their concept of America is fundamentally threatened by the other. But we are many elections away from stage 2.

  33. Trump interrupted the DEMOCRATS Red Revolution.

    He has literally engaged Sata

  34. Even if Trump invites a lot of opposition and push back because of his style and policies, I have been shocked by the lack of morals openly displayed by his opponents, which includes Dems, MSM, the entertainment industry, academia, and the EU. They think that destroying Trump, and the policies that got him elected, is such a noble end that any means is justified. This kind of amoral thinking is dangerous.

    • And straight from the Nazi playbook.

    • “Lack of morals”? You’re kidding right? Three wives (and counting), affair with a porn star that he paid to cover up and explaining how women love it when he “grabs them by the pussy”, investigations into possible money laundering and collusion with an enemy State that has already swept up 4 members of his administration; yeah, go ahead and talk to me about morals.

      • I’m so ignorant that I don’t consider his having three wives (and counting) nearly as important as what he’s accomplished for the country. I’m so ignorant that I believe the porn star when she states for the record that the alleged affair never happened. I’m so ignorant that the locker room talk doesn’t bother me nearly as much as Clinton’s rapes and sexual assaults. I’m so ignorant that I’m thankful we have for president a man who loves the country and is doing his best to improve the lives of every US citizen.

      • He hasn’t accomplished squat for this Country unless you count damaging our world reputation and screwing with trade deals that benefit America but hey, not on your radar screen, right? “Loves this Country”, what planet are you living on? If you haven’t figured out that the only thing Donald J Trump loves is Donald J Trump then you deserve everything that’s coming. I’m retired and independently and I’m sooooooo looking forward to people like you filing for bankruptcy because you were stupid enough to hitch your wagon to that idiot.

      • Damaging our world reputation? Sorry, being the doormat and piggy bank for a bunch of s…hole countries becomes tiresome (and expensive!) after many decades. (One does wonder though, if our reputation is shot, why was Trump treated like a rock star at Davos?)
        The trade deals that Trump is “screwing with” are those that did not favor the US. Accordingly, Americans should be pleased that he’s getting us better deals.
        As for my deserving everything that’s coming: If the stock market, unemployment figures, consumer confidence, draining of the swamp, defeat of ISIS, etc., are examples of what’s coming, may I have some more, please?
        PS: Why would you wish people who have a different opinion from you, bankruptcy? Trump wasn’t my first choice (Walker was) or even my sixth. I didn’t vote for Trump: I voted against the Harridan. (And. so far. I’m pleased with the results.)
        Though I disagree with your political views, I don’t wish you any will.

      • Tell that to the farmers who are going to lose bigly if NAFTA goes down. Mexico and Canada are already negotiating and signing trade deals that exclude the U.S. HIs pull out of the TransPacificTradeAgreement has left China in the cat birds seat in south-east Asia, a part of the world whose economic growth potential is enormous and could benefit the U.S. economy for years to come. The stock market and unemployment are where they are because the previous administration laid a solid foundation for growth, plain and simple, ask any economist. And why would I wish you ill, because people like you who are so short sighted and can’t see your hand in front of your face are destroying the future of this Country and damaging my children’s inheritance. P.S. The Donald was boo’ed at DAVOS.

      • The trade deals that Trump is cancelling were bad for the US as a whole. He wants fairness for everyone, not just our trading “partners.”
        China is certainly not “in the cat birds seat” in Asia as Trump is establishing ever closer ties with Japan, South Korea, Tiawan, and Viet Nam. These improved relationships will pay many present and future dividends to the US not only militarily but also economically.
        The “previous administration laid a solid foundation for growth”: Yes, high taxes, cronyism (Solyndra anyone?), and strangling regulations will do that every time … Not. “Ask any economist” such as Krugman or the wrong-every-time Keynesians? (That’s the go to economic theory the Times and the Post rely on for their reporting.) No thanks. I’ll go with the precepts of Hayek and Friedman, the economists that got it right.
        I find it sad that you would wish others misfortune. Apparently, you’re a bitter, unhappy soul because you lost an election. (Why is it that all you lefties resort to malevolent thoughts and actions whenever anyone disagrees with you? I know some on the right do that as well, but that seems to be the fall back position for all lefties.)
        Here’s a thought that should cheer you: Hillary isn’t president! That alone improves your children’s future.
        PS: The few boos that Trump got at Davos were from the press section. The attendees did not boo him; they fell all over themselves just to get a glimpse of him.

      • “Hayek also wrote that the state can play a role in the economy, and specifically, in creating a safety net. He wrote, “There is no reason why, in a society which has reached the general level of wealth ours has, the first kind of security should not be guaranteed to all without endangering general freedom; that is: some minimum of food, shelter and clothing, sufficient to preserve health. Nor is there any reason why the state should not help to organize a comprehensive system of social insurance in providing for those common hazards of life against which few can make adequate provision.” You mean that Hayek?

      • Excellent cherrypicking of just those points with which you agree! Though I must point out Hayek uses the qualifier “minimum” that, to me, means no free stuff for those who can work.
        And, regarding social insurance, the key statement is the state is to “help to organize.” This, to me, does not imply that Hayek believes the state should organize, and then control, and also administer the insurance for everyone in the country. In fact, Hayek instructs the opposite.
        Hayek’s economic tenet is that the government should intervene as little as possible in the economics – planning and administration – of a country. The less government meddling in a country’s economic activity, the more freedom: The more the state puts its bureaucratic finger on the economic scale, the more quickly economic freedoms erode with the result that the country has tyranny (serfdom).
        So, yes, that’s the Hayek I reference.

      • Either what he said is socialism or it’s not, it’s as simple as that. Thanks for playing, movin’ on.

      • Not so ignorant, really. There are parts to the Trump persona I do not care for but they have nothing to do with why I and others voted for him. His policies, domestic and foreign, are the reasons why I voted for him. If the left thinks that it can shame the body politic into embracing “liberal” policies, it is very mistaken.

      • Forget about “cultural appropriation”. Using the name Carl Sagen, behold, an attempt at “intelligence appropriation”.
        Impressive.

      • What’s really sad (and scary) is people like you who believe it when Trump lies to your face. How’s that wall coming, you know, the one that Mexico will pay for, jailed Hillary yet, how’s your healthcare, you know, the one that was going to be cheaper and better than anything you’ve ever seen day one. You people are disgusting.

      • You use a lot of unfounded and spun talking points to prop up your “whattaboutism”

      • Three wives and three proven instances of cheating on them is hardly “unfounded and spun talking points”. Also being involved in more that 4000 confirmed law suits as a plaintiff or defendant could question Donald’s moral standing regarding his integrity,keeping his word and truth telling, all standards of morality. That’s a hell of a lot of “whattaboutism”, isn’t it?

      • You should expand your news sources and it wouldn’t hurt you to entertain the idea that just because you believe it it has to be true. You must be one of them Evangelicals.

      • Get your facts straight. 1 member of his administration. Exaggeraton will get you nowhere but into the land of non-credibility. Oh, wait. I guess you’re already there.

        Blocked.

      • NOOOOOOOOOOO!!!! don’t block me!!!!!! Please, please, I’ll do anything you ask!!!

      • Carl, you are dealing with people brainwashed for 30 years by the likes of ‘fair and balanced’ Fox News and Limbaugh. They will vote and defend a monkey if Fox News tells them to. They can see nothing good in others and think they own the country. They are about to find out there are many more people who are not on their side and that includes majority whites.

  35. So a President who is a crook, a liar, a philanderer, and a bully gets a pass.

      • Oh please take the time out of your busy life to explain to me how Obama was anyone of those things. Take all the time you need. Use Trump as a reference point, it will make it easier for me to understand.

      • Good for you, that’s one! Now only 1999 more and he’ll be even with Trump, not counting, of course, the lies Donald has told in 2018 already. Go for it.

      • Four capitalized letters separated by a space. At last your childish insults are not taking a lot of time to post or to read. Thank you. Keep it up!

      • So how is that wall coming (I haven’t received my check from Mexico but I’m sure it is in the mail). And that repeal and replace Obamacare, you know, on day one, probably in the first hour of his Presidency. Get back to me in a few years when you’ve been financially wiped out and can’t find a job because Trump decided to it was better for (his) business to push American jobs overseas.

      • I was merely answering your question to explain “how Obama was any one of those things.” Here’s more:
        Bully: “elections have consequences”
        Crook: $500,000/hour speeches
        Philanderer: look at his wife–could you blame the man?
        Idiot: “the police acted stupid”
        Socialist: “you didn’t build that,”
        Communist: “spread the wealth around”

      • 1. So elections don’t have consequences? How is that a “bullying” statement.
        2. $500,000 for a speech is not illegal. If it is, please cite the appropriate law for me.
        3. Look at his wife? Let me explain the meaning of the word philander to youi.
        4. The police did act stupid.
        5. You didn’t build that; take the time to go back and read the whole speech instead of listening to sound bites on Fox.
        6. Spread the wealth around; by all means, let’s concentrate the wealth in the top 10%. (I’m all for that one because I am in the top 10%).

      • Well, Carl, at least we agree that Obama is a liar. And as wealth goes, yes it will concentrate at the upper end no matter what form of government is in power. Its sound as if you prefer socialism/communism as is your prerogative. I can suggest China or Venezuela as alternatives to America for you as Trump seems content with a capitalist approach for now. We can all hope that the wall gets built, immigration is controlled, and Obamacare dies peacefully. And I am sure you agree with me that we all as Americans wish success for our duly elected president who, without pay, gets up every morning to do the best he can for us. God bless America!

      • Let me add this; Do I want him to be successful and work to create a strong, respected America that is a beacon of hope for the world, an America where it’s citizens can prosper and have every opportunity for success. Of course I do, I felt the same about Obama and Bush. The trouble is, this man is a con artist. He has convinced people he loves this Country when the only thing he really loves is himself, he has convinced people he is a Christian

      • Part of this may be a repeat as my computer froze but to continue:
        Do I want America to be successful?, Of course I do, do I want it to be a beacon of hope to the world and a place where my children and my grandchildren have every opportunity to be successful, of course I do. But what I am saying is that this may, this “duly elected President” is a fraud. He is a con man who has convinced a large number of people that he really, really loves America but the only thing he loves id himself and he demands loyalty and adulation, He loves America because it gives him a chance to fleece people and treat them like the inferiors they are. He has always used a group of lawyers to browbeat his competitors and thinks he is a “great businessman” HE IS A FRAUD, A CON MAN, A SNAKE OIL SALESMAN AND A GOOD ONE BECAUSE SO MANY PEOPLE PEOPLE BELIEVE HIM. He has convinced a large group of religious people that he is a true “Christian” but all he does is pander to their neediness and feelings of victimization all the while cavorting with porn stars and paying them off while his wife sits at home. (if you don’t believe that that’s your problem but this man has bragged about how he can abuse women with impunity and get away with it.) He promised to “billed a wall and make Mexico pay for it” but if that’s the case why is he asking Congress for the money for the wall. He promised to provide healthcare coverage that was better than anything this country has ever seen, cheaper and of higher quality. How is that working out for you? Multiple members of his campaign and members of his administration are under investigation and where is the outrage from people like you? If this had been Obama you and the rest of the Rush Limbaugh/ Sean Hannity/Fox News crowd would have been in the streets demanding impeachment for any one of these transgressions but the great god Trump gets a pass because it’s all “fake news”. I don’t need to go to China,, (been there), I don’t need to go to South America (been there) I want this country to live up to it’s potential but that won’t be accomplished by having people like Trump in the White House. Regarding Capitalism; do you know why Henry Ford decided to “spread the wealth around” and pay his workers well above the prevailing wage? It was because he knew, the great American Capitalist Henry Ford knew, that in order to make money he had to pay his people enough to buy his products. Regarding “gets up every morning to do the best he can for us”; sure he does, from his commode where he sits and Tweets his great thoughts.

      • Well, then we agree again. We both want success for America. I saw Obama as a junior senator without any executive experience assault the country I love hoping he could bring about “fundamental change.” Jimmy Carter brought us stag-flation and Obama guided us through 8 years of minimal growth and told us all this was the new normal in a global economy. Real wages were flat his whole presidency. All this not to even mention spying on his political opponents and looking the other way while his SOS and her ex-pres husband sold access for ‘charity’ donations. His wife was only proud to be American when her husband was elected and found matters hopeless when he left. His signature legislation Obamacare failed and was based on a lie. He call ISIS a JV team. Internationally he chose to lead from behind. To half of us in America he was an arrogant, racist, embarrassment that we painfully endured. So we elected Trump. The economy is better with 3% growth, the energy sector handcuffs have been removed, international policy has clarity, and America is going in the direction my half thinks is right. So, we both want America to succeed but see different directions to that end. Obama had 8 years; can you give the same to Trump and then judge?

      • Okay, let’s see what happens but I don’t think he’ll last 8 years. Regarding energy sector; manipulating the market in favor of dying industries may provide short term growth but will fail in the log run. I have solar on my house and my electric bill is $23.00 a month, all fees. It wasn’t my intent to put coal miners out of work but it was my intent to get the most for my money. This is the future and allowing oil companies to drill anywhere they want and supporting the dying coal industry isn’t going to change that. Secondly; clarity of foreign policy; my daughter is a Foreign Service Officer and has been for 12 years. She has worked under Bush, Obama, and now Trump. In conversations with her she has told me that Trump is a disaster, they are losing top leadership and institutional knowledge, they have so many vacancies it makes it almost impossible for them to functions and our allies don’t trust us because Trump says one thing one day and something else the next. This is the real world, there is no “clarity” in that. Yes the economy is better but let me point out two things; the fundamentals of this great economy were built by the Obama administration after 8 years of a Republican administration left an economic disaster by starting a war and paying for it with a credit card and by not cracking down on lending. Secondly, when you throw gasoline on a fire it burns very brightly for a while but burns out more quickly (Keynesian Economic Theory). We are long overdue for a correction but when it comes I’m sure it will be Obama’s fault. Even though Obama was a junior Senator, he had and education in Law, knew how the Government worked (or was supposed to work), and he didn’t act like everyone in the government worked for him and not the American people.

      • Comments appreciated. We shall see. We both have kids which brings sincerity to the discussion. Thank you!

      • Your comments are appreciated too. There’s a lot of passion on both side in this Country. I hope we can all open up a bit and find a compromise. You take care.

  36. All these reasons and more are why I say that all Democrats are corrupt treasonous criminals, many of them belong in prison, many of them deserve to be executed for their treason.

  37. Time to bring back the draft & give the snowflakes a real education

  38. It’s staggering to see the many outrages and subversions of law and decency that have taken place over the last two years as laid out here by our distinguished author. Our country is on the brink of ruination. On the other hand, there seems to be Providence at work here and the desperate machinations of the powerful elite and their well-placed sycophants are being exposed on a nearly daily basis in a way that can only be viewed as divinely inspired.

  39. The liberal/progressives, the democrats, the “Fake News” media and the never-Trumpers are all willfully ignoring the wrongs committed by the FBI and DOJ in hope of finding evidence of collusion or obstruction of justice.

  40. Remember when politics was the democrats vs the republicans? Now it’s the democrats along with the “Fake News” media, the activist judges, the liberals of Hollywood and the RINOs vs the republicans.

    • That all pretend to hold the moral high ground over an equal number of American citizens that stand for traditional American values. I don’t even know what Democrats stand for anymore. Bigger government, more regulations, illegal immigration and open borders, abortions for anybody/anytime and transgender bathrooms?

  41. It’s as if the democrats and the “Fake News” media speak with one voice.

  42. When the weapons of war are emotions and misinformation, the progressive left is at peak strength, when the weapons are fact, reason and intellect, the left is woefully over-matched.

  43. Liberalism’s “end of the world” hyperbole, denial and US hate just aren’t winning policies. If you all choose to stay out of the democratic process, that’s your choice, but we already tried your 4th worst US economy under US hating obama….it only helped the 1%.

  44. Mr. Hanson has outlined the important elements of what can only be characterized as an effort to overthrow the legitimate, elected government of the United States, and to do so illegally. The common definition of such an effort is “treason.”

  45. Feed the LEGEND. Donald Trump has left 17 seasoned politicians lying face down and bleeding into a political mud puddle. Now the effeminate media eunuchs are breathing their last gasps and whining and crying every second of the way. The Memo will end them all.

  46. The deranged part of Trump opposition has long since stopped being hackneyed political opposition and become an expression of the left’s insanity and general all-around unfitness to be called American citizens. Perhaps one of the best outcomes of the left’s insane reaction to Trump is that these people are finally so discredited that even FOX News no longer feels obligated to have them come on their news programs to provide ‘alternative’ points of view. I look forward to that outcome even as I would morn the loss of my favorite form of entertainment: watching leftists obliviously making complete fools of themselves.

  47. Well if CA can get away with flouting Federal laws, states that already voted to ban same sex marriage, should just flout that law too. See how that works CA? BTW, CA voters twice voted to ban same sex marriage, maybe CA should pay attention.

  48. This will all sort out soon.

    Before there was man, there was War.

    It still awaits us. And it will have its turn on us.

  49. “Former Secretary of State John Kerry, according to the Jerusalem Post, assured a prominent Palestinian government leader, “that he should stay strong in his spirit and play for time, that he will not break and will not yield to President Trump’s demands.” Kerry reportedly further assured the Palestinian representative that the president may not be in White House for much longer and would likely not complete his first term. In sum, the former American secretary of state all but advised a foreign government that his own president is illegitimate and thus to be ignored or resisted in the remaining time before he is removed.”

    John Kerry’s Secret Meeting with the Enemy. Merely one account of many……..http://www.wnd.com/2004/10/26929/

    • Out of all the things listed in this article, the craven work of John Kerry is what bothered me the most.

      • Got me to comment. I missed his anti war 70s stuff because Lo!, I was serving my country.

  50. just another fantastic article from one of America’s best and most influential thinkers

  51. what do you expect from people who manipulated a kenyan marxist into the white house and organize mexican rapists and lying women?

  52. So, this century proves a Republican president will not be legitimate. His election is to be subverted by all means necessary by the “resistance”. The left demands only they win. This then is not a democratic republic but a dictatorship of the left with the winner preordained.The question is is this 1984 or Brave New World? Maybe the 4th Reich?

  53. It’s interesting that Mr. Hanson says nothing about the lawsuits seeking to declare Obama ineligible for the Presidency based on his citizenship status. It’s also interesting that the lawsuits mentioned by Hanson were filed by fringe people, unlike the non-stop investigation and impeachment of a Democratic President in the 1990s.

    The immunity to hypocrisy that’s required to claim that Donald Trump is the object of illegitimate attempts to remove him from office after the crap that was thrown at both Bill Clinton and Barack Obama is absolutely amazing.

    • The differences between the way Obama was treated by a few on the right and the way Trump has been treated as evidenced by this article are laughably enormous. There were no attempts by the right to overturn votes on made-up charges of voter fraud, or get electoral voters to not vote as they were delegated, or crazy accusations designed to discredit the President in order to make him less effective.

      The main thrust of the right against Obama was the birther issue. One of Obamas publishers even had Obama as born in Kenya on their website! https://www.snopes.com/politics/obama/birthers/booklet.asp. So Obama was either born in Kenya or pulling the Elizabeth Warren Pocohantas routine for financial gain.

      • “A few on the right.” You mean the entire right-wing propaganda complex (perhaps it’s better described as a vast conspiracy)? No “crazy accusations” against Obama? You must not listen to Mark Levin or Sean Hannity, both of whom spent 8 years arguing every night that Obama literally hated America and was trying to destroy it. Nothing crazy about that. Or Donald Trump, Ted Cruz and others saying that Obama was going to take people’s guns. Or that he would declare martial law.

        All completely legitimate, right?

        And do you really think that the only two possible explanations for Obama’s promotional booklet saying that he was born in Kenya are (a) he was really born in Kenya, or (b) he was lying about it? You don’t think that it’s more likely that someone just made a mistake, as explained by the Snopes article you linked?

    • You act like there is something wrong with a person’s qualifications and eligibility to be questioned.

      You are aware, are you not, that in 2008 the US Senate debated on whether or not John McCain was eligible because he was born in the Panama Canal zone. You do remember because most of you don’t.

      • There’s nothing wrong with questioning someone’s qualifications and eligibility for the Presidency. We have a First Amendment that allows people to say what they want about elected officials. Some of those things that people say are really stupid. It’s just ridiculous to pretend that Donald Trump is somehow unique in taking a lot of crap from people who oppose him.

      • Well, according to the facts, he has taken much more negative press than any other president and it was even obvious to Jimmah! You may want to remove your blinkers.

      • You may want to consider how he’s acted. OJ Simpson had more negative press after June 1994 than before then. Trump has essentially demanded negative press – he’s called the media enemies since before his Inauguration, he’s made ridiculous assertions from day one, and he’s governed in the most nakedly partisan manner of any President that I can think of.

    • Really? Obama’s SS# belonged to some dead guy from Connecticut. Obama himself claimed to be from Kenya for years. I don’t care where he was born, I’ve never witnessed in my long life a more anti-American president and his America hating wife.

  54. All the racism, ignorance and hatred in so many of theses comments. Ideas bolstered and perpetuated by our braying, corrupt moron of a president. And the thought that people would resist this is decried by some right wing shill as conspiracy.
    You people might want to pull your heads out of whatever dank hole you keep them in. The future does not look good for you. And that’s just the demographics talking.
    The fact that you’ve let your government use sexism and racism to justify ripping you off and sending your livelihoods overseas is coming home to roost.
    Hopefully clinging to your idiotic notions of GOD will offer you some consolation as you starve and die of perfectly treatable illnesses because you have no access to medical care. But I doubt it.
    Your time is just about up.

    • Scott, such doom and gloom. Get a grip—life is good in America. In the end, it’s whether you believe in socialism which has universally failed, or capitalism which has delivered more from poverty than any other system. Read about it.

      • Yes, and trust me when I tell you my life is great, I enjoy it very much. I worry, though, about our citizens in Indiana, West Virginia, Georgia etc. who continue to support candidates who use fear and and notions of limited resources to make boogie men out of “Urban” Americans all while continuing to embark on policies that further destroy lives and communities in these “Trump States”.

      • I love the arrogance you clowns who always know what is right for their fellow citizens. I live in one of those places, and it is inexpensive, and easy for me to get for a nice hike in the mountains. Enjoy your urban sh!thole!

      • You project your insecurities. I am going to log out and disengage now so I can go walk my dogs. Today is not one of the three days a week I work so after that I will go to the gym enjoy a late lunch (probably with wine), catch up on some reading and relax. I will then enjoy some very legal (in my state) marijuana and take my dogs to the several thousand acre waterfront national park three blocks from my home and think.
        I don’t know what is right for other people, and I don’t care. Your life is yours to live and not mine to judge. I do worry about the politics in this country and how they seem less and less to be “of the people, by the people, for the people”.
        I hope you enjoy your cheap rent and access to nature.

      • Why Scott would such voters vote Dem when the Dems are for open borders and unabated immigration? Would that simply be against their self interest?

      • I am not a Democrat, I think Dems are ALMOST as ineffectual and only HALF as dishonest and corrupt as the Republicans. I only voted for Hilary as a vote against Trump. As a candidate I found her repulsive.
        As far as Immigration, I’ll ask you: How many white rural Americans do you know who leave their families and communities, work two or three jobs 60 or 70 hours a week and live six men to a one bedroom apartment to provide a better present and future for the next generation? All the while paying taxes: federal, state, SS, payroll, unemployment insurance; all of which they will never reap any reward from.

      • What a BS contrast? Have you ever worked in those groups? I worked construction to pay my way through college, and even though it was a family company, I started out a minimum wage working alongside those “saints” you describe. Most of them work 40 hour weeks like anyone else, DO NOT pay taxes, because they get paid cash, and they DRINK half their paycheck every Friday.
        Are there some who do what you described? Yes, but they are the exception, not the rule.

      • Scott, not all midwesterners are white trash and not all immigrants work hard. Low skill, low paid labor is subject to supply and demand. It’s a commodity. Large supply keeps wages low. The Dems, with an open border attitude, are looking for votes and not necessarily in the best interest of low skill wages, supply, and demand. What good does it do to bring in more workers and relegate many who are already here to state dependency?

    • Demographics? Hahahahahahaha!

      By 2030 30% of the electorate will be elderly and reliably GOP and only 15% will be hispanic and unreliably Dem. Young people age and as they age their priorities change and so they line up with the GOP.

      AND there has been more white evangelicals voting than the total of all blacks and hispanics since 2004, and their share of the voters keeps increasing and they vote 95% GOP.

      There is a really good reason the Dems are a rump regional party and it is not due to demographics.

      • The 1.8M new citizens in Trump’s immigration plan are not all destined to be automatic Dems when they figure out who brought them on board.

      • Well, for starters the Dems will reject the offer. Then if they finally realize they are doomed, the qualifications, like being crime free and having paid all taxes and fees will eliminate a few more.

        Of the 1.8 million eligible, I doubt few will qualify.

      • I think Trump was pretty good with his opening bid. Now let the Dems explain why criminals should get a path to citizenship.

      • Trump saw the Dems 800k and raised them a million and they folded their cards!

      • Agreed, it was always intended to cause the Dems to double down on their failure on the shutdown. He proposed twice as many as everyone had been discussing, so when the dems reject the offer, they will look that much more foolish.

  55. And only a Donald Trump could stand up under this constant withering attack (and let’s not forget those wonderful NeverTrumpers), and have it role off him like water off a duck’s back. Other Republicans wither and whimper, and he just seems to get stronger. And he’s revealing them for who they are, for what they’ve always been, as the comments here rightly describe.

  56. This excellent articulation is why the facts around the illegal actions of the DOJ, FBI, CIA, and NSA must be revealed. The DNC and Hillary Campaign must be brought to answer for the creation of the dossier. All possible prosecutions must proceed in order to save the Republic.

    • Contrast VDH with the woeful Stephen Hayes, found elsewhere on RCP lineup for the day. He’s a conservative and I’m Mahatma Gandhi.

  57. It is simply stunning. Dr. Hansen has the gift to define in a few words, the madness that has consumed our politics and media. Insane hatred has displaced policy disagreements.

    I recently watched two hours of Senate Armed Forces Committee testimony by George Shultz, Henry Kissinger and Richard Armitage. These authorities discussed the threats to our survival as a people, how our nation can survive in the coming years. Yet what the press reports and what is important to staying alive are two distinct sets of knowledge.

    If we do not narrow down the disagreements, if we do not ignore the gossip of talking heads, if we do not look past Donald Trump’s weaknesses, bolster his strengths and analyze the vital differences, a lot of Americans are probably going to violently die, perhaps in his term of office. One term, megadeaths, was considered. It means a million dead people.

    I question if our society, politicians and media are up to the task.

  58. The Kerry comment was unbelievable. He never fails to disappoint.

    • When his only skill is the ability to betray his country and run down his fellow citizens, what else would you expect from Kerry?

  59. Does anyone really think that if the Dems thought they could win the vote, fair and square, they wouldn’t be behaving completely differently?

  60. I think Dr. Hanson has a reasonable view here… little too much on the ‘FBI get trump conspiracy’ side and lacking on the ‘secret society nonsense of fox news’ side.

    Final Analysis… America can’t have too much transparency in government. trumpy should divulge ALL his financials… and the investigations of his friends & relatives should be fully transparent. Equally, there is reason to investigate what happened to kill the hillery investigation – besides trump reneging on his promise to do so. Full transparency here, too.
    HB

    • Trumps tax returns have ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to do with it.

      As usual another contentless post from the virulent NeverTrumper!

      • Sure they do.

        How much did trumpy make for himself, at tax payers expense, from the so-called ‘tax reform’?
        HB

      • Truly stoopid comment. Trumps tax returns have NOTHING to do with the witch hunt underway, they aren’t even mentioned by you boobs. First it was collusion and now you are talking obstruction.

      • How dooes Trump tax returns have anything to do with this fairy tale collusion narrative?

        Conflating this with “tax reform’ is really ignorant on your part, but follows with most of your tin foil hat commentary.

      • Hehehe, so YOU don’t want to know how much tumpy enriched himself?

        How kind of you. trumpy appreciates it.
        HB

  61. I don’t recall a time in history that the progressive movement (whether from the Repubs or Dems) has ever been this far left. As a result those espousing it’s virtues have lowered themselves to the level of the bolshevik revolution and are now attempting to deploy it’s tactics. At some point America will wake up. And when it does… ;)

  62. Sorry, pal, but all this did not start with Comey “leaking confidential notes” nor did it start with the FBI propagating a “fraudulent document” (who says it’s fraudulent?). It started with the Russian regime implementing a year-long, unprecedented campaign to interfere in our election, sully and undermine Hillary Clinton, and help Donald Trump to win. And it accelerated as Trump has done every crazy thing he can think of — including firing Comey — to prevent Americans from discovering why the Russians did it and whether Trump or anyone acting on his behalf coordinated with them. Until those questions are answered definitively, yes, a question mark will hang over the legitimacy of his razor-thin victory. If he had nothing to hide, he could have disposed of these questions six, eight,10 months ago, but instead he chose to engage in a coverup into which he has now dragged a significant part of the GOP. There are now no lengths to which you ahd others will not go to save this man from accountability — attacking Comey, Mueller, now Rosenstein, and Republicans; attacking and smearing thevejtire FBI and DOJ; calling life-long public servants traitors; stirring up hateful talk among your gullible readers and followers of coups and “civil war” and arming up to battle in the streets. It is all disgusting and reprehensible. You, VDH, will never recover your reputation after enthusiastically drinking the poison of Trumpism.

    • You’re confusing Russian interference with Trumpian collusion–the fallacy invented by the Deep State and Democrats to wreck a candidacy and then subvert a duly elected president. You’re ignoring that the Dossier was Russian disinformation spread by Hillary and swallowed by the FBI. You’re deflecting from the criminality of spying on an opposition party’s candidacy. Etc.

      You (Democrats) are a greater threat to democracy and constitution than the Russians are. And you use the Russians to destabilize American democracy, thus doing their work.

      And you threaten punishment on those who merely disagree with you.

  63. It’s pretty clear by now that Democrats and progressives reject elections and constitutional process as the way we establish legitimate governments and transfers of power. They are engaged in a soft coup that must sooner or later turn hard, because they simply do not accept legal (constitutional) means of politics any more. Using the courts and state government to deny federal prerogatives, as in California, is just the beginning. The Democrats have become a serious threat to democracy.

  64. Stellar work as usual, Dr. Hanson, but I have one small correction. You said “The effort might embrace trying to subvert the Constitution by pressuring state electors not to honor their constitutionally defined responsibilities to vote in accordance with the popular vote in their respective states.”

    Sorry but no such responsibilities are defined in the Constitution. In fact, there is no requirement that presidential electors be chosen by popular vote at all, just that the electors be chosen in such manner as the state legislature thereof shall direct.

    • And winning the popular vote means nothing, but that has not stopped the Dems from trying to claim Trump is not legitimate.

      • I’m a Democrat. Trump is legitimate. But Trump won on an anti-democratic technicality. The popular vote should mean quite a lot to every American who appreciates the significance of such basic democratic concepts as “one person one vote.”

  65. Obama is STILL being protected by the media…and will continue to be protected by historians for decades to come.
    He represents peak Leftism in our history (we can only hope).

  66. Why do I totally distrust the left? Here’s an excerpt from an article I saw on “real clear politics” called “How Campus Politics Hijacked American Politics” by Cathy Young. I see articles like this pretty much every day yet leftists pretend this just isn’t happening. The left is insane. We really do exist in entirely different realities.

    “Not long ago, tropes such as “white privilege” or “rape culture,” which reduce a vast range of social dynamics to racism and misogyny, were seldom heard outside the radical wing of the academy; today, they’ve joined the mainstream. The term “microaggression,” describing statements and acts deemed unintentionally prejudiced, now shows up without explanation even in business publications.

    Opposing bigotry and injustice are noble goals; but the social justice movement, on and off campus, goes far beyond that. It labels people by identity, creating a hierarchy in which being “marginalized” confers status while being “privileged” brings shame. Moreover, given its focus on changing “wrong” attitudes, is almost by definition hostile to free speech: dissent, even counterargument, becomes “microaggression” or “discursive violence.”
    http://www.bostonglobe.com/ideas/2018/01/26/how-campus-politics-hijacked-american-politics/GsJwJwG78lqq6LPYcKWERK/story.html

  67. In a classic coup , one of the first things that the “resistance” must do is forcibly take control of radio, television and newspaper outlets so that the public can be informed only of “approved” information.This has already occurred peacefully, with the exception of one major television outlet, several radio programs and the internet.Thank God for radio and the internet.

  68. All the unhinged efforts by “The Resistance” to enact a slow coup on Trump (and well summarized by Dr. Hanson) will backfire: The arrogant insurgents are depending on the President’s dismal approval ratings to smooth their path to electoral victory.
    But the approval ratings in this instance are in effect likability ratings for a guy who can be rude-and-crude. Moreover the electorate is not about to storm the polls in order to enact higher taxes; open borders; hostility to business, law enforcement and the military; and a surrender-to-all foreign policy.

  69. Progressive must have power to complete the ruination of America.

  70. One consequence of Obama’s malfeasance is that the chance of another black president has been set back substantially. Of course, the Congressional Black Caucus has helped achieve that result as well, by defending him to the hilt.

    OTOH, the chances of another Chicagoan as president, black or otherwise, has become infinitesimal.

    I’d hope the same for another Democrat president, but unfortunately, I doubt it.

  71. You folks get nuttier by the minute. I suspect you’ll all stop by Comet Pizza with your guns to make sure Hillary isn’t sending children to colonies on Mars for the purpose of being sex slaves next. Or wait. That’s been done, hasn’t it?

  72. The first Mayor Daley ( his son also served as a later mayor ) was the mayor of Chicago during the 1968 Democratic Convention in Chicago. He sided with the police against the anarchists and could never have imagined that Chicago would one day be a “Sanctuary City” where people here illegally would be protected from deportation.

    Our present mayor, Rahm Emanuel, sides with thugs against the police and has sworn he’ll fight to protect the many illegals living in Chicago from deportation.

    Or compare the California of 1968 to the California of 2018. In 1968, in spite of riots and protests, California was a vastly more functional state than it is in 2018. California is now a “Sanctuary State” where illegals are protected from deportation once they make it across the border.

    What would great liberal democrats from the past like FDR and JFK have thought of a city like Chicago being a “Sanctuary City” or, far worse, a border state like California being a “Sanctuary State”? They would have thought that their Democratic Party has become insane and they’d be right.

    The difference between the Democratic Party of 50 years ago and the Democratic Party of today is like the difference between day and night. It’s really quite horrifying how far downhill our society has gone in the past 50 years. Does America even still exist as a country? Can a society so severely fragmented that we no longer even have a common reality remain intact? These are questions I often wonder about.

    Last year I read that a feature of living in the modern world is always living with a sense of impending doom. That sure is the truth.

  73. And yet President Donald J Trump continues to beat the leftards like rented mules and red-headed step-children. And he will continue to do so up to 20 January 2025.
    MAGA and God bless President Trump!

  74. This is a civil war at this point. The left has shown that it no longer believes in the peaceful transfer of power. They believe only they should have power. The left must be destroyed at all costs. This has gone way beyond us just having a difference of opinion from them

    • I’d probably be considered “left,” for the most part. In my post above I try to make clear that I believe Trump is the legitimate President. I also believe people can have legitimate, if profound, differences of opinion. I also believe that it’s actually healthy in the long run for conservatives and Republicans to win sometimes. I promise there are many more like me, but if you can’t believe that I’m anything more than an aberration, how about we take a page from Lot and instead of declaring “civil war” and “destroying” the left, we spare the city for the sake of one?

  75. What need is there in calling leftists anti-American? Their very actions prove the postulate daily.

    • Kind of an oxymoronic phrase. The goal of the left has always been to overthrow our constitutional republic and replace it with a totalitarian regime with them in charge.

  76. I liked VDH as his writing was about issues not personality. However, it’s clear that even an intellectual like him believes I am always right and the other side is always wrong. Mr. Hanson, it’s hard to believe that someone of your caliber cannot see that truth is usually in the middle. Neither Obama or Trump are devil or saint. And it is a lame excuse that other media outlets do it because some do not. Anyway, I love this country and I want fairness, justice and compassion for all. This way we fulfill the motto Live and Let Live.

  77. VDH: “In modern terms, that might entail opponents suing to challenge the legitimacy of the election, perhaps by charging in court that according to “experts,” voting machines were dysfunctional and thus some state tallies were null and void.”

    RECENT HISTORY: “Numerous lawsuits and ballot challenges, based on conspiracy theories related to Barack Obama’s eligibility for the United States presidency, have been filed since 2008. These actions have sought to have Obama disqualified from running for, or being confirmed for, the Presidency of the United States, to declare his actions in office to be null and void, or to compel him to release additional documentation related to his U.S. citizenship.”

    https://amgreatness.com/2018/01/29/conspiracy-theories-conspiracies/

    ***************

    VDH: “The effort might embrace trying to subvert the Constitution by pressuring state electors not to honor their constitutionally defined responsibilities to vote in accordance with the popular vote in their respective states.”

    RECENT HISTORY: “My research on the Electoral College reveals that 8 in 10 electors were lobbied to change their votes in 2008. There would seem to be little to protest when your candidate loses by nearly 100 Electoral College votes and 10 million votes across the country.

    “Electoral College lobbyists in 2008 argued that Barack Obama was literally not qualified to be POTUS because he was not born in the United States. That’s right, the same birtherism that Donald Trump claimed Hillary Clinton started and he finished was the focal point for pleas to alter the outcome of the 2008 election.”

    http://thehill.com/blogs/pundits-blog/presidential-campaign/308379-remember-when-republicans-tried-to-stop-obama-with

    ************
    VDH: “It might also include an effort to introduce articles of impeachment in the House.”

    RECENT HISTORY: (See 1998.)
    *************

    VDH: “A resistance might sue under the 25th Amendment to find the president non compos mentis, accompanied by a popular campaign to clinically diagnose the president as mentally unfit or physically decrepit. ”

    RECENT HISTORY: From the Washington Times, December 2015:

    “Is it now time to invoke Section 4 of the 25th Amendment?

    Has our president officially lost his ability to discharge the powers and duties of his office?

    Anyone who listened to President Obama speak to reporters in Paris on Tuesday would reasonably conclude it is high time to start drawing up the papers to transmit to Congress for his removal.

    If you are one of the millions and millions of literate Americans out there who have simply tuned this president out the past three or four years, that is certainly understandable. But if you tuned in to the long, rambling, empty press conference, you would have been truly alarmed.”
    •••••••••••••••••••
    VDH: “On the petty side, an organized effort to discredit a president would range from boycotting the Inauguration to deliberately holding up and delaying confirmation of his appointees.”

    RECENT HISTORY: Merrick Garland. For starters.

    • Here’s an excerpt from an interesting article I saw on “real clear politics” called “The Gay Rights Movement Is Undoing Its Best Work” by Andrew Sullivan. Every day I see articles like this on Real Clear Politics. What does this mean? It means the left has become insane and since the Democratic Party is the Party of the left it certainly makes sense to avoid voting Democratic.

      “As many of us saw our goals largely completed and moved on, the far left filled the void. The movement is now rhetorically as much about race and gender as it is about sexual orientation (“intersectionality”), prefers alternatives to marriage to marriage equality, sees white men as “problematic,” masculinity as toxic, gender as fluid, and race as fundamental. They have no desire to seem “virtually normal”; they are contemptuous of “respectability politics” — which means most politics outside the left. Above all, they have advocated transgenderism, an ideology that goes far beyond recognizing the dignity and humanity and civil equality of trans people into a critique of gender, masculinity, femininity, and heterosexuality. “Live and let live” became: “If you don’t believe gender is nonbinary, you’re a bigot.” I would be shocked if this sudden lurch in the message didn’t in some way negatively affect some straight people’s views of gays.”
      http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2018/01/sullivan-the-gay-rights-movement-is-undoing-its-best-work.html

  78. Column after column VDH lays out the facts. Thank god we have him.

  79. I have no problem with most of this. We still don’t know if in fact Trump is a threat to the nation, if he’s compromised, or what his intentions truly are. He is a profiteer. The use of a FISA warrant isn’t an issue if it was necessary against a potential threat. Beyond all that I’m sorry, but Trump is so outside the realm of what is normal and so untrustworthy that as an American I cannot follow or support him under any circumstances and feel it is the right and just thing to work to undermine him and derail his presidency. Oh and I’m not a progressive or a leftist. I’m a moderate conservative, a registered Republican, and someone who voted Republican in the primaries.

    • “Outside the realm of what is normal” is up for debate but let’s use the term, and I state it is necessary. The last two GOP “leaders” have ceded to the Left an ever progressive agenda, never fighting. They have continually devalued the rights of the individual to an insidious policy of The State and group think. If you have any conservative beliefs, other than proper decorum, you will understand that this President is attempting to restore the proper role of Government,the rights of the individual and the focus of this great country that “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness”

      • He doesn’t care about individual liberties or any of that. He doesn’t care at all about equality and he doesn’t care about the values the nation was founded on or the concept of democracy. If he did he wouldn’t constantly threaten freedom of the press, or advocate for registering people of a certain religion with the government, or advocate police abuse, or advocate torture, or have been popped for not renting to black people, or have continued to accuse the Central Park 5 even though they had been shown to be innocent. He does not in any way care about the values you stated.

      • Give it up lefties. Your hate Trump rants are tiresome. If the deplorably evil hag Hillary had won she’d be using the federal government to grind working class whites, the “deplorables”, into the dirt and the hate whitey msm would be cheering her on for doing so.

        Regardless of his flaws, Trump is still infinitely better than anything on the left. Just imagine all federal agencies being run by partisan hacks like Lois Lerner or a leftist like her being appointed to the Supreme Court.

        Hillary totally agreed with BLM that white racism was oppressing blacks which means the hate whitey fanaticism being promoted in our pigsty universities would also be taught in our high schools, elementary schools and no doubt even in our kindergartens.

        “Controversial ‘Problem of Whiteness’ course reintroduced at UW-Madison”.
        http://www.thecollegefix.com/post/40421/

        That’s what we’d have if Hillary had won.

      • Across the board, you’re wrong here. He’s proven he cares about equality and the values of the nation by the policies he’s pursued. As to the other stuff, he has not once threatened the freedom of the press, nor pushed any policies to register people of a certain religion. He has not advocated police abuse. He has allowed for waterboarding, but remember, George Washington had men summarily executed for desertion, as did Lincoln. The whole not renting to black people is a outdated trope, and you should do a little research on it. Central Park 5, I’ll grant you that, but as President he has no time to look into an old case like that. He cares a great deal about the values Vineyard Summer mentions, and it’s glaringly obvious to his supporters.

      • A small, but important (I think) point: These are profound words, ones I’ve studied, contemplated, and defended many times. However, they do not “define” the proper role of the United States government, in that they are from the Declaration of Independence, not the Constitution. They are a statement of political philosophy, not an articulation of governmental scope or structure.

      • Very true, which is why they are placed after “the Focus of this great country”. Appreciate the observation.

      • You two need to get a room. Strokin’ that Leftist meat is so unseemly in public. Here. Read this and learn something;

        “Unlike liberal democracy, which only concerns itself with what is good for the rich, republicanism assumes that both countries and governments belong to their citizens, who have the right to control things such as their own borders, and make their own laws. Republicanism assumes that since countries and governments alike belong to the citizens, that the citizens have a right to expect their government to protect and defend their interests. This is what liberal democracy calls “populism”. To liberals, non-elite citizens expecting policies and laws that will benefit them as taxpayers is “controversial”. Just ask a liberal what he thinks of populism.”

        Eat it, Lefties. Eat it all: https://disqus.com/home/discussion/takismag/democratic_trump_takis_magazine/#comment-3724985612

      • Dude, did you actually read the above string of posts? You might, thereby understanding that you and I just stated the same ideas.

    • You remind me of my fellow countrymen here in the UK who voted to remain in the EU. Before the election it was universally accepted that whatever the outcome the result would be respected by both sides. This is called the rule of law. The remain side lost. First of all they claimed the referendum wasn’t binding. Then they said it violated the supremacy of Parliament as if the people were there to serve the Parliament rather than the other way around. And of course they constantly accused us of being racists and bigots. They are continuing to try and subvert the process every day.
      In essence what it boils down to is that we have a large section of society on both sides of the Atlantic who have not grown up. They are children posing as adults. They have no respect for the rules that govern us because they were brought up not to respect any rules by their parents and peers. They are snowflakes.

      • Donald Trump is the legitimate President of the United States. That doesn’t mean he can’t have committed an impeachable offense. It doesn’t mean that actions of the Executive can’t violate the Constitution. Opposing the Administration isn’t equivalent to “subverting the system.” And it’s really rich that a person who resorts to calling us names (and unimaginative names, at that), questions our maturity.

      • I accept that he is the President. In America that doesn’t mean I have to support him. My loyalty is to my country and what I believe is right, that’s the role of a citizen in our republic. As stated, I cannot as a person trust or respect the president and I cannot follow him or view him as a leader

  80. The part about how celebrities threaten physical violence against Trump reminds me of how I have read that Bill Thompson, the early 20th century mayor of Chicago used to loudly proclaim that if the King of England ever set foot in Cook County, he, Bill Thompson, would punch him in the nose. There was, of course, no chance of that ever happening, but it used to make Thompson popular with the Irish and German voters in Chicago.

    • Interesting. The part about how celebrities threaten physical violence against Trump reminds me of how Ted Nugent once told the “subhuman mongrel” Obama to “suck on my machine gun.” Which, in turn, reminds me of the picture of Ted Nugent shaking Trump’s hand in the Oval Office.

  81. People and groups who oppose Trump’s agenda are availing themselves of the courts?! The outrage! Other people and groups are attempting to influence the administrative and representative branches of their government to thwart Trump’s policy agenda?! My god, have these traitors no shame?! A special counsel is appointed to investigate issues relating to the President, giving rise to the specter of impeachment?! This is completely unprecedented in our nation’s history!!

    Hanson’s laundry list is comprised virtually entirely of familiar forms of political opposition. (It’s also replete with inaccuracies, errors, and irrelevant or misleading statements. But as is all-too common with reactionary attacks on the “left,” it would require far more time and space than I have here to dismantle each of them.) Honestly, does Hanson or anyone here believe it would take more than ten minutes to find corresponding examples of acts taken in opposition to Obama?

    It’s true the opposition to Trump and his agenda is massive, passionate, and mobilized to a degree we haven’t seen in decades. I understand why this would rattle true believers like Hanson: When a person really loves something, any person who doesn’t just love it too simply must be irrational or downright evil. But Hanson’s anti-Trump “conspiracy” is basically the flip-side of the “vast, right-wing” non-conspiracy Hillary Clinton identified so many years ago. Many people saw Clinton as dishonest and corrupt, and determined to oppose her and combat her agenda by trying to influence the courts, the media, and other institutions of American government and society. But this wasn’t a “conspiracy” in any meaningful sense. Rather, lots of people just really, really hated Hillary Clinton and acted upon it.

    Today, scores of millions of Americans feel exactly the same way about popular-vote-loser Donald Trump. We think he’s a detestable person, believe his stated policy agenda is ignorant, harmful and corrupt, are ashamed and embarrassed by how he makes America look in the eyes of the world, and believe that he must be strongly opposed. (Please note that I did NOT say Trump is anything less than the legitimate President of the United States of America.) Hanson’s attempt to cobble this thoroughly American action into a nefarious plot may not speak to paranoia, but it sure doesn’t speak to fair assessment or reason, either.

  82. It’s remarkable the way Trump’s ascendancy has released the inner loon in so many right-wing pundits who previously pretended to be reasonable, evidence-based analysts. Hanson is a prime example; he’s now no different to the likes of Sean Hannity and Michael Goodwin. Nothing but incoherent tribal propaganda for the echo chamber.

    • yes . they are full fledged alternative narrative party now. VDH is their best spinner.

    • “Incoherent” really is the correct word. Paragraph after paragraph of Things that Happened (and some things that didn’t), literally zero analysis, explanation, or connection, concluding with an unstated “See?!?!?” As with pretty much all conspiracy theories.

    • I had the same thought this morning when I read piece. Thanks for putting it in print.

  83. Who do we think is most likely to be charged with a crime and go to jail? Comey? McCabe? Strzok? How deep does this go? What crimes? By whom?

  84. One of Hanson’s “points” supporting his conspiracy theory is that all of this happened in the first year of Trump’s administration, the implication being that the only way such massive, passionate opposition could occur so quickly is if it’s being organized – even if only loosely or “incoherently” – in some sort of plot to oust the legitimate President. (This is nonsense, of course: One can only imagine the opposition President Hillary Clinton would have faced in her first year.)

    For my part, my own opposition has been developing for far longer than a year. To plagiarize myself: In the thirty-plus years since Donald J. Trump first welled up like a gilded boil on the butt of American culture I’ve watched Donald J. Trump demonstrate over and over that all Donald Trump truly cares about is the fame and fortune of Donald J. Trump. The herald and apotheosis of a reality TV world, where the mantras “there’s no such thing as bad press” and “nobody ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American people” have been taken to their logical extremes, not only is he utterly devoid of soul, he mocks the quaint notion that a soul (or basic decency, civility, class, humility, introspection, etc.) has any value with every unearned brag and boast and with every slur, insult, and lie he hurls at anyone who doesn’t sing his praises.

    In sum, I’ve been horrified by Donald Trump and his gilded, gauche, ignorance ever since he didn’t write the Art of the Deal. My own efforts at resistance this year were far more than a year in the making.

      • Love it or leave it, eh? No, you’re not getting rid of me so easily; I have more faith in my country and (most of) my countrymen and women than that. Fortunately, America isn’t defined by any one man, not even one so astoundingly ignorant, incompetent, amoral, unethical, mendacious, and grotesque as the current occupant of the Oval. I’ll keep plugging away to do my small part to keep the damage he does to a minimum, until the country returns to its senses.

      • What exactly is your part? Paying taxes, joining the army, volunteering, giving to charity, supporting your local police, running for office, or just complaining?

  85. We obviously lack a common reality and without something as basic as that how do we have a country? The most obvious answer is that we no longer do have a country. I think that’s our whole situation in a nutshell. Time will tell what fate has in store for us.

  86. Someone or a bunch will have to face the gallo’s. Rightly so in GITMO

    • To which ‘Gallo’ are you referring, white, red or rose’?

  87. California is in rebellion.

    Just as Little Rock was in rebellion when they attempted to defy a Supreme Court order to desegregate their schools, and Eisenhower sent in the 82nd Airborne to enforce the order.

    It’s time for 5th Army (U.S. west of the Mississippi River) to be tasked with bringing California back into compliance with federal law, up to and including arrest of the legislature and the governor for aiding and ebetting the invasion of the United States by hostile nations.

    • If only YOU were president, all would be well. We can wish,can’t we?

  88. One of the posts mentioned that Andrew McCabe had just stepped down. Is that true? Or was he just referring to the fact that McCabe is retiring in 3 or 4 months?

  89. He left out ‘entertainers’ that said Trump is worse that the Taliban or ISIS, and is constantly called a racist,etc

  90. I want to support Trump with whatever money I can afford but I dam’sho do not want any of my money going to Mitch McConnell or Paul Ryan. Is it possible for Trump to raise money without having to deal with the RNC? The UniParty RINOs are samizdat Democrats, like moles burrowing into Conservative strongholds. Will Trump make a speech and make it clear how people can support him without supporting RNC? The Republican National Committee fights as hard as Democrats against Trump.

  91. When you see the wild, unhinged responses to VDH’s measured, thoughtful pieces, that old piece of wisdom comes to mind: a stuck pig’s gonna squeal

    • Exactly! Completely unlike sober, judicious responses such as “The goal of the left has always been to overthrow our constitutional republic and replace it with a totalitarian regime with them in charge” and “This is a civil war at this point..The left must be destroyed at all costs” and “The Democrats have become a serious threat to democracy.” Not to mention all the trenchantly satirical posts that refer to fellow Americans as “libtards.”

  92. Poor VDH. What’s he going to do when his (apparent) Idol is shown by the Special Counsel to have obstructed justice? Will he be talking about “conspiracies” then? Or will he simply dismiss Mueller’s findings/report as “the activity of the nefarious deep state”? VDH may indeed be a scholar, but it’s clear he’s forgotten his high school civics…..

  93. its ok trumps cleaning out his enemies. vdh the blood is on yours and republicans hands

  94. There’s a term for all this, used a long time ago by some rebel colonists who tried to put together a better governing system: Tyranny.
    Tyranny is when a leader can do things that violate basic rights of subjects without due recourse. Tyranny is when accepted systems of making collective decision (like elections) can be ignored and reversed on a whim (usually in courts run by political allies). Tyranny is when nobody has any assurance of privacy in their daily life and yet the politically connected somehow are the only ones whose “private” communications are actually private -because they conveniently disappear. Tyranny is when people with certain names that EVERYONE knows simply cannot ever be prosecuted for crimes that anyone else would be put in jail for. When there are multiple standards of justice depending on who you know and how close you are to them.
    Everyone who is complacently slapping their buddies on the back because “we won the election” had better open their eyes and wise up. A people who refuse to see their chains being forged in front of their eyes don’t deserve their freedom and will not retain it. Freedom demands vigilance, not complacent social media memes.

  95. 50 million people going to vote to do it again, harder, in november 2018, and every november thereafter. Betsy DeVos and Fed Grant agencies can fix it in 20 years if they started last year and stay in power for 20 years. Probably got their heads up their fannies though. Got no idea what they are facing.

  96. This is an important piece. I would like to think that certain of my friends would read it and put aside any personalities, but to see it for what it is. But I don’t believe they want to think about any of it, preferring to toe the liberal/progressive line, which feels comfortable, and close their eyes to what this country is becoming … that is, has become. It’s practically self-immolation in the service of political, moral, and philosophical corruption.

  97. Thank you Victor Davis Hanson, for the best article I have read about the attempted destruction of Donald J Trump and the unbelievable corruption within our own Government. God bless you for delineating this disgusting, tragic, horrific attempt of the truly wicked servants of satan himself trying to destroy what God Himself has established, The United States of America. With the God inspired Constitution granting us Freedom and Liberty for all, and making America the greatest country on planet earth. Satan and all his followers cannot destroy what God has established. The fight against evil is real, we cannot be complacent as we all to often are. We must continually call upon the God of this land, who is Jesus Christ, humble ourselves, keep His commandments and pray for the continual deliverance of our country from evil, for protection, for inspiration for our president, Donald J. Trump and good and righteous leaders to stand up and be counted. Truly, may God bless America.

  98. Dear Lord, please let this evil be unmasked. Let their deeds be exposed. Let those that know the truth to have a voice. Give them the courage to speak out. Shed light on the darkness in our Country..and let all Americans rise up and defeat the evil tyranny of corruption and greed that has taken over. Please have mercy on us, God. Let those that love you, and love light and truth, rise up and defeat the evil that is eating away at this great Nation. Give us the courage to defeat this evil of our time…and let every American praise your Holy name. Amen.

  99. I was so naeive. I thought the election settled the struggle. It turned out to be merely the opening volley.

  100. I think this quote from Michael Gerson sums up Trump’s view of the world better than I ever could —> “Trump’s sustained attack on the FBI’s credibility (“in tatters,” he claims) comes in the context of a broad assault on the integrity of American institutions. In a short political career, Trump has maligned the CIA (comparing it to the Nazis), the electoral system (“rigged”), the media (“fake news”), the federal judiciary (U.S. District Judge Gonzalo Curiel is a “hater” and a “Mexican”) and the Justice Department (harboring the “deep state”). Any institution that checks him is smeared. In the current case, Trump has reportedly demanded loyalty from law enforcement officials, attacked them after they refused, and suggested to the country that everyone in Washington is as cynical as he is (praising, for example, Eric H. Holder Jr., the former attorney general, because he “totally protected” President Barack Obama).”. What VDH and so many of his readers fail to understand is that we have institutions in this country, both established by the Constitution (the Courts, the Congress) and protected by the Constitution (the press, and public discourse) that fulfill the roles of “Checks and Balances” to where the damage that someone like Trump can do is (perhaps I’m being optimistic here) is marginal at best. The “conspiracies” he talks about above are merely the actions and behaviors of the other actors in the institutions that I have mentioned. If any of them are criminal, I’d sure love to see the citations to statute that indicate such. And of course, the left engages in the same behaviors as well. (How many Democrats/leftists still believe that the 2000 election was “Stolen”? Probably, quite a few)