Attorney General Merrick Garland has appointed a special counsel to investigate former President Donald Trump. Do not be fooled: this act is not intended to remove Trump from the battlefield, but rather to help him ride to victory and become the GOP 2024 candidate. Democrats, who most recently subverted Republican primaries by pushing candidates they hoped would lose in the general election, are just that devious.
President Trump achieved his highest-ever approval rating of 49%, as measured by Gallup, in the week the Senate convened to impeach him in 2020. In the months during which the House held endless hearings on the terrible riots of January 6, President Trump’s popularity rose.
Attorney General Merrick Garland and former President Donald Trump
(Photo illustration/Getty Images)
How could that be? Mainly because Trump is a genius at playing the victim card. He thunders and rages, denouncing his persecutors convincingly because, indeed, the treatment meted out to him by the liberal press and by his political opponents has been stomach-turning. His words have been twisted and misrepresented in appalling ways, his every act ignored or defamed. Trump was never granted unbiased treatment.
ATTORNEY GENERAL GARLAND NAMES SPECIAL COUNSEL TO INVESTIGATE TRUMP ON MAR-A-LAGO DOCUMENTS, JAN. 6
The January 6 hearings in the House could have tempered enthusiasm for Trump on the right had they been conducted in a fair-minded way. Almost all Republicans were horrified by the assault on the Capitol. But, they were not. Nancy Pelosi’s hand-picked “Select Committee” put on a political show trial, with Trump afforded no representation. He was guilty until proven innocent, with zero opportunity to offer an opposing position or even question his accusers. That is un-American.
In naming a special prosecutor, Garland buckled to angry Democrats whose desire for vengeance against the former president – vengeance for exposing their empty promises and damaging policies – will never be sated. But, even as he purportedly holds Trump accountable, he will also boost his chances of prevailing in the GOP primaries.
A great many Republicans will condemn Garland’s decision as a political strike aimed at preventing Trump from ever again becoming president. They will be incensed and, despite many warning signs that the former president is not the best 2024 candidate, they will support him.
Meanwhile, the special counsel probe will go forward midst a swirl of leaks and rumors that will constantly remind independent voters of Trump’s misdeeds. That should stifle any nostalgia for the pre-inflation days when Americans’ IRAs and home values had not yet been torched by Bidenomics. The point isn’t to elect Donald Trump; Democrats just want him to be the nominee.
GARLAND’S DOUBLE STANDARD — A SPECIAL COUNSEL FOR TRUMP BUT NOT HUNTER AND JOE BIDEN
Garland’s pretense that the special counsel’s deep dive into Trump World will be apolitical and detached from the vindictive Joe Biden White House is, of course, nonsense. Jack Smith will report to Garland and he, in turn, will report to Joe Biden.
Given that former President Trump just declared that he would run for the Oval Office in 2024, and that the mentally infirm Joe Biden says he plans to run against him, the appointment on its face is an outrage. It isn’t as though Trump’s handling of documents is not already being investigated, or that there is a lot of new material to be gathered about the January 6 riots.
Even for those of us who do not think President Trump should be our party’s nominee, the entire escapade stinks to high heaven. As intended, it almost makes us sympathetic to The Donald, who has been unfairly targeted, spied upon, and accused of terrible misdeeds by the likes of Adam Schiff, whose bogus claims of having inside dope on the former president’s Russian collusion were a complete made-for-TV scam.
Or by people like the former FBI Assistant Director who told ever-credulous MSNBC that Trump had perhaps hidden stolen nuclear secrets at Mar-a-Lago with an aim to selling them to the highest bidder. Only after the midterms did the Washington Post acknowledge that, actually, the former president was most likely collecting souvenirs.
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Consider: who actually wants former President Donald Trump to run in 2024? Only about 35% of Americans, polls tell us, maybe 40%-50% of Republicans and nearly 100% of Democrats. Democrat candidates and party officials see The Donald as the gift that keeps on giving.
After all, even with his astonishing victory in 2016, Trump’s batting average currently stands at 250 and is declining fast; most teams wouldn’t be eager to sign him for another season.
Democrats see Trump as having helped them win two elections in which the GOP were favored, and one in which history predicted their own success.
In the 2018 midterms, Republicans gave up 41 seats in the House and lost the popular vote by one of the largest margins in history. Democrats scored those wins despite an economy growing at nearly 3% in real terms, (faster than any single year during Barack Obama’s presidency), unemployment below 4% and inflation of less than 3%. In fairness to Trump, the incumbent normally loses seats in Congress, but the midterms during his presidency were a statement.
In 2020, he lost the Oval Office – something only 10 campaigning incumbents have done during our entire history. He lost to a candidate who spent much of the race hiding in his basement, allowing Trump to effectively defeat himself.
In 2022, Trump’s candidates in numerous key races performed so poorly that history was made again. Even led by an extremely unpopular president, and with Americans struggling with 40-year-high inflation, the GOP eked out only a slim win in the House, while the Senate remained in Democrat hands.
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It is not a record to be proud of, nor one that should inspire Republicans to nominate Trump to be their candidate in 2024. If they do so, it will be out of frustration that our law enforcement agencies have joined with the liberal media, social media, academia and Hollywood to gang up on a president they voted for twice and whom they consider to have been unjustly treated.
That’s the plan.
