Horist: Is Trump really a threat to the Republic?

Yes, Democrats and the radical left – to the extent there is a distinction – were surprised, shocked and dismayed to the point of emotional break down on that late evening in November of 2016 when it was conceded by their favorite media personalities on CNN and MSNBC that Donald Trump had won the presidential election over Hillary Clinton.  Their grief was palpable.

In watching the returns, you could see the faces of Rachel Maddow, Lawrence O’Donnell, Brian Williams and other MSNBC talking heads drain of blood as Trump was projected the winner in those industrial states they had called Clinton’s “firewall” just hours before.  The liberal tingle that ran up Chris Mathew’s leg over the election of Barack Obama gave way to a shaking-head disbelief.

One of the great strengths of the American Republic has been the willingness of the public – especially the losers – to accept the results of even controversial elections.  We saw it in 1960, when Jack Kennedy won a dubious victory over Richard Nixon – an election which most historians concede was stolen by vote fraud in Texas and Illinois.  We saw it in 2000, when George W. Bush was declared the winner after a brutal series of court cases.  Life went on.

The only earlier exception was the election of Abraham Lincoln in 1860, when Democrats took resistance to the extreme by seceding from the Union and launching the Civil War.  Now THAT was a real constitutional crisis and threat to the Republic.

In 2016, Democrats resurrected their propensity to be sore losers and their willingness to place their partisan interests above the rule-of-law and the constitution.  The losing Democrats, left-wing radicals and much of their allied news media went on instant war footing with a resistance movement unlike anything seen since the Democrats organized the Massive Resistance Movement against school integration in the 1960s – once again demonstrating their defiance of the law when it conflicts with their political interests.

The resistance folks attempted to stop Trump’s certification by the Electoral College.  They attempted to have the Congress refuse to authorize his inauguration.  They even moved for impeachment on Trump’s first day in office.  They called on everyone – especially the media – not to “normalize” the President with any favorable responses to anything he says or does.  And of course, they have spent more than a year and a half working feverishly to force Trump out of office.

The vanguard of the resistance movement is, of course, a news industry operating as the chief prosecutor in the court-of-public-opinion and propagandist for the specious narratives of Democrats and radical leftists.

The withering assaults by the elitist east coast media on Trump and on any group or individual who express any agreement on any issue at any time has failed to bring down the President’s reasonably respectable favorable rating. In fact, ratings have gone up driving the crazed media completely off the rails in their criticism of the Trump administration.

The more recent, more extreme and more ludicrous of the anti-Trump narratives is that he is transforming the American Republic into a “banana republic.”  He is a dictator. They are really trying to sell that putrid political product by name.  The phrase “banana republic” is being thrown around by cable personalities parading as journalists and repeated by those panels of parroting pundits with a frequency not seen since the days when Fulgencio Batista y Zaldívar ruled over Cuba.  To save you a trip to Google search, Batista was overthrown by Fidel Castro in the 1950s.

The desperately mourning Mika Brzezinski of the Morning Joe show expresses her own irrational fear that Trump is undermining the Republic and taking us toward an authoritarian form of government – a “banana republic,” she claims.

MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell connected Trump’s disdain for much of the news reporting to Joseph Stalin.  Oh Yeah.  Trump is like a guy who was a brutal, murderous dictator responsible for the deaths of millions of his people.  He was a man who completely disallowed any independent free press – replacing the flow of information to the people with a totally controlled media.  So far, Trump has not ordered the execution of anyone – not even Jim Acosta of CNN.

Mitchell was neither alone nor the first to connect Trump to Stalin and other infamous despots.  In a speech to the annual Radio Television Digital News Association, NBC’s Chuck Todd also made the Trump-as-Stalin comparison. CNN’s unreliable host of “Reliable Sources” Brian Stelter trumped Todd with a two-despot gambit – comparing Trump to Stalin and Hitler.  Not to be outdone, the New York Times compared Trump to Stalin, Mao and Pot Pol. These comparisons are likely to continue until the media runs out of historical despots.

However, when looking at the facts – which the #NeverTrump press are increasingly avoiding – we discover that Trump is not seizing power.  Quite the contrary.  He did not extend Obama’s Executive Order dealing with the Dreamers – those brought to America illegally as children – because he said it was beyond the authority of the President.  It is the constitutional responsibility of the Congress.

The separation of the children of illegal border crossers is due to the law.  While the critics say it was all due to Trump’s change of policy – that policy change was to … obey the existing law.  Trump cannot change the law and he will not violate the law – as Obama did with his “policy.”  It is up to the Congress to pass immigration reform.  As much as he wants his wall, Trump is refraining from shifting money from other areas – a practice used by previous administrations.  Again, he is yielding to congressional authority.

While the #NeverTrump resistance movement was declaring his temporary travel ban from nations without adequate vetting as an abuse of power, Trump was upheld by the Supreme Court.  No abuse of power there.

Nothing Trump has done – like it or not – has undermined the rule-of-law, the Constitution or the Republic.  While one can understand the angst created by seeing everything the left imposed on America being shuffled off to the dustbin of history, that does not mean he is doing so beyond the constituted legal powers of the presidency.

What we are witnessing is a media run amok because their extraordinary level of arrogance makes them believe that they are beyond any criticism.  They view any complaint about their reporting as a treasonous attack on the foundations of the Republic.  I mean, really?