“The Republican nominee for president will be that candidate who best learns that there is no future in apologizing,” I wrote in a June 10, 2015, column. Six days later Donald Trump descended the escalator at Trump Tower and, in so doing, launched the most volatile period in American history since the Civil War.

I wish I could say I had Trump in mind when I wrote the above, but as right as my prediction proved to be, I did not even know Trump was running. His refusal to back down or apologize came at a huge personal cost, but the rest of us, including his enemies, benefited from his un-Republican-like willingness to punch back when punched.

The benefits came in two primary forms: what Trump accomplished as president and what he exposed. The last few months, and the last week especially, were all about exposure. We will get to this in a minute, but first a quick brief on Trump’s accomplishment.

No matter how visceral their loathing of Trump, even our leftist friends benefitted from four years of peace and prosperity. So vibrant was the economy in early 2020 that it pushed us through the globalist fear pandemic in relatively good order. Enjoy the fruits of that economy while you can. They won’t last.

As to peace, Trump launched no new wars, nor did he expand any old ones. No president since Jimmy Carter can make this claim, and Carter accomplished his peace through submission. Trump accomplished his through strength: a military rebuilt, North Korea subdued, Russia restrained, China looking over its shoulder, Israel making new friends throughout the region.

Of universal benefit, too, were the trade deals that Trump pulled off. In 2016, these deals were on the agenda of no other candidate from either party. In 2019, the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA), which replaced the disastrous NAFTA, passed a Democrat-controlled House 385-41. In his eight years, Barack Obama had no bipartisan accomplishment of this magnitude, nothing close.

From the conservative perspective, Trump’s most enduring accomplishment were the judicial appointments, a high percentage of whom are constitutionalists, nearly 500 at all levels, including three in the Supreme Court.

Although another Republican president might have secured, as Trump did, deregulation, tax cuts, and energy independence, none other would have dared to build a wall, help move the capital of Israel to Jerusalem, speak at the March for Life, or rescue us from the delusional Paris Accord.

Then too, despite four years of media race baiting, Trump secured the highest Republican percentage of minority votes in sixty years, not to mention 12 million more total votes than any Republican had ever received.

Reportedly, Louisiana Governor Huey Long was once asked, “Do you think we will ever have Fascism in America?” Said Long, “Sure, only we’ll call it anti-Fascism.” What Trump exposed, and which may prove of more lasting value than what he accomplished, was the real-life unfolding of Long’s paradox.

Even before Trump was elected, he had panicked the bipartisan deep state into overreaction. Speaker of the House Paul Ryan refused to appear with Trump on stage in Wisconsin. Hillary Clinton and the DNC meanwhile launched the Russia collusion hoax as a dirty trick operation, and the Obama administration finessed it, with the help of the FBI and CIA, into the foundation for a coup. The media meanwhile cheered the coconspirators on.

On August 15, 2016, the FBI’s Peter Strzok memorably signaled the shared motive of all the conspirators. “There’s no way [Trump] gets elected — but I’m afraid we can’t take that risk,” he texted FBI lover Lisa Page. “It’s like an insurance policy in the unlikely event you die before you’re 40.”

As the coup progressed, renegade Rolling Stone reporter Matt Taibbi said out loud what should have been obvious to everyone on his side of the barricades, “Being on any team is a bad look for the press, but the press being on team FBI/CIA is an atrocity, Trump or no Trump.”

The major media were well beyond caring about appearances. Laughably, in 2018, the Washington Post shared a “national reporting” Pulitzer with the New York Times “for deeply sourced, relentlessly reported coverage in the public interest that dramatically furthered the nation’s understanding of Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election.” Not since the Times’ Walter Duranty won a Pulitzer for concealing the Soviet terror-famine has the prize been awarded so promiscuously.

In gauging scores in sports like diving and figure skating, judges factor in a “degree of difficulty.” No president since Lincoln has labored under a higher degree of difficulty than Trump. I cannot recall seeing a positive headline in any major media during the duration of his presidency. The fact that America’s most beautiful and stylish first lady never made it onto the cover of a magazine suggests just how monolithic was the opposition. And still Trump never apologized, never backed down.

In the 2020 election, Trump showed us just how inherent was the Left’s fondness for fascism. Big Tech crossed something of a Rubicon two weeks before the election when its agents colluded in censoring the Hunter Biden story. Big Media helped their allies across.

With the story blocked, Biden had a chance of winning. Using COVID as a cover, Democratic operatives in key states just had to steal thousands more votes than usual. Big Media and Big Tech colluded by mocking those who dared question the rigging of the election, and the FBI sat on its hands. Although Trump had carried congressional Republicans to unexpected wins, most collaborated with the conspirators by either keeping silent or scolding Trump for daring to question the outcome.  

The “fascist” movement began with Italy’s Benito Mussolini. He took the name of his party from the Latin word fasces meaning a bundle of rods gathered together in one strong hand. Starting in ten days all the rods will be gathered — the presidency, the House, the Senate, Big Tech, Big Media, Hollywood, the CIA, the FBI, perhaps even the military. Just in the last few weeks, their collective eagerness to suppress dissent has shown up their mentors in the CCP.

To enforce the new order at the street level, the Left has developed its own private army. In a marvelous bit of self-parody, the bully boys of the new fascism, the Left’s own SA, call themselves anti-fascists or Antifa for short. Huey Long had the last laugh on that one.

With his back to the wall, Trump rallied the last bulwark against this encroaching tyranny, the American people. In so doing, he showed the comically obvious hypocrisy of the Left’s support for “largely peaceful” protests.

Although events this past week did not appear to work out as we might have liked, appearances can be deceiving. There were lessons learned, eyes opened. It seems somehow providential that the people’s protest at the “People’s House” occurred on the Epiphany.