by Jeffrey Lord
Former President Donald Trump triumphs in yet another new poll.
The headline at USA Today from reporter David Jackson on July 16 — two days ago — reads this way:
Donald Trump has a big lead for the GOP nomination. Can DeSantis, Pence or anyone else catch him?
The story begins by reporting as follows:
WASHINGTON — A half-year before anyone actually votes, and one year before the Republican nominating convention, the GOP presidential race is in the same place it has been for months: A bunch of challengers chasing former President Donald Trump.
Trump has built a huge lead in polls despite — or because of — two indictments and two other ongoing investigations, while Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and other GOP candidates are scrambling for ways to close the gap on the former president.
Note that one sentence:
Trump has built a huge lead in polls despite — or because of — two indictments and two other ongoing investigations.
There is no question that Trump’s political persecutors have indeed helped him with their seriously rigged banana-republic-style indictments and investigations. Individually, not to mention collectively, what was designed to bring down Trump has backfired and backfired big time.
But, in fact, Trump was far and away in the lead well before those indictments were handed down.
There is a reason.
That reason is that Donald Trump has long since become the embodiment of the contempt and seething anger that millions of Americans feel toward the intrusive busy-body attitude of the federal government, not to mention the condescending holier-than-thou attitude of American elites in all manner of areas of American life. From government to the media to academia to, of all places, sports and countless other locations, the do-as-we-say-not-as-we-do elites have managed to so infuriate millions that those millions are making it their job in life to reelect Trump.
In short? Trump means what he says. And they know it. As was noted by Clay Travis and Buck Sexton on their hit radio show, he is also having fun — and wants everyone to come along and have fun with him.
Take this New York Times report that came on the heels of Trump’s recent speech to the Turning Point Action conference in Florida. The headline:
Trump and Allies Forge Plans to Increase Presidential Power in 2025
The former president and his backers aim to strengthen the power of the White House and limit the independence of federal agencies.
The story, bylined by reporters Jonathan Swan, Charlie Savage, and Maggie Haberman, reports this:
Donald J. Trump and his allies are planning a sweeping expansion of presidential power over the machinery of government if voters return him to the White House in 2025, reshaping the structure of the executive branch to concentrate far greater authority directly in his hands.
Their plans to centralize more power in the Oval Office stretch far beyond the former president’s recent remarks that he would order a criminal investigation into his political rival, President Biden, signaling his intent to end the post-Watergate norm of Justice Department independence from White House political control.
Mr. Trump and his associates have a broader goal: to alter the balance of power by increasing the president’s authority over every part of the federal government that now operates, by either law or tradition, with any measure of independence from political interference by the White House, according to a review of his campaign policy proposals and interviews with people close to him.
Mr. Trump intends to bring independent agencies — like the Federal Communications Commission, which makes and enforces rules for television and internet companies, and the Federal Trade Commission, which enforces various antitrust and other consumer protection rules against businesses — under direct presidential control….
He intends to strip employment protections from tens of thousands of career civil servants, making it easier to replace them if they are deemed obstacles to his agenda. And he plans to scour the intelligence agencies, the State Department and the defense bureaucracies to remove officials he has vilified as “the sick political class that hates our country.”
It is very safe to say that there are a heck of a lot of Americans who hear this and feel this is long past time to do.
Recall again that Jan. 31, 2017, Washington Post headline — appearing a mere 11 days after Trump took office — that read:
Resistance from within: Federal workers push back against Trump
The story, reported by the Post’s Juliet Eilperin, Lisa Rein, and Marc Fisher, begins:
The signs of popular dissent from President Trump’s opening volley of actions have been plain to see on the nation’s streets, at airports in the aftermath of his refugee and visa ban, and in the blizzard of outrage on social media. But there’s another level of resistance to the new president that is less visible and potentially more troublesome to the administration: a growing wave of opposition from the federal workers charged with implementing any new president’s agenda.
Less than two weeks into Trump’s administration, federal workers are in regular consultation with recently departed Obama-era political appointees about what they can do to push back against the new president’s initiatives. Some federal employees have set up social media accounts to anonymously leak word of changes that Trump appointees are trying to make.
Not to be forgotten either was this story from the Hill in 2016. It opened by reporting this:
Federal government employees are opening their wallets to help Hillary Clinton beat Donald Trump on Nov. 8.
Of the roughly $2 million that federal workers from 14 agencies spent on presidential politics by the end of September, about $1.9 million, or 95 percent, went to the Democratic nominee’s campaign, according to an analysis by The Hill….
Employees at all the agencies analyzed, without exception, are sending their campaign contributions overwhelmingly to Clinton over her Republican counterpart. Several agencies, such as the State Department, which Clinton once led, saw more than 99 percent of contributions going to Clinton.
In other words? The federal bureaucracy is not about doing its various jobs. It is about implementing its left-wing agenda — and Donald Trump stands in their way, with the American people right behind him.
Trump supporters understand at a visceral level that Trump is exactly the person who will be fearless in taking on the thoroughly corrupted bureaucracy that is, among other things, now using the Department of Justice and the FBI to target Trump personally, not to mention average Americans, like those protesting at school board meetings.
The 2024 election promises to come down to a serious fight between millions of Americans versus a relative handful of elites, all too ably represented by President Joe Biden, who have nothing but contempt for average Americans — and are all too willing to use the power of government and other American institutions to target those average Americans.
All of which gives meaning to the repeated polls that show Trump far and away the leader for the 2024 GOP nomination — and the election beyond that.
In short? Trump is trouncing his GOP opposition.
And there is a reason why.
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Jeffrey Lord, a contributing editor to The American Spectator, is a former aide to Ronald Reagan and Jack Kemp. An author and former CNN commentator, he writes from Pennsylvania at [email protected]. His new book, Swamp Wars: Donald Trump and The New American Populism vs. The Old Order, is now out from Bombardier Books.
