Victor Davis Hanson
American Greatness
So-called King, Donald Trump, ran in two contested Republican primaries.
He ran three times in a general election.
He was elected twice, and his party recently won a Republican Congress.
In contrast, in 2020, Joe Biden did not run a typical campaign.
He avoided the public, staying ensconced in his basement. He outsourced his campaign to Democratic politicos, donors, and a sycophantic media.
No red state ever sought to remove Joe Biden or Kamala Harris from their 2024 ballots. In contrast, twenty-five blue states attempted to take Trump off their ballots.
In 2021, Joe Biden’s DOJ and FBI raided then-former-President Trump’s home. They found only 102 classified documents among some 14,000 seized, but nevertheless indicted him.
There was no such SWAT raid on Biden’s multiple repositories of illegally removed classified documents.
All were in less secure places than at Mar-a-Lago. Biden removed them over the course of three decades with impunity. At the time, unlike Trump, he had no presidential prerogatives to declassify them.
Special counsel Robert Hur found Biden culpable for the removal of these files but declined to prosecute, claiming that he was too enfeebled to stand trial.
In 2024, the same backroom donors and politicos who had conspired to ensure Biden was the 2020 nominee now, against his wishes, in coup-like fashion, removed him from his own reelection ticket.
Within 48 hours and without a delegate vote, they crowned Kamala Harris as the presumed nominee. Queen Harris had not received a single delegate vote in her disastrous 2020 primary run.
Donald Trump, in 2020, did not sic his Department of Justice on his rival, Joe Biden.
Nor during his presidency did his Department of Justice indict any past or future political opponent or ex-president.
In contrast, Kingly Joe Biden’s White House helped coordinate 91 indictments of his past and future presidential rival, ex-president Donald Trump.
A mere three days after Trump announced his reelection bid on November 15, 2022, Jack Smith was coincidentally appointed special prosecutor of Trump.
That same day, strangely, Nathan Wade, the Georgia county prosecutor prosecuting Trump, met with Biden’s White House counsel.
On the same day, Matthew Colangelo, the former lead prosecutor in Letitia James’s case against Trump, abruptly left his DOJ post. He would soon go on to lead Manhattan prosecutor Alvin Bragg’s prosecution of Trump.
In the 2020 election, Joe Biden’s surrogates rounded up 51 “intelligence authorities” to lie that Hunter Biden’s authentic and incriminating laptop—then verified but suppressed by the FBI—was the work of the Russians.
The Biden-era FBI also joined Twitter, Facebook, and other social media to help smother any media story that might have verified the authenticity of the laptop.
The left portrays Trump’s constitutional right to pardon as the act of a king.
In his nearly five years of governance, Trump has pardoned roughly 1,700, including about 1,500 en masse for those convicted for the January 6 protests.
That number so far is about 200 fewer pardons than during the Obama administration.
Joe Biden, in a mere four years in office, pardoned roughly 4,245 people—the vast majority through autopen signatures and without the full knowledge of Biden himself.
Under the Obama and Biden administrations, admitted left-wing government lawbreakers and White House allies were never prosecuted for felonious behavior.
CIA head John Brennan admitted to lying twice to Congress.
Director of National Intelligence James Clapper confessed to lying under oath to Congress as well.
FBI Director James Comey claimed ignorance or amnesia 245 times while under oath to a House oversight committee.
Interim FBI Director Andrew McCabe lied four times, often while under oath to government investigators.
A federal judge in 2020 admonished John Bolton, Trump’s former National Security Advisor and vehement critic, that he had endangered national security by removing sensitive documents to write an anti-Trump campaign-cycle memoir.
He also warned Bolton that he could be subject to civil and criminal penalties.
Not one of these political grandees was ever indicted by either the Obama or Biden DOJ.
Trump’s White House advisors Steve Bannon and Peter Navarro were arrested in public for ignoring a congressional subpoena, convicted, and imprisoned.
In contrast, top Democrat officials like former attorneys general Eric Holder and Merrick Garland both ignored congressional subpoenas and faced no such indictments.
Monarchs might order assassinations of U.S. citizens abroad and surveil the phone records of Associated Press reporters.
Obama did both during his tenure.
Do kings monitor the phone records of their senatorial opponents?
Joe Biden’s special counsel, Jack Smith, did just that.
Why then do the Democrats’ “No Kings” protests claim that Trump is a monarch?
Answer: Through open and fair elections, the left lost most of its former political power in Congress, the White House, and the Supreme Court.
Now in their fury and impotence, Democrats hit the streets—projecting onto their hated nemesis, Donald Trump, their own past preferences for kingly methods.
The projection by dems continues. They actually want to be monarchs and the lorded elite. They behave as such and get away with it already, as you well stated. The dems simply tell the same lies until they get their base to accept the lies as a common or self-evident truth (axiom) and then stage opposition rallies. Since their base is basically brainwashed already, the time required gets shorter and shorter. It is quite formulaic. They also flood certain areas with unnaturalized immigrants, illegal and legal, and then force their way to power and their views on the populace. When challenged, they attack in the media and legally. If that does not work, they get violent. They have learned quite well that they can control cities and control the nation. They will double down on that strategy until it does not work. The divide between rural and urban is as real today as it has been throughout history. The USA is the only example I know of in history where the rural has held or at least blunted the power of the urban for this long. Can it continue?
Just live with it all you serfs and take solace that lies when told enough like DJT does do work. Have you received. Your souvenere piece of the East Wing yet? 🤪 jm
Total exposure of their idiocy, thanks for the article Victor! Could you imagine living in a world with the type of leaders these ignorant people would put in office? Of course, yes. We just survived Biden. However, we must sustain what President Trump has brought back to ensure the survival of our constitutional republic!
The voice of reality. A precise list and 100% verifiably true.
God Bless VDH!!
Bravo!
Why is open insurrection by leftist judges and government officials being tolerated by the DOJ? Time to completely clean out that department and allow the former employees to apply for their own jobs.
These protests seem to be a mere projection of their own “kingly” ideology. It was disturbing to me that a huge number of the protestors were from my generation (boomers). I was I graduated HS in 1975, and civics was still taught very vigorously during my school years, so I am incredibly confused as to why some of my generations are the ones railing against a very American patriotic civic minded president. My only conclusion is they kept their head in the bong and are living a perpetual trip on LSD. BTW, this even happened here in NE Oklahoma…..
In short, the left calls Trump a “king” because the left psychologically projects and gaslights. 🙂
The “real kings” are the super wealthy supporting and pushing the leftist agenda via riots, harmful propaganda, and the actual insurrection. They seem to be legion but represented by a couple governors, Reps like Garcia, etc. Their threats should be taken most seriously. They are destabilizing.
I agree it’s time for Judges who ignore recent well publicized precedents be santioned. And perhaps like in baseball, 3 strikes and you forfeit your position. There’s no way a small circuit judge should be able to create a TRO against a President.
As long as I can remember, whenever a prominent Democrat blames a Republican for this or that major error or criminal act, you can be sure that the Democrat or the Democrat party has committed same already.
Off topic with this column but I am a Virginia voter and voted this morning. In this state the liberals want a white Governor but the conservatives prefer a Black Haitian-American. Will the press talk about this switcheroo? I doubt it.
Excellent article V as always. The ‘Rule of Law!’ What rule I ask? I use to believe that the principles of right v wrong were undeniably clear as set forth in our constitution. Now, they are blurry at best and I see no light at the end of the corrupt political tunnel. Congratulations on the Daily Signal change and glad to see you are returning to good health. God bless America, our President, his family, his administration, our military and especially our Veterans.
A great summary. Thank you.
It seems that until and unless the DOJ does something about the billionaires who sponsor these demonstrations and riots by the useful idiots, it will only continue and probably grow worse. Freezing assets of Singh, Soros, Hoffman, Gates, etc., et al, may be appropriate. The politicos who daily make threats against those enforcing law, are in effect, insurrectionists. It’s time to arrest and charge a few of the threatening Dem mayors, governors. The Illinois gov, in particular, was offensive with his threat to punish ICE employees once the Dems regain control. He should be taken seriously. Proof was their behavior during the Obama’s/Biden’s administrations. They wasted little time unlike AG Bondi.
Democrats crave the position of ‘king’ so they can impose their will upon each and all of us. All of this ‘No Kings’ nonsense is an example of their frustration and manipulation of ‘useful idiots’ who are not bright enough to question what is going on. Civics appears to have been gutted from high school curriculums, and few today understand the structure and role of government in the lives of the citizens. What an overwhelming task for Trump and his team to begin the process of recovery and re-education in the rules and responsibilities of American citizenship.
It’s always been about the abject hatred of Donald Trump; nothing more, nothing less.
The no Kinger’s minds are parasitized. Gad Saad explains it well in his book -The Parasitic Mind.
The U.S.A. is a constitutional republic, n0t a democracy, which most of these protesters are ignorant of since civics is not vigorously taught in schools. The real “threat to democracy” are the left wing Judges who repeatedly are overturned on their rulings that contort precedents to suit the plaintiff’s law~fare objectives. SCJudge Kavanaugh admonished numerous rulings by these advocate Judges that had to be repeatedly overturned for ignoring just passed precedents. Congress need set a standard to dismissing these Judges from the bench if they continue to ignore precedents on the basis of incompetence or willful obstuction. Being overturned is typical in jurisprudence, but excessively numerous times is not.
Why oh why are we republicans so infuriating
A great, but depressing list.
As a foreigner living in Europe, it amazes me how much purchase this “No Kings” false narrative has gained.
Thanks for setting the record straight.