Including both national elections and Republican primaries, I’ve had four chances to vote for former President Donald Trump. I’ve never done it. I’ve never even been tempted to. I could rattle off the names of 100 people I’d prefer for the job.
The reason isn’t complicated: I simply don’t believe that a man who lacks even a modicum of prudence, temperance, or humility should ever be in charge of anything. Not a gas station or a classroom, and certainly not a nation. I’ve published dozens of columns in the past two years alone that elaborate on this point.
And yet, following the Soviet show trial in Manhattan that resulted in the first felony conviction of a former president in history, I find myself in the unthinkable position of supporting Trump’s reelection bid. It isn’t because I’ve suddenly forgotten about Trump’s abominable character or his magnificently grotesque personality, nor because I’ve suddenly been swept up in the MAGA craze. I’ve simply come to believe that a Biden reelection is too dangerous for the fate of our nation. I believe that the forces that animate the modern Democratic Party are far darker than the sum of Trump’s numerous deficiencies. Biden must be defeated — even if that means supporting an unfit and unqualified man.
The sham verdict is what finally knocked me over the edge, but far more troubling is how it fits into the larger effort by the establishment in Washington, D.C., to maintain its grip on power in the Trump era. From the very beginning, a malevolent monolith of government lifers, legacy media millionaires, and liberal elites in academia and business conspired to destroy him, setting fire to core American institutions and values along the way.
It will doubtless astound and horrify future historians that a multi-year investigation into Trump’s supposed ties to Moscow was heavily influenced by a piece of opposition research, the Steele Dossier, which was paid for by his opponent for the White House, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Again, Trump was prosecuted for a crime so irrelevant to the well-being of America that hardly anyone could explain what the crime was.
Of course, I am not saying that Trump has never committed a felony in his colorful life — I’d wager that he has. The classified document charges leveled against Trump are serious. But context matters. Former President Bill Clinton lied under oath about having an affair with Monica Lewinsky in the late 90s. President George W. Bush is said by some to have committed war crimes for his invasion of Iraq and his policies at Guantanamo Bay. Former President Barack Obama targeted and killed three U.S. citizens in drone strikes in Yemen — the ACLU even filed a lawsuit against him to this effect. Hillary Clinton narrowly escaped felony charges for criminal negligence in handling classified documents despite mountains of damning evidence. Biden only evaded felony charges for the same crime because the prosecutor didn’t think he could secure a conviction against an elderly man with a poor memory.
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The notion that Trump’s payoff to porn star Stormy Daniels, made in order to keep their affair out of the papers, was the crime finally worth turning a former president into a felon is so preposterous, so completely insulting to the intelligence of the public, that it beggars belief.
I retain deep doubts about Trump’s capacity to lead — his leadership on COVID-19, from lockdowns to handing over the country to Anthony Fauci to hurrying the production of an experimental vaccine, was abysmal. Unlike other new converts in the media, I will not be donning a red baseball cap the next time I’m in front of a camera. But I do believe that he must win — or rather, that Biden must lose — in order for democracy to survive.
