By now, more than six months after President Trump left the White House, Never-Trumpers were sure that he would have faded from the political scene. No mere politician could survive such an onslaught of negative publicity, the indictment of his business associates, and the unprecedented retaliation against his personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani.
Yet here we are, with Trump as popular as ever, as proved by his two-hour appearance last Saturday before an overflow crowd that stretched far outside the Arizona Federal Theater in downtown Phoenix. Trump thrilled with a high-energy performance, and the pro-Trump candidates who preceded him on the same stage were buoyed by rapturous enthusiasm.
The crowd was smart, too, in rejecting Republicans who block the Trump agenda of cleaning up our elections. State Sen. Michelle Ugenti-Rita, an otherwise attractive Republican candidate running for Arizona Secretary of State, was loudly booed off the stage for recently defeating an election integrity bill.
Trump himself blasted the do-nothing Republican governor of Arizona, who has obstructed ferreting out the election fraud that switched that state from Trump to Biden. Trump also lambasted critical race theory as “flagrant racism” that is being crammed down “every facet of our society.”
Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC), a rising member of Congress who thought she was adapting to shifting winds when she criticized Trump in January, has apparently learned her lesson. She is back on board after being rebuked by many for not remaining loyal to Trump when it mattered most.
Meanwhile, Trump-haters have a disaster on their hands by continuing to imprison without trial many ordinary Americans who dared to enter the Capitol (a.k.a. the “people’s house”) on January 6th. Their plight is being compared to the brutal Soviet gulag, which is history’s worst example of inhumane detention of political prisoners.
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The House Select Committee on January 6, whose members were selected by Nancy Pelosi, became a farce when the Speaker refused to seat two leading Republicans, Jim Jordan and Jim Banks. Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy has properly tagged Liz Cheney (R-WY) and Adam Kinzinger (R-IL) as “Pelosi Republicans” for joining that show trial, which recalls another notorious feature of communist countries.
The surge in the Delta variant of Covid, coupled with demands by the unhinged Anthony Fauci to impose even more restraints, strengthens Trump’s hand further. Trump managed the Covid issue better than Biden has, as Trump respects freedom.
Biden and Fauci are creating a two-tiered America, consisting of one group that has been vaccinated and one that has not, even though Covid deaths have occurred among those vaccinated. In contrast, Trump and Republicans stand for liberty to resolve the Covid crisis.
Fauci’s approach pushes America towards suffocating controls without end. He supports compelling schoolchildren to wear masks again this fall, as the Leftist California Gov. Gavin Newsom imposes there.
Trump continues to wield power through hundreds of judges he appointed to the federal bench, and last Friday two remarkable decisions were issued in favor of liberty and against the CDC. Cruise ships will embark again, and the striking down of the CDC’s eviction moratorium was affirmed.
In both decisions the CDC received its comeuppance by panels that included Trump-appointed judges. The CDC lacks authority to command cruise ships or landlords, the courts held.
In the cruise ship case, two Democrat-appointed judges on the Eleventh Circuit had blocked the splendid district court ruling that ended the CDC’s anchoring of the ships. The CDC had shut down the cruise ship industry, injuring Florida’s economy in addition to infringing on Americans’ rights to enjoy their vacations.
After a 2-1 Eleventh Circuit panel reinstated the CDC restrictions on cruise ships, Florida filed a petition with the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn the Eleventh Circuit. Within hours of filing that petition last Friday, the judges who sided with the CDC reversed themselves and ruled in favor of freedom to a cruise vacation.
Anthony Fauci and his ilk at the CDC have no expertise in captaining cruise ships. Indeed, it is unclear what, if anything, they have any genuine expertise at.
Yet our land of liberty and freedom has been taken over by a few petty tyrants who have exploited the Covid pandemic to infringe on our constitutional rights. Courts have allowed this power grab by the CDC, but cracks emerge in the walls of tyranny.
Also on Friday, three judges on the Sixth Circuit issued a unanimous ruling against a CDC-imposed moratorium against eviction of tenants. For months the CDC blocked landlords from exercising their constitutional rights over their own private property.
The bureaucrats in Washington, D.C., have enjoyed unlimited power for a year to address the Covid pandemic, and yet they have only made things worse. It is time to give liberty a chance to succeed, as it always has.
John and Andy Schlafly are sons of Phyllis Schlafly (1924-2016) and lead the continuing Phyllis Schlafly Eagles organizations with writing and policy work.
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