Donald Trump is the presumptive Republican nominee for president in this November’s exceedingly consequential election. Yes, there’s a lot that needs to be done in the next several months to ensure Biden and Harris are shellacked at the ballot box, but it’s time to unite and dispense with the notion that supporting President Trump means endorsing a uniquely chaotic future for America. Instead, it’s time to embrace Trump, the “chaos candidate."
In her bid to derail Trump’s return as the Republican nominee, Nikki Haley — who had no qualms serving the 45th president as his ambassador to the United Nations — routinely attacked him as being weighed down by chaos and pointed out what she said was a disqualifying number of issues that drew fire and made him unable to beat Biden or lead the country again.
While making such arguments, however, Haley ignored the most basic reality of being a conservative in America today: you’re automatically guaranteed “chaos” no matter what you do — and even if you do what Democrats want.
Quite simply, there is nothing Donald Trump could do to avoid this reality short of quitting and going into exile. This has been demonstrated repeatedly in recent months as Republicans announced their plans to retire from Congress or step back from leadership roles. Only when conservatives are dead or powerless do Democrats even consider letting up or offering a positive word. Even in death, conservatives are still routinely dug up and used as punching bags for leftists.
The truth is that Donald Trump is not a uniquely chaotic person. His career and friendships before running for president prove this. He had multiple seasons of a primetime TV show on NBC, a network that is now essentially dedicated to his destruction. He made a cameo in “Home Alone 2: Lost in New York” and was invited to appear on “The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air,” “Sex and the City,” and “The Nanny.” He even appeared with Megan Mullally for a “Green Acres” bit at the Emmy Awards in 2005. He ran the Miss Universe pageants. He was accepted by ruling elites such as the Clintons, Barbara Walters, Russell Simmons, Anna Wintour, Oprah Winfrey, et al.
Ever since taking his trip down Trump Tower’s escalator in the summer of 2015, Trump’s life has changed, but the chaos hasn’t come from him. Advocating for constitutional rights and pursuing tax cuts are not radical positions, especially for a Republican politician. Seeking to enhance national security and shut down foreign foes is also not behavior from the agent of chaos detractors say Trump is. Yet, because he had power and wielded it successfully more often than not, he became “the chaos candidate” as a result of unhinged leftists’ reaction.
Trump didn’t collude with Russia to defeat Hillary Clinton. Her campaign created that chaos.
Trump didn’t create a constitutional crisis by doing his mandated duty to nominate justices to the Supreme Court. Radical leftists decided to go full hair-on-fire with false smear campaigns alleging Brett Kavanaugh is a rapist and declaring Amy Coney Barrett a racist for adopting children from Haiti.
Trump didn’t bring fiery ruin to America’s cities and cause violent unrest before the 2020 election. Marxist Black Lives Matter rioters destroyed minority-owned businesses because they’re criminals in search of a Target to loot and a police station to burn.
“But the prosecutions,” Trump’s detractors, even on the “right,” will whine. Yeah, and? Does anyone believe the lovebirds in Fulton County who seemingly couldn’t put together a coherent legal argument or even bother to try competently covering up an affair really have the silver bullet to sideline Trump? One only needs to look at the disparity in the federal prosecutions of Hunter Biden and Trump to see the clear partisan benefit only one side enjoys.
“He’s an insurrectionist!” Maybe, but only insofar as Democrats are also insurrectionists. The leftists don’t even hide it, nor have they in the past. When Republican presidential candidates win, Democrats don’t accept it. Worse than that, by their own standards, leftists seek to invalidate the will of the American people. It’s happened multiple times since the turn of the century, and Democrats have already said they will seek to deny certification of a Trump victory in November. There is no quiet part to say out loud because Democrats are proud of their undemocratic actions.
As noted in a column in December, “our democracy” (America is a republic, but I digress) is not dying in darkness supposedly created by conservatives and Donald Trump — it’s being murdered in broad daylight by giddy Democrats and other strips of unhinged leftists who wear their attempts to deny Americans the right to vote for a Republican candidate.
Trump’s “chaos,” as a reminder, brought a cornucopia of benefits for the American people. The economy was booming pre-pandemic. There were no new wars. Iran was sent sulking into the shadows and its terror proxies were left panhandling around the Arab world. Russia didn’t invade any neighbors. The border was under control. If that’s what chaos brings, let’s double it starting in 2025.
Contrast Trump’s chaos with the current reality created by Biden’s supposedly “adults-are-in-charge” administration and the Democrats in Congress. War is breaking out around the globe, despite his “diplomacy.” The U.S.-Mexico border has been reduced to an abstract concept. Biden handed Afghanistan to the Taliban while calling the terrorists "businesslike." Inflation surged to 40-year highs and continues to accelerate upward. Cocaine is being found in the White House. Biden’s illegitimate grandchildren are topics of national news. Democrats are openly advocating for Hamas to survive. When they can’t win, members of Biden’s party pull fire alarms on Capitol Hill on the rare days they're not working to destroy America's institutions. That's some real chaos.
The chaos supposedly orbiting Trump, on the other hand, isn’t his — it’s the left’s, all created as part of their attempts to make him seem so bad that even those in the “basket of deplorables” won’t give him another shot. As the 2024 primary confirmed, however, the chaos created by leftists in their attempts to derail Trump has failed. They’ve made him stronger as Biden sinks lower and lower, and each week brings more disastrous poll numbers for the president’s re-election hopes.
As Trump has been wise to begin doing, it’s time to pivot to general election messaging and, hopefully, more attempts at unifying conservatives so that Biden can be put to pasture and Trump can get back to work with the wisdom from his first term informing his efforts to drain the swamp, reform government, and restore real American strength on the world stage.