Michael Anton wrote a seminal essay for the Claremont Review of Books in September 2016 titled “The Flight 93 Election,” which went viral, particularly among conservatives. It was a wonderfully crafted metaphor, suggesting that the survival of America as a viable republic depended on the against-all-odds election of an outsider to the D.C. swamp by the name of Donald J. Trump. Although it was a gamble as to whether this brash businessman with no government experience could effectively lead the country, the alternative of a Hillary Clinton election was a guaranteed death sentence for a United States in which the people still ultimately ruled.
Guess what? The American people re-took control of the airplane in 2016 and put Donald Trump at the controls of the massive plane. The question now is whether he can stave off the near fanatic efforts by those hell-bent on putting back in charge those who would drive the plane into the ground.
The real Flight 93 of course was the ill-fated United Airlines jetliner that was hijacked by al Qaeda terrorists on September 11, 2001 in their suicidal mission to destroy an American landmark. A heroic group of passengers, realizing they had nothing to lose, rose up to charge the cockpit in an effort to re-commandeer the flight. While their incredible bravery did not result in the salvation of their own lives, it likely did prevent the deaths of hundreds, perhaps thousands, of lives at the hijackers’ intended target as the plane tragically crashed in a field near Shanksville, PA.
Thankfully, the American electorate was able to save itself in 2016. And one might draw out Mr. Anton’s metaphor a bit further.
Mr. Trump has been flying the plane now for nearly four years, arguably doing a magnificent job. The economy roared back to life following so many years of anemic growth under Barack Obama, thanks to Mr. Trump’s drastic cutbacks of job-killing regulations and onerous taxes. He unleashed the military to crush ISIS in a matter of months, after their caliphate had flourished for years under the prior administration, due to the utter incompetence of Mr. Obama and his feckless vice president, Joe Biden. In fact, Mr. Trump has achieved the unthinkable in the Middle East, engineering new peace agreements between Israel and the countries of Sudan, the United Arab Emirates, and Bahrain, with the prospect of additional Arab countries allying with Israel. Mr. Trump has achieved the greatest re-alignment of the Middle East in 70 years.
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Yet during the remarkable first three years of his administration, half the passengers on Mr. Anton’s metaphorical airplane grew increasingly rabid in their hatred of the salvific pilot who was asked to take control and save all those onboard. The leadership of that half of the air travelers in fact has mounted attack after attack on the cockpit, first with a fraudulently predicated counterintelligence operation against the pilot (complete with a doctored FBI document and illegally obtained FISA warrants), then a “special counsel investigation” of Hillary-formulated “Russian-Trump collusion,” which came to naught, then a badly concocted and ultimately failed impeachment bid over a perfectly normal telephone conversation.
After all else failed, and with remarkable timing, a mysterious virus swept through the cabin, handing Captain Trump yet another headache to address, while violent, occasionally homicidal, “mostly peaceful protests” broke out among the passengers. Talk about your flights from hell.
Not to fear, however. The half of the passengers who have been driven to the edge of madness by the presence of Donald Trump in the captain’s seat have their own prospective pilot to take command. His name is Joseph Robinette Biden.
Yes, this pilot has had a most unremarkable, near-half century career in Washington, most distinguished for its dearth of achievement. As former Defense Secretary Robert Gates wrote in his memoir, Joe Biden has “been wrong on nearly every major foreign policy and national security issue over the past four decades." Well, that certainly instills confidence.
But of greater significance than the question of the prospective pilot’s competence is his integrity, or lack thereof. Thanks perhaps to providence, and the influence of powerful narcotics, Joe Biden’s son Hunter abandoned his personal “Laptop from Hell” with a computer repairman in Delaware. Under the terms and conditions of the repair shop’s agreement with Hunter, and Delaware law, the laptop and its contents became the property of the repair shop owner. And what a story it had to tell, with help from excellent reporting by the New York Post, which Big Tech, the mainstream media and the Democratic Machine have done everything they can to suppress.
We came to discover that Hunter and, it seems, his father, were hip-deep in shady influence-selling schemes with foreign actors including, apparently, the Chinese Communist Party through the Chinese company CEFC Energy Holdings. The damning documentary evidence yielded by Hunter’s laptop has now been bolstered by the testimony of a highly credible international businessman and Navy veteran, Anthony Bobulinski. His eye-opening interview with Tucker Carlson regarding Joe Biden’s involvement in his son’s corrupt foreign deals is suggested viewing for every American voter.
We have a stark choice on November 3. The pilot who took command in 2016 not only saved the aircraft from terminal leftist descent under a Hillary Clinton presidency. He made a severe, and positive, course correction, and in the process, exposed massive corruption within the administrative state (and complicit media and technology allies), and immense corrupt foreign influence as well. We can choose him to land our plane or a self-evidently senile, corrupt Washington swamp creature.
Be sure that if the rabid passengers are successful in placing their pilot, Joe Biden, in command, there is a very strong likelihood that this aircraft will be owned by the People’s Republic of China or other malign foreign actor. Destination, unknown.
William F. Marshall has been an intelligence analyst and investigator in the government, private, and non-profit sectors for more than 33 years. He is a senior investigator for Judicial Watch, Inc., and a contributor to Townhall, American Thinker, Epoch Times and The Federalist. Follow him on Parler and Twitter at @BillMarshallDC1. (The views expressed are the author’s alone, and not necessarily those of Judicial Watch.)
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