Victor Davis Hanson lays out in NRO the many ironies of Donald Trump being president for the Left, for the Never Trump, for the Always Trump, and for the Better Than the Alternative. First, the Left.
Left-leaning politicians and media were untroubled by the President Obama’s unconstitutional abuses during his eight years in the White House.
- The camouflaging and disguising of much of his agenda because it was “antithetical to the wishes and preferences of the American electorate.” (Benghazi, the conduct of Bowe Bergdahl, the Affordable Care Act, the Iran deal, Fast and Furious)
- The pen-and-phone mockery of established federal law (the suspension of the ACA employer mandate, the Chrysler creditor reversal, the non-enforcement of federal immigration law, the institutionalization of sanctuary-city nullification).
- The constant mythmaking (faux red lines, deadlines, and step-over lines to the fatuity of the Cairo Speech and Iran-deal harangues).
- The abuses of presidential power (the surveillance of journalists, the selective release of the bin Laden trove to pet journalists, the likely surveilling, unmasking, and leaking through reversed targeting of political enemies).
- The serial scandals at the GSA, the VA, the IRS, and the Secret Service, or his disastrous reset policy with Russia and the implosion of the Middle East or the strange spectacles of Obama’s interview with GloZell (very strange) or polarizing Oval Office guests, such as the rapper whose album cover portrayed celebrations over a dead white judge.
Obama set the bar for recalibrating presidential conduct, Mr. Hanson reminds readers. Along came the next Republican president, “empowered by Obama’s exemptions to do almost anything he wished, albeit without the thin exculpatory veneer of Ivy League pretension, multicultural indemnity, and studied smoothness. …”
- For every sermon about not building your business, making too much money, or profiting at the wrong time, there was a Trump retort to profit as never before.
- For every too-frequent gala golf outing of a metrosexual Obama decked out in spiffy attire, there is a plumper Trump swinging away, oblivious to the angry pack of reporters that Obama once so carefully courted.
- For every rapper with an ankle bracelet that went off in the White House, there is now a White House photo-op with Ted Nugent. For every executive-order suspension of federal immigration enforcement, there is an executive-order corrective.
- For every lecture on the crusades, sermons on Western genocidal history, apology tour, or Islamic mythmaking, there is an American Greatness pride in everything.
Continued tomorrow, Hanson’s ironies for the Never Trumpers.
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