By Wayne Allensworth
Journalist Salena Zito understands the 45th, now 47th, president’s verbal riffing in a way the establishment does not: She wrote that “The press takes him literally, but not seriously; his supporters take him seriously, but not literally.” From Western Pennsylvania, Zito has spent the best part of a decade following Donald Trump, and her background helped her see him the way his supporters do. Trump is the Troller-in-chief. Sometimes it’s probably intentional. Sometimes it’s just Trump being Trump. He never has had much of a filter.
Watching Trump’s inauguration yesterday was quite an experience. I’ve never seen anything quite like it. A number of people who had spent the last eight years screeching about him as a Hitler who threatens “our democracy” showed up for Hitler’s inauguration. That should tell you something about their rhetoric and how to take it. President Joe Biden looked like an ambulatory mannequin as he escorted Vice President Kamala Harris in her black Chairman Mao pantsuit. Former President Barack Obama was there without Michelle. POTUS 43 George W. Bush and wife dutifully took their seats. Hillary Clinton put on a good face, while Bill, yet another former president, looked somewhat cadaverous as he seemed to hang on every word of Trump’s speech. And it was quite a stemwinder. I smiled as Trump flat out told the truth about the globalist-technocratic regime. It is a corrupt cabal that has betrayed the country, suppressed free speech, and “weaponized” the federal bureaucracy to punish its political opponents, among other things. And the globalist gang had to sit there and take it.
In his usual inimitable fashion, Trump declared that, to borrow a catchphrase from the ‘70s, the long national nightmare was over. He called it “Liberation Day.” I think it’s a fine thing that he intends to rehabilitate President McKinley by restoring the war-hero president’s name to “Mount Denali.” I don’t care whether the Gulf of Mexico becomes the Gulf of America. Going to Mars might be worth it (“Manifest Destiny” in outer space!), and kicking the Chinese out of the canal zone in Panama is probably called for. I get a little nervous about all the “exceptionalism” talk, but the ordinary people who voted for Trump expect that.
What mattered to me, and I think what really mattered for all of us, was not the high-flown rhetoric and the usual Trump hyperbole, but the core promises he intends to fulfill in part by a slew of executive orders: defending the southern border by declaring a “national emergency,” for instance. Deporting illegal aliens, beginning with criminals. Designating the Mexican drug cartels as terrorist organizations. Protecting American industry and American jobs. Ending woke ideology — diversity, equity, and inclusion — in the bureaucracy and military and promoting on merit. Reforming the government bureaucracy. And, perhaps most of all, for American foreign and domestic policy are inextricably linked, pledging to use American power to end wars — and not to get into wars in the first place. By pledging that America no longer will be taken advantage of, meaning we will no longer subsidize everyone everywhere or advantage our “allies” over ourselves, Trump unconsciously overturned Washington’s Cold War policy consensus of a limitless Marshal Plan for the whole world. Mass immigration, “free trade,” and endless foreign “aid” were all in part a legacy of the global struggle with communism. Those policies fit perfectly with a globalist agenda. The establishment hates him for that.
Trump’s speech expressed Middle America’s feeling about the country. It was a love poem, a pep rally for America. Trump is hardly a radical. His vision of good times is probably the Reagan era. One could easily pick a lot of nits in Trump’s worldview (how about an immigration moratorium?), but without him, we wouldn’t at least have a chance to salvage something from a dire situation. My short answer to anyone who asks why I enthusiastically voted for Trump is that he doesn’t hate us. His often-noted common touch and ability to connect with ordinary people is sincere. His enemies have quite the opposite view.
So, when I watched the Trump rally on the eve of the inauguration, I laughed heartily at the man himself doing the “Trump Dance” on stage as the Village People belted out “YMCA.” As far as your observer is concerned, Trump can troll the establishment prigs with promises to annex the North Pole or build a Trump Tower on Venus, so long as he follows through on those core promises as best he can.
I think he intends to do just that. As Zito says, let’s take him seriously.
Chronicles contributor Wayne Allensworth is the author of The Russian Question: Nationalism, Modernization, and Post-Communist Russia, and a novel, Field of Blood. For thirty-two years, he worked as an analyst and Russia area expert in the US intelligence community.
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