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Former President Donald Trump addresses the Conservative Political Action Conference held in the Hyatt Regency in Orlando, Fla., on Feb. 28, 2021. (Joe Raedle/Getty Images) Viewpoints

Conrad Black May 24, 2021 Updated: May 25, 2021 biggersmallerPrint

Commentary

With the latest job creation numbers 75 percent below forecast, and illegal entry into the U.S. across the southern border up 944 percent from April of last year, and the president having difficulty reconciling his support of Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state with the vocal anti-Semitism of elements of his own congressional party, and inflation on gasoline, lumber, bread, and a number of other vital products running between 50 and 150 percent, the contemporary Democratic Party is reverting to the only arrow left in its quiver and the only song remaining in its song book: Trump-hate.

The administration’s demiurgic effort to continue public panic over the Covid virus has failed. Texas, whose opposition to the complete shut-down President Biden denounced as “Neanderthal,” and other anti-shut down states such as Florida and South Dakota, have so completely outperformed the principal Democratic compulsory lockdown states, as to make it very difficult to sustain public pandemic hysteria at its former stratospheric levels. Likewise, the progress of the vaccines for which no Democrat is physically capable of giving any credit to former President Trump, have made hysteria even more difficult to support.

The administration has acquiesced in the Colonial Pipeline paying a $4.45 million bribe to the Russian cyber-hackers who shut it down as “a corporate matter.” The president has expressed his confidence that the Russian leader Vladimir Putin knows nothing about this illegal computer hacking activity conducted from within his own country.

It would be an offensive use of the generally shabby device of the rhetorical question to ask if any reader could imagine President Eisenhower or President Kennedy or President Reagan or President Clinton being both so blasé about such a development, and so little bothered by the docile media about it being impossible to fill the tank of your car at the gas stations of the nation’s capital because cyber thugs have shut down the pipeline, and it is only being reopened because of the bribe paid by the company, and the president says it’s a corporate matter and believes that the head of the Russian government knew nothing about it.

The polls so far show President Biden’s approval rating in the low to mid ’50s, a very comfortable position about 10 percent ahead of his disapproval rating though not miraculous for someone so early in his administration. The approval ratings for the former president are about the same in reverse so the effect of the proverbial honeymoon has been to freeze things.

The following insight makes no pretense to being scientific, professional, or in the slightest degree researched. But my impression is that the relief at the less hectic and antagonistic and backbiting atmosphere of the Trump era, chiefly the result of his enemies’ endless attacks upon him, but still the remembered ambiance of Trump’s America, approximately balances the increasing concern over the practical shortcomings of this administration’s performance in almost every field.

None of these problem areas, including the sharply increased crime rates, and all the complicated and almost wholly negative consequences of the country, especially the schools, being shut down for a year, are likely to abate quickly or continue to be assimilated with such Job-like patience as they have been up to now.

It must be said that Mr. Biden does a very good job of appearing to be moderate and likable and while his inarticulation is acoustically irksome and worrisome as an indication of his mental acuity, his understated and good-natured treatment of almost every issue is amiable and in many ways a welcome change.

It now appears that the Democratic senators and congressional representatives, having had the opportunity to consult with their own districts and states, are now substantially disabused of the temptation to try to enact much more of the Sanders socialist program that Biden signed on to, to maintain party unity.

It isn’t working—it is in fact a disaster in every field: open borders, pouring borrowed money out of the treasury to the point that it disincentives people from working and inflames inflation in a way that has not been seen in the United States in more than 40 years. In these circumstances, with failing policies and rising controversy over unspeakable irritations such as the official promotion of racist versions of American history and current sociology even in the Armed Forces, it is logical that the Democrats return to the one card they’ve successfully played these last five years: the confected and orchestrated hatred of the former president.

This appears to be the explanation for the rabidly partisan attorney general of New York, Letitia James’ elevation of the decades-old investigation of the Trump organization, whether by the IRS or the department of justice, to be a criminal investigation.

It is in this context that the personification of the Trump Russian collusion fraud when she was at Lawfare, Susan Hennessey, has joined the Justice Department, and that Speaker Nancy Pelosi is pressing ahead with her insatiable ambition to pretend that the Jan. 6 violation of the Capitol really was a Trump-inspired attempt at insurrection.

The FBI, tarnished though it is, has established that it was just hooliganism unconnected to Trump or his political organization. It has also come to light that none of the damage would have been done if the speaker and the egregious mayor of Washington, Muriel Bowser, had paid any attention when the head of the Capitol Police asked for reinforcements in the receding days.

The Democrats had naturally bought into the Never Trump Republicans’ view that having ousted him from the White House, Trump would vanish into the aberrant past and the Republican party would resume its former post-Reagan status as alternating occupation of the White House and control of the Congress while the machinery of government was entirely operated by Democrats and the country drifted slowly to the left.

It is now clear the Trump retains the support of the great majority of Republicans and that in early polling for the 2024 presidential nomination, he leads the second place finisher former vice president Mike Pence by 43 percent to 13 percent, and other candidates are in single digits. Ironically, the attempt to cancel Trump on the social media platforms has enabled him to be as much present to the public as the public wishes without being oppressively in the face of the public all the time as he was as president.

The prosecutorial system in the United States is so generally corrupt, and grand juries are so hopelessly incapable of providing any comfort at all against capricious prosecution, that Attorney General James could certainly indict Trump but, since he has been under continuous tax audit for 40 years, it is unlikely that she would have a real case.

In New York City and given the terrible abuse of the plea bargain system, juries would convict any Republican of any charge, but such charges as might be mounted against the former president would almost certainly be blown to pieces on appeal and that would not help achieve the Democrats Holy Grail of destroying the Trump political phenomenon.

They are now in the uncomfortable position through there ineptitude and their dalliance with the far left of being unable to pass any legislation that will satisfy the cutting edge of the Democrats, and unable to make any of the policies that they have advocated since the election campaign even passably successful.

At this point the administration looks like a melting iceberg, turning in the desperation of their failure at governing, back to the only tactic that has worked for them: the malicious character assassination of the former president. It is unlikely that will work again.

Conrad Black has been one of Canada’s most prominent financiers for 40 years, and was one of the leading newspaper publishers in the world. He’s the author of authoritative biographies of Franklin D. Roosevelt and Richard Nixon, and, most recently, “Donald J. Trump: A President Like No Other,” which has been republished in updated form. You can hear more of Conrad’s thoughts on his podcast “Scholars & Sense” alongside his co-hosts Bill Bennett and Victor Davis Hanson at ScholarsAndSense.buzzsprout.com