The Patriot Post® · Donald Trump Doubles Down on MAGA
Former President Donald Trump has kept a relatively low profile since leaving office three months ago — partly because he’s re-immersed himself in the family business, partly because he’s playing more golf, and partly because he’s been banned from what had been his primary communications vehicle, Twitter. Still, when he speaks, people listen. And he did so last night in an hour-long interview from his Mar-a-Lago resort with Fox News’s Sean Hannity.
“I miss the most helping people,” Trump said when asked what he missed the most about the presidency, “because I can directly help people. That’s why I did it.” Still, he continued to punt on the big question — whether he’d run again in 2024 — but this seems increasingly a strategic position, one designed to maximize his influence in the near term.
As for that near term, Trump said, “We’re going to help with the House [in 2022]. I think we have a really good chance. I’m working with everybody including [House Minority Leader] Kevin McCarthy in taking back the House. … The Senate’s going to be a little bit tougher,” but he said he was willing to travel and do speeches and rallies for candidates that need help, adding that he’s “all in” on helping the Republican Party.
Hannity rattled off what he considered to be the Trump agenda, the “Make America Great” agenda: more liberty, a belief in the Constitution, lower taxes, less bureaucracy, constitutionalists on the bench, secure borders, legal immigration, energy independence, law and order, safety and security for every American, school choice, free and fair trade. (It’s an incomplete list, obviously, as it fails to mention Trump’s support of the Second Amendment, his remarkable pro-life legacy, and his willingness to punch back against a deeply dishonest and corrupt media.)
“Should this now be the Republican Party agenda?” asked Hannity. “Should anybody that wants to run for the House or the Senate — should they take this ‘Make America Great’ agenda and fight for those things that you fought for the four years you were president?” the host asked.
“If they want to win, yes,” Trump responded.
But how to win within a system that seems increasingly stacked against Republicans? When Hannity asked Trump about Georgia’s recently passed voting reform law — the one that Joe Biden and his fellow Democrats have shamefully and dishonestly dubbed “Jim Crow on steroids” — the former president responded, “The Georgia bill is far too weak. … Look, what happened is, [Governor Brian Kemp] and others were afraid to be called ‘racist,’ so they gave a very weak bill, and they’re called ‘racist’ anyway.” Trump added, “Now, Texas has got a very strong but fair bill. But you have signature matching. … All of the states that we won were properly run. Florida was properly run, Ohio was properly run … North Carolina [was] … properly run.”
Kemp, thus having failed to learn his history, is condemned to repeat it. He tried to placate the implacable Left, and we all know how they thanked him. As Winston Churchill admonished British PM Neville Chamberlain after he’d returned from having signed the infamous Munich Pact with Adolf Hitler, “You were given the choice between war and dishonor. You chose dishonor and you will have war.” It’s probably unfair to equate Brian Kemp with Neville Chamberlain, but the lasting lesson about appeasement still stands.
As for Trump’s signature issue, immigration and border security, his response to Hannity’s question about Biden’s utter mismanagement of the border and his dismantling of Trump’s policies yielded a predictable response: “They’re sending us not their best people. They’re sending us people that, in many cases, not in all cases, are murders, drug dealers, human traffickers, and really bad — rapists, really bad people. They’re sending us people from their prisons. Those people are coming into our country. … What [Biden’s people are] doing is insane. They’re going to destroy our country.”