AP Photo/Ross D. Franklin
The question in the title needs, I believe, critical examination.
Why DOES the Left hate Trump so much?
The answer, as usual, can largely be found by analyzing history.
But first. Do they hate him because the average price of a gallon of gas in his administration was far lower than under Biden?
Is it because inflation was low (around 2%) and trending downward?
Is it that the USA was energy independent and didn’t need to beg our enemies for oil, deplete our strategic oil reserve or sell it to China?
Is it because black and Hispanic unemployment was lower than at any time in history?
Is it because Trump forced China into a fairer trade agreement, got a strong trade deal with Japan, and a solid peace in the Middle East?
Are these the reasons (more in a subsequent article) that the Left despises Trump so much?
These reasons may be symptoms, but don’t touch the main issue.
If you ask a liberal why they hate DJT so much, they aren’t going to say, “Well, because gas prices and inflation were manageable, minority unemployment was at record low levels, America was energy independent” etc., etc.
Those aren’t the answers you are going to receive.
More likely, they might mention something about his “mean, hateful tweets” or maybe opposition to their Green God.
Mr. Liberal, are you better off now than you were four years ago?
“Trump is a Nazi racist!”
Are you paying less for gasoline, groceries, and heating oil?
“He is an insurrectionist and dictator!”
I truly doubt any of them will respond, “I hate Trump because we now have to beg Saudi Arabia and Venezuela for oil.”
I’ve just a hunch you’ll get a different reply.
But, we all know the Left’s hatred of Donald Trump is real. It is a visceral, vicious, primeval, vindictive, animal. Unending and never ceasing.
To them, he is the worst President the country has ever had. The above accomplishments of Mr. Trump mean absolutely nothing to liberals. Theirs is a total, and blind, unreasoning hatred.
But, crucially, it isn’t just Mr. Trump they hate. He is simply the current target.
If Mr. DeSantis, or some other conservative Republican, gets the nomination in 2024, the hatred will simply be transferred, and perhaps worse. They loathed George W. Bush, they especially despised Ronald Reagan, and you are deplorable.
Most “common” Leftists probably can’t tell you why hatred of the Right runs so deeply, and many would probably deny it does. But you and I know better.
Most folks don’t understand the historical or ideological reasons why the leadership of the Left is so vindictive toward the Right.
There is no one, single, simple explanation, but it starts with the leadership’s arrogance and lust for power, and their inherent belief in their right to have and exercise it.
They are elitists, which makes them better than you, and thus, by right, they should rule and you should obey. It isn’t a new feature in human history; the current manifestation spins out of Darwinism and Marxism. But elitism itself isn’t recent.
Perhaps the best known (though certainly not the only) example of the same kind of bitter loathing is the rabbinical clique’s attitude toward Jesus.
The scribes, Pharisees, and chief priests were the “elitists” in Palestine in Jesus’ day. They were the local “rulers” of the people, they controlled, they intimidated, they spoke for God, and the common people were expected to submit. They loved their power and the positions it gave them—the “Jerusalem Establishment.”
Jesus, the outsider, represented a danger to all that. “The common people heard him gladly.” Abomination! Jesus constantly exposed the “establishment’s” failures and hypocrisies, and that drove them insane with venomous odium.
Thus, those religious leaders continually and viciously attacked him. They couldn’t answer his arguments, so they resorted to ad hominem assaults and name-calling, incessantly strove to destroy his reputation and belittle him and lower his esteem in the eyes of the people. He had to be removed.
But being unsuccessful in their attempts, they sought help.
They took him to the Romans (illegally in the middle of the night) and got him executed. For one reason, and one reason only.
Power.
Now, Donald Trump is not Jesus Christ, of course, far from it, but the parallels are intriguing. And the principle of corrupting power remains the same.
Trump, more than any Republican since Reagan, is/was perceived as the greatest menace to the Establishment’s desire for continued dominance over the American people. Whatever Trump likes (America), they hate. His policies were enormously successful and beneficial to the American people, but that is 100%, wholly irrelevant to the Left.
The people mean nothing to them, except as slaves who must submit to their masters or be removed. Mao Zedong’s 60-70 million slaughtered Chinese is a testament to this. The same with Stalin and every other Leftist thug.
The American Left’s “love” for children is manifested in their willingness to let them be mutilated in the name of a perverted ideology that gives the Democratic Party its slavish devotion in return.
Elitists hate Trump because, like Jesus, he exposes them for the hypocrites they are.
They spent four years, every day, 24/7, trying to destroy the man. And, as we are now learning, evoked every shady practice they could concoct to deny him re-election in 2020.
And should, for example, DeSantis receive the nomination in 2024, and be perceived as a similar threat (and he will be so perceived), they will shift all of their animosity and venom toward him.
It isn’t Trump, per se. It’s that the Left worships power, and like every Torquemada who ever lived, elitists will do all they can to destroy anyone who opposes their insatiable lust for dominance.
They hate you because you stand in the way of the thing they love most.
A mother bear defends her cubs. Viciously.
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RELATED ARTICLE
Weaponization: Dems release info from Trump tax returns
By ED MORRISSEY | Hot Air.com
The information itself amounts to a rehash of Donald Trump’s tax issues. The precedent it sets will have a much more substantial impact — as will the debate over whether Democrats violated the law in releasing the data.
The Wall Street Journal reports on the IRS data released by the House Ways and Means Committee, which shows — as everyone already knows — that Trump used previous tax losses to avoid paying taxes for several years:
The committee released reports and some documents that revealed details about Mr. Trump’s tax returns and audits on Tuesday, showing that he and his wife, Melania Trump, reported negative adjusted gross income in four of the six years from 2015 through 2020. The Trumps paid some form of federal taxes every year, but reported income-tax liability of $750 or less in three of the six years. A full set of tax documents is expected to become public in subsequent days.
The Internal Revenue Service hasn’t completed the Trumps’ audits for any of those years, and Democrats contended that the agency was too slow and timid in how it handled the complex, sensitive tax returns of Mr. Trump, particularly during his presidency.
The committee used a provision of the tax code that lets lawmakers on the tax-writing panel review otherwise confidential documents and make them public in a report.
“I voted to reinforce this critical principle: No person is above the law, not even a president of the United States,” said Rep. Brendan Boyle (D., Pa.), a committee member.
But is the committee itself above the law? Let’s just say that their reading of 26 USC 6103 seems fairly generous about their use of confidential taxpayer data. This statute does allow the chairs of several different congressional committees to access any taxpayer returns, but only while keeping them confidential. Any discussion of that data without the consent of the taxpayer is supposed to be restricted to in camera sessions:
(f)Disclosure to Committees of Congress
(1)Committee on Ways and Means, Committee on Finance, and Joint Committee on Taxation
Upon written request from the chairman of the Committee on Ways and Means of the House of Representatives, the chairman of the Committee on Finance of the Senate, or the chairman of the Joint Committee on Taxation, the Secretary shall furnish such committee with any return or return information specified in such request, except that any return or return information which can be associated with, or otherwise identify, directly or indirectly, a particular taxpayer shall be furnished to such committee only when sitting in closed executive session unless such taxpayer otherwise consents in writing to such disclosure.
Needless to say, Trump did not consent to the release of his tax information to the public. He fought for years in court to block the request from Neal even though the statute clearly allowed him access to Trump’s returns, on the basis that Neal and committee didn’t have any legitimate legislative interest in them but planned to use them for partisan political attacks. The courts rightly ruled against Trump on the basis of the statute and their claims to have legitimate legislative interest in the data.
It’s clear that Neal and the committee misrepresented that interest. They are instead using the data to demand more audits of Trump, not to craft new legislative proposals. Furthermore, they could have simply reported on the lack of required presidential audits without releasing any of the confidential information on the returns if this interest was legitimately legislative in oversight terms. This is clearly being used to embarrass Trump (good luck with that) and to damage him politically.
And while Neal and Democrats claim that 6103 gives them permission to release this information publicly, there’s no language in this statute that explicitly allows for such publication. Every grant of access in the statute contains the same language — that the taxpayer has to consent to publication of their confidential return data. Otherwise, the data has to remain confidential and revealed only in closed-door session to other committee members.
Return data can be handed to law enforcement agencies for prosecution in such cases under 6103. Had Neal and his committee found evidence of crimes, they could have referred Trump to Treasury or the DoJ for a criminal probe. They pointedly did not do so; instead, they just started releasing his confidential information for political purposes.
By the way, this is what they found in particular, which again is pretty much what we knew all along:
In the six-year period covered by the returns, the Trumps’ adjusted gross income totaled negative $53.2 million and their total federal tax liability was $4.4 million, the report said.
The Trumps reported positive adjusted gross income in only two of those six years — $24.4 million in 2018 and $4.4 million in 2019, according to the Journal.
The Trumps paid roughly $1 million in taxes in 2018 and $133,445 in 2019, according to an analysis by the New York Times.
In 2020, as the coronavirus pandemic raged across the country, the Trumps reported a loss of $4.8 million and paid $0 in federal taxes.
That’s how capital gains and losses work. Nothing in these releases show that the Trumps broke the law. If it did, you can bet that Neal et al would have trumpeted that from the rafters and made a very public referral to the DoJ.
People can argue that Trump’s refusal to follow presidential-candidate tradition and release his tax returns created this situation. Trump promised to do so and reneged, opening up the argument that he was hiding something nefarious. However, that was a political question for voters to make, not for the opposing party to punish by violating the confidentiality of the tax-reporting process. If Neal et al didn’t quite violate the letter of the law — and that still seems like an open question — they certainly violated its spirit and intent.
That sets a very dangerous precedent, and it won’t be limited to presidential politics. The next target of a future Ways and Means Committee may be a big-time political donor or activist that an opposing party wants to discredit. It might be a reporter who’s digging into the donors of the leadership caste in control at the moment. It could be me, or it could be you, or it could be anyone. Section 6103 didn’t exist to endorse public revelation of private taxpayer data — it exists to limit it only to the most necessary cases, and then only under seal, precisely to prevent this kind of political weaponization.
In politics, precedents set are precedents followed. It will be unfortunate when it happens, but don’t think for a moment that this won’t happen again, and again, and again.
