'It was masterful and shamed me that I did not make the distinction between Trump's character and his virtues, the former being deeply flawed, the latter being almost perfect.
"I recently wrote a column about why I believed Trump should not run in 2024.
I was wrong.
I allowed my distaste for Trump’s personality to override his virtues, which are considerable.
Some people want Trump without his vices.
I was among them -- until yesterday, when I watched and listened to Tom Klingenstein’s speech titled “Trump’s virtues.”
It was masterful and shamed me that I did not make the distinction between Trump's character and his virtues, the former being deeply flawed, the latter being almost perfect.
I need to man up in my defense of the former President's virtues.
The speech was among the most pointed I have heard and deserves some exposure.
Klingenstein says:
It is anti-Americanism that makes so many of us very angry: The Left have trashed America's Founding and her history to the point where some believe it virtuous to hate America.
Rather than advocating forgiveness for sins, the Left are advocating hair shirts, self-flagellation, and perpetual guilt.
It is un-American and certainly un-Christian.
In 2016, we loved Trump for his outspokenness.
But many seem to have changed their minds without cause; Trump is the same today as he was before he was elected.
The very things we disdain today are the things that made him the man for our time.
I take back my unwillingness to engage Trump on his own terms.
It is the Left, not we, who are politically correct.
They are the ones restricting speech, cancelling and censoring, not we on the Right.
His accomplishments far outweigh his personality quirks.
No other president did so much in so little time.
Had it not been for the vehement and irrational hatred of Trump, we never would have discovered that our own security and intelligence structures are compromised.
This unprecedented breach of the very security of this nation is unprecedented and deeply dangerous, leaving us open to the espionage of courtesans who prey on politicians who think with their private parts.
We always knew but never had anyone champion that we, not the Swamp, knew better how to manage our money, our time, our personal lives, our resources and our families.
In their authoritarian mindsets, the Left wanted to take over all these very personal, uniquely American functions and replace it with governmental overreach.
They nearly got their wish, had it not been for COVID's home zoom classes where we found out that very young children are being sexualized, perverted, deliberately alienated from their parents and taught to hate America and white people.
This most sensitive area of politics is a disaster.
I believe the election was stolen and millions of others do.
We now have evidence from many quarters that this is so.
It cannot be permitted a repeat or there will be severe repercussions that will dwarf the current ones.
We wanted Trump not only to fix things; we wanted him to be perfect while doing it.
That is unrealistic in the average family, the average relationship, the average business and the average political or cultural milieu.
Yet some of us wanted Trump to be perfect enough to invite to tea.
He is not that man.
But he is the man for our tumultuous times.
These very things are what the Left hate, yet it is not their favor we need to care about.
They will not embrace anyone on the Republican ticket and certainly not one they cannot bully.
We need to stop worrying about acceptance of our candidates by the Left or they will have won.
…which is exactly where Trump and we are at this moment.
We have to prepare for the gale-force winds we will encounter.
To not do this is to ignore the lessons of the recent past and it will be forever to our sorrow to ignore them.
Amen and amen.
We don't have to like his personality but his virtues far outweigh it.
Full text from the @WSJ article originally published June 12, 2014:
Perhaps it can provide a clue...
"The government and media alliance advancing the transgender cause has gone into overdrive in recent weeks.
On May 30, a U.S. Department of Health and Human Services review board ruled that Medicare can pay for the "reassignment" surgery sought by the transgendered—those who say that they don't identify with their biological sex.
Text:
"Last summer, the German publishing company Axel Springer purchased Politico.
The media guesstimated the price was $1 billion.
Who knows? Who cares what the price was?
At the time, Mathias Döpfner, CEO of Axel Springer, said, "Politico's outstanding team has disrupted digital political journalism and set new standards.
"The District of Columbia Court of Appeals ruled on Friday that the Department of Justice must release an internal memo advising then-Attorney General Bill Barr in March 2019 to determine that former President Trump did not obstruct justice.
According to the appeals court, the memo urged then-Attorney General Bill Barr after the Mueller report was delivered "to conclude that President Trump had not obstructed justice."
'Recently “presidential historian” Michael Beschloss speculated about the parameters of such an envisioned civil war.
That was a lunatic insinuation that Trump might justly suffer the same lethal fate due to supposedly mishandling of “nuclear secrets.”' amgreatness.com/2022/08/17/civ…
"As Joe Biden’s polls stagnate and the midterms approach, we are now serially treated to yet another progressive melodrama about the dangers of a supposed impending radical right-wing violent takeover.
This time the alleged threat is a Neanderthal desire for a “civil war.”
The FBI raid on Donald Trump’s Florida home, the dubious rationale for such a historic swoop, and the popular pushback at the FBI and Department of Justice from roughly half the country have further fueled these giddy “civil war” conjectures.