Most of us are aware of the age-old fairytale about crying wolf. A shepherd boy repeatedly and falsely tells his fellow villagers that a wolf is attacking his town’s flock. But when an actual wolf appears and the boy calls for help, the townspeople, sick of being played the fool, ignore his pleas. The sheep and boy are promptly devoured by the wolf. Now, it may admittedly be imprudent to carry the fairytale analogy too far, but there is also the one about poor Pinocchio, who falls into the clutches of an evil man, starts telling lies, and sees his nose grow longer every time he does – for all to see.
Are these not apt descriptions of the current standing of Donald Trump’s hardened enemies in the wake of the devastating Durham Report? You know, the ones who long ago decided that whatever was needed to destroy the man is fair game – even if it is cooked up out of whole cloth, is certain to balkanize an already divided country, and amounts to direct interference in a presidential election – the very thing of which they accused Trump. How many people will be at rapt attention when the left gins up the next Trump scandal, the umpteenth in an unending crescendo of falsehoods dating back eight years? The scandal-fatigued citizenry will surely consider whence the latest allegations come, and with mistrust of the media growing like a cancer, they are more likely than ever to believe there is no wolf.
Donald Trump, Full-On Martyr
So now we have come full circle. The left, bathed in the comforting sycophancy of corrupt corporate media, accused Trump of being a traitor and spent years trying to prove it. They collected Pulitzer Prizes for the entirely fabricated scandal invented by the Hillary Clinton campaign to deflect attention from her own real email scandal. That is, unless one considers the deliberate physical destruction of evidence subpoenaed by Congress to be acceptable for Mrs. Clinton when we know it would never be for the rest of us.
The only thing worse than someone who would do what Trump’s enemies have alleged is to falsely accuse someone of the same. Could the Durham Report possibly be a more stinging indictment of, not just leftists who lecture us about Trump’s iniquities, but journalists operating under the protection of a First Amendment designed to hold the powerful to account? And perhaps worst of all, the report unmasks the full-on weaponization of the nation’s intelligence community and premier law enforcement agency.
Donald Trump (Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images)
The left has oh-so-predictably laughed off a report four years in the making by a man highly respected within his industry, confirming everything Donald Trump has been claiming for the last eight years. The report describes in vivid detail the assault on democracy perpetrated by the deep state iron pentagon (five-sided structure) – politicians, media, academia, and now we learn, both the intelligence community and federal law enforcement – literally conspiring, pressing their full fist down on the scale, to tank the candidacy of a presidential nominee.
The left has predictably advanced the argument that, because Durham called for no indictments beyond the three already issued during an investigation that seemed to last forever, the whole thing is, ipso facto, a nothing-burger. Of course, this completely – and deliberately – misses the point. The investigation was designed to uncover the truth about indefensible political tactics indistinguishable from those of tyrants that would make the disgraced Richard Nixon blush. It was about detecting bias and corruption in our political system, not about sending anyone to prison for what amount to political crimes – even though we can be sure they would constitute actual prosecutable crimes if such a cabal had been assembled by Republicans. But the fact that the conspiracy to depict Donald Trump as a traitor was so wide – stretching from the Clinton campaign to sympathetic media to the pathetic James Comey’s FBI, the intelligence community, and yes, all the way to Barack Obama’s White House – makes the sweeping nature of the conspiracy by itself breathtaking.
Acting on the thinnest of rumors from foreign intelligence – gossip, really – the FBI had to know the allegations of Trump colluding with Russia did not warrant a serious examination. But they went ahead anyway and launched the investigation which will live in infamy. According to the report, they “disregarded significant exculpatory information” while obtaining search warrants based on falsified information and “investigative leads provided or funded (directly or indirectly) by Trump’s political opponents.” FBI operatives admitted “… both then and in hindsight — that they did not genuinely believe there was probable cause to believe that the target was knowingly engaged in clandestine intelligence activities on behalf of a foreign power.”
But as this report launches Trump to full-on martyrdom, whipping up his base to new heights of outrage, it is actually just the latest blow to the left’s cavalcade of ginned-up charges against the evil orange man. One by one, Trump has been able to bat away every misleading, self-serving, hypocritical allegation the left has fired at him since his post-January 6 political demise which, like Mark Twain, turns out to be greatly exaggerated.
Democrats were giddy about the FBI raid on Mar-a-Lago – until Joe Biden was also found to be holding classified documents. They were sure they could carry on labeling the “Q’anon Shaman” as a domestic terrorist who incited an insurrection on 1/6/21 – until footage they deliberately withheld saw the light of day, proving he was not that at all. They preach from a self-proclaimed moral high ground vilifying Trump, but now have to answer for the ever more obvious corruption of their dear leader Joe Biden and the 16 shell corporations laundering and funneling massive amounts of foreign cash to his entire family. They can hardly point to a vibrant economy, or safe streets, or a secure border – especially when compared side-by-side with the Trump era. To take us back to childhood one more time, Trump is in a position to employ the old playground taunt: Everything you say bounces off of me and sticks to you. Indeed, Democrats have emptied their chambers on Trump, and yet he is now stronger than at any time since he left office.
In every political melodrama, there comes a tipping point. It can happen when allegations of wrongdoing are fully confirmed – as with Richard Nixon’s White House tapes which ultimately delivered the death blow to his presidency. But it can also occur when, because of crying wolf, the accuser begins to draw more scorn than the accused, when the supposed cure is finally seen as worse than the alleged disease. The nation will decide over the 18 months between now and Election Day 2024 if we have in fact reached that point.
