By DEXTER DUGGAN
Donald Trump’s entry into the 2024 presidential race brought what could be described as his characteristic rambunctious style. He’s not a garden party; he’s a circus. He may be a loose cannon to his foes, but a focused cannon to his admirers.
Before he won the White House in 2016, many conservatives had to take Trump’s candidacy on faith because they knew they never could take his radical Democratic opponent, pro-abortion extremist Hillary Clinton, in any way, shape, or form. As it turned out, for all the digressions as president, Trump often got the job done that conservatives wanted.
After the Supreme Court reversed the blatantly unconstitutional pro-abortion Roe opinion of 1973 with the states’-rights Dobbs in 2022, anti-Trump but pro-life pundit Timothy Carney admitted that Trump’s three High Court nominees were the ones who got the job done after decades of GOP presidents’ futility.
Moreover, the report by Special Counsel John Durham disproving alleged Trump-Russia collusion to win the presidency in 2016, released May 15, was a striking reminder of the sweeping illegitimate power in the establishment to try to destroy Trump — from the Democratic Party and Hillary Clinton to dominant media to the outgoing Obama-Biden administration to the so-called law-enforcement, intelligence, and justice systems.
Regardless of what Trump did, there indeed were vile liars and conspirators and frauds — preening themselves as forces of goodness and decency — trying to destroy his political career. Just as there still are today.
That helps to explain why many people who continue to stand by Trump’s presidential aspirations think there’s every reason to believe his 2020 re-election was stolen by this same massive cabal, and Trump deserves another chance for a fair result.
Meanwhile, left-wing Democrat Joe Biden as president has been spared any of the tough legal treatment from the establishment that Trump received, including not one but two specious impeachments — even though it could be argued that some of Biden’s policies, including his wide-open promotion of massive illegal immigration, are outright treason.
That ghastly, disastrous, mentally impaired bad Catholic Biden was shoved into the White House by the elite to replace Trump must be one of the worst political moves in U.S. history. But they’re just as determined to exclude Trump again, whether Biden can manage to stumble through another campaign or the elite choose to find a replacement.
For pro-lifers, of course, just about any Republican presidential candidate in 2024 would be a vast improvement over anyone deemed acceptable to run by the national Democratic Party, the cancerous political machine whose heart and soul are dedicated to massive slaughter of defenseless infants and damage to their mothers.
However, despite the good job Trump had done in office, there are indications again that he’s not sure just how to approach the pro-life movement. Anyone might recall that during his first GOP presidential race, Trump rambled around into saying women who had abortions should be punished by the law.
Apparently he thought this was what pro-lifers, to whom he was trying to appeal, wanted to hear in 2016. Their shocked reaction quickly taught Trump that he was on the wrong path. His campaign issued a follow-up statement saying Trump thought that the abortion providers, not the women, should be punished.
After a mostly positive pro-life presidency, Trump began to equivocate again in 2022, drawing this rebuke from national pro-life leader Lila Rose on Twitter: “Trump is way out of line here on life. He does not have a pulse on where his potential base is — as many believed he has in the past. This kind of nonsense will be a losing political strategy for him.”
By the spring of 2023, Florida conservative GOP Gov. Ron DeSantis was regarded as a major foe to Trump’s presidential ambitions, although DeSantis hadn’t yet formally announced he was in the race.
Trump, with his characteristic touch for deriding opponents, christened the governor as “Ron DeSanctimonious.”
DeSantis was widely popular with conservatives for how he strongly promoted conservative causes in the Sunshine State and received popular support from Floridians for doing so. However, for whatever it was worth, Trump clearly led DeSantis in national polling results.
Perhaps more Republicans thought DeSantis should wait his turn while Trump got a deserved chance to undo the 2020 presidential election rigged against him.
However, Trump raised doubts again about the reliability of his pro-life orientation when he criticized DeSantis for signing a heartbeat bill, to limit abortion in Florida to the first six weeks of pregnancy.
On May 15 The Messenger website posted an interview with Trump that said: “Trump’s blunt communication style, however, becomes more vague when it comes to the issue of abortion. He’s not clear on what sort of restrictions he would support and wouldn’t say if he agreed or disagreed with DeSantis’s decision to sign a six-week abortion ban in Florida.”
The Messenger then quoted Trump as saying: “He has to do what he has to do. If you look at what DeSantis did, a lot of people don’t even know if he knew what he was doing. But he signed six weeks, and many people within the pro-life movement feel that that was too harsh.”
The website’s story commented: “Trump wouldn’t say if he believed a six-week ban went too far.”
Other news stories attributed Trump’s remark about being “too harsh” to Trump’s own thinking on the issue.
CNBC said that DeSantis in a response said Trump didn’t say where he stood on the legislation. CNBC said DeSantis said that “probably 99 percent of pro-lifers support” what he signed, and went on to quote DeSantis about Mar-a-Lago resident Trump: “As a Florida resident, you know, he didn’t give an answer about, ‘Would you have signed the heartbeat bill that Florida did, that had all the exceptions that people talk about?’”
The CNBC story added: “‘The legislature put it in, I signed the bill, I was proud to do it,’ DeSantis said, adding, ‘He won’t answer whether he would sign it or not’.”
Raising Legitimate Questions
The Wanderer asked conservative GOP political consultant Constantin Querard for his reaction. Querard had run U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz’s 2016 presidential effort in Arizona until Cruz dropped out, and then Querard threw his support to Trump. As for 2023, Querard said he has no role with DeSantis but hopes that the Florida governor gets into the presidential race and plans to support him if he does.
Querard said on May 16: “Trump has historically been center-left on abortion, although he struck very pro-life themes in his 2016 campaign as he sought support from influential evangelical leaders. The challenge with Trump is that he is so transactional, it can be difficult to ascertain which positions are deeply held personal convictions and which are temporary because they advance his best interests at that moment.
“Pro-lifers are right to worry when they see Trump attacking DeSantis on the issue of life because if there is one issue where every major Republican candidate ought to agree, it is protecting babies,” Querard said. “So when Trump stakes out a position to the left on life, conservatives get nervous.”
Trump leaves the impression that any other Republican trying to get into this race shouldn’t be taken seriously and that the party’s 2024 nomination should be his.
Querard said an article about the situation should consider this angle — that Trump supporters “claim he’s treating the primary [election] like a non-event and is trying to position himself in the reasonable center for the general-election matchup. Who knows, maybe that’s true? But it does then raise legitimate questions about how he would govern if re-elected, doesn’t it?”
Whatever lies ahead for Trump, Special Counsel John Durham’s report lays bare the broad establishment’s unhinged hatred of Trump that opened the Russia-collusion investigation without any solid basis, even while it ignored Hillary Clinton’s defiance of the law — plus the fact Clinton had ginned up the Russia ruse to benefit herself.
Dominant media, which fired up the ruse for many months, became so unreliable that much of the public rightly regards them as a raw left-wing propaganda organ unable even now to do serious contrition or deserve credibility.
The morning after Durham’s damning report was released, the front page of the May 16 New York Times played it down with only a one-column headline halfway down the page.
People who read the story online were astounded to see that the Times’ first paragraph still dared to claim that there were NO “blockbuster revelations of politically motivated misconduct, as Donald J. Trump and his allies had suggested it would.”
On the other hand, Washington Examiner commentary writer Christopher Tremoglie posted on May 17: “The Durham report is just the latest in a string of investigations to show just how wronged Donald Trump was. Numerous people owe him an apology.”
Meanwhile, in a separate development out West, the equivalent of the incompetent executive official Joe Biden in Arizona, the left-wing extremist Democratic Gov. Katie Hobbs, failed to get any money allocated for her beloved permissive abortion in the recently passed Arizona budget.
Hobbs did, however, remove money that homes for homeless pregnant women previously received from the state. This showed Hobbs’ viciousness on behalf of abortion — punishing women who already had made their choice to bear their babies.
LifeNews.com posted on May 12: “With a budget totaling nearly $18 billion, Gov. Hobbs couldn’t find a tiny fraction for homeless pregnant women and their babies. For the past six years, the Arizona legislature has set aside a little money to help expectant mothers on the street find a home, stability, and make a fresh start for themselves and their babies.
“But not this year; Gov. Hobbs wouldn’t allow it,” LifeNews.com said — even though it had been between just $100,000 and $200,000.
In a statement to The Wanderer on May 16, the president of the conservative Center for Arizona Policy replied to Hobbs, who began serving as chief executive in January.
“The pro-life majorities in the Arizona House and Senate are strongly committed to protecting the sanctity of human life,” said CAP President Cathi Herrod. “Gov. Hobbs, on the other hand, has made her stance clear during the campaign when she refused to put any limits on abortion and accepted the endorsement of Planned Parenthood, which supports abortion up to birth.
“With both sides needed for the required budget, and with many important issues — including life — on the line, the result is that the budget doesn’t include pro-abortion or pro-life measures,” Herrod said. “I am grateful House and Senate leadership took a hard stance against funding abortion in any way. There are other efforts underway to help fund homeless pregnant women left out of the budget.
“Yes, I do expect Gov. Hobbs will find other ways to promote abortion in Arizona, but we and our allies will do all we can to counter her efforts as we work to promote a culture of life in our state,” Herrod said.
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