As we continue to see, the worst thing Trump did was reveal the hate and vitriol of his enemies

By Gary Abernathy

Trump brought out the hate, vitriol in his enemies

As president, Donald Trump probably kept, or tried to keep, more campaign promises than anyone in history. His pushback against stifling political correctness was refreshing, and his rolling back of job-killing draconian environmental regulations, coupled with “America First” policies, led to jobs and record stock market performance, which helped anyone with a 401(k). He kept his promise to nominate conservatives to federal courts, including the highest court, hopefully holding off activist policy initiatives masked as judicial decisions for a few more years.

Trump was also guilty of many things worthy of criticism — first, taking his anti-PC attitude to the unnecessary level of childish name calling and insults, and second and most importantly, his refusal to accept the results of the 2020 election and his role in inciting the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol.

But another thing he did among his “worsts” was to reveal the hate in others. The vitriol from Trump’s enemies was alarming, and did much to demonstrate that they were no better than Trump.

As far as many in the media and others on the left were concerned, what really constituted Trump’s biggest crime was winning the presidency in the first place and derailing the presidential dreams of Hillary Clinton and those whose goals of inaugurating the first female president were crushed. Trump was never forgiven. In fact, he was hated for that, which led to his presidency being the most harshly covered ever, with almost completely antagonistic and confrontational reporting techniques. He soon retaliated with “fake news” claims, and the war never ended. The most unprofesssional part of that war was that the media lowered itself to actually engage in it, rather than staying above the fray and impassionately doing its job.

That hate was channeled into many avenues, but the single biggest dereliction of duty during Trump’s presidency was the hyping of the Russian collusion narrative. Trump and his supporters have long had a legitimate complaint that the manufactured “Russia! Russia! Russia!” hysteria was always a red herring used to discredit the Trump administration and bring about impeachment proceedings from the start of his presidency.

When that fell apart, based on both the report of special counsel Robert F. Mueller and other Justice Department determinations, the years of preparation couldn’t go to waste, so everyone immediately pivoted to a phone call with Ukraine, which resulted in a completely partisan and rushed impeachment after almost no time spent investigating the allegations — at least, compared to the time and effort spent on both the Watergate and Clinton-Lewinsky scandals, where congressional probes lasted for months before impeachment charges were brought — and a similarly partisan acquittal, as everyone knew would happen. Trump’s enemies never worried about the consequences of carrying out meaningless and time-consuming acts of vengeance under the guise of “we have to do what’s right.”

Some have gone to prison over actions like fraud or tax evasion uncovered during the Mueller investigation, and others were convicted for actions that happened as a reaction to the investigation, like obstruction. But Trump did not collude with Russia. (In fact, “collusion” is not even a legal term.)

Still, it never ends. Numerous reports out today focus on federal court Judge Amy Berman Jackson, an Obama nominee who has presided over many of the cases that emerged from the Mueller investigation. Jackon issued a “scathing opinion” earlier this month condemning the Justice Department and its then attorney general, William P. Barr, for being “disingenuous” about an internal document said to influence the decision not to recommend criminal charges “when he cited the document as key to his conclusion that Trump had not broken the law,” according to the Washington Post.

“She also accused department lawyers of misleading her about the internal discussions that surrounded the memo and ordered the memo be released, though she gave the government several weeks to decide whether to appeal,” the Post reported.

The memo had concluded that even if Trump wasn’t president, the evidence collected by Mueller did not rise to the level of bringing criminal charges.

The latest Post story reports as follows:

“Not only was the Attorney General being disingenuous then, but DOJ has been disingenuous to this Court with respect to the existence of a decision-making process that should be shielded by the deliberative process privilege,” Jackson concluded. The judge also found that claims made by the department to try to shield the memo from public scrutiny “are so inconsistent with evidence in the record, they are not worthy of credence,” and said the department sought to “obfuscate” that it had set out to create a legal justification for a decision department leaders had already made — to not accuse the president of a crime.

The side issues being endlessly litigated are a result of the fact that Trump’s enemies can’t accept that “Russian collusion” wasn’t really a thing. And so, even though Trump is long gone from the White House, the effort continues to show that his opponents were right when they devoted night after night on MSNBC, CNN and too many other news sources claiming that Russian collusion was the scandal of the century.

Trump’s defeat will hopefully, over time, help his enemies regain some of their composure, dignity and maturity. But we’re not seeing much evidence of it yet.

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