Trump’s Momentous Surge

When President Trump descended on Dubuque, Iowa, on Wednesday, he did so not as a conquistador entering uncharted territory yet to be conquered, but as a victorious General inspecting the fruits of his prolific conquest. 

By Paul Ingrassia

Photo of presidential candidate Donald J. Trump greeting a massive crowd of Iowa voters.

When President Trump descended on Dubuque, Iowa, on Wednesday, he did so not as a conquistador entering uncharted territory yet to be conquered, but as a victorious General inspecting the fruits of his prolific conquest.  As of this writing, President Trump’s poll numbers are surging – and the momentum only gets stronger.  In an unconventional primary season, he has been able to break loose the strictures of convention – the normal campaign rules and attendant expectations – baby-kissing, meet-and-greets, even debates – that the other would-be challengers have been loath to undertake, and with dismal results.  But woe to he who criticizes the front-runner – now shellacking his competitors by thirty, forty, even fifty point margins in the so-called “reputable polls” – for that candidate will find himself even worse off than before the criticism was made.  Ron DeSantis was hard-pressed to discover this sobering reality just this past week when he complained about Trump not playing by the same rules as everyone else.  Of course, for the cameras, such griping only further cemented his image as a petulant sellout, someone who betrayed the interests of the grassroots for the party establishment.  In DeSantis’ case, even the party establishment has grown sour to his prospects for high office – either re-focusing their efforts on other candidates deemed more “electable” (whatever that means), such as Nikki Haley, as did the Koch’s and Murdoch’s, or bailing out of the race altogether, as did Kenneth Griffin.

The Trump insurgency may begin with the primaries, but it certainly does not end there.  Indeed, even on the national level, polling by “credible” organizations – such as CBS News – has Donald Trump now decisively beating Joe Biden.  Other well-established polls even have Trump ousting the current Oval Office occupant by several points, a lead that only seems to widen by the day.  This has sent the ruling class into a nervous tizzy, with Washington’s rumor mill now in full swing asking who, if the scenario arises, should replace Joe Biden as the Democratic nominee? Kamala Harris? Michelle Obama? Gavin Newsom? Maybe even Andrew Cuomo, whose recent broadsides against the current administration’s management of the migrant crisis make him appear like an out-and-out reactionary compared to his party’s establishment.

For his part, Donald Trump has correctly pivoted away from the primaries, which were always something of a charade, and towards the general, where the real work needs to be done.  The ruling class’ insatiable drive to cling to power no matter the cost, however, has reached a boiling point – and do not think for one second that they will not go down without a fight, committing civilizational seppuku if need be.  All the complaints about systemic election fraud have made their trickeries that much more brazen: in addition to the unprecedented and unconstitutional four – count ‘em four – indictments against President Trump, their main political opponent, they have resorted to all sorts of schemes, each one crazier than the previous, to maintain power.  And they have been absolutely shameless in their actions, resembling a fanatical Roman emperor, like Nero, holding onto power for dear life (perhaps this explains the influx of America-Rome comparisons now so commonplace on Twitter.)

The ruling class have resorted to desperate measures.  They have mobilized — and deployed — their most radical and unhinged lawyers to concoct the most ridiculous of legal theories, in states like Arizona, Michigan and New Hampshire, to disqualify Donald Trump from running for president again.

The theory goes as follows: Section 3 of the 14th Amendment contains the word “insurrection.”  These people believe the events of January 6th were an insurrection (they were patently not) against, presumably, the United States government – even though virtually none of the protestors showed up on Capitol grounds armed, and the vast majority departed peacefully without ever having entered the premises.  Even so, to draw a causal nexus from the actions on the ground – and what President Trump did that day – hint: telling the protestors to peacefully go home – was, in the lunatic reasoning of these lawyers (one is behooved to ask who or what is financing this cockamamie scheme, and how much time do these people really have on their hands?) “insurrectionary” — and ergo, apparently, disqualifying.  (Never mind the fact that neither Trump nor, for that matter, any of the so-called “insurrectionists” have been charged with the elusive crime of “insurrection” (to say nothing of the related “seditious conspiracy” pursuant to that same article of the Fourteenth Amendment.)

The great national malady – our age’s true pandemic – is certainly not COVID, but hysteria and paranoia.  The Left has literally gone mad, and the Right unfortunately has been slow to wake up to just how off the rails their opponent has gotten.  Rather than take responsibility for the border crisis, which poses an existential threat to New York (as well as myriad other cities from sea to shining sea), NYC Mayor Eric Adams stands atop his soapbox and decides the remedy is to – check notes – take down the statue of George Washington?

This is the very definition of clown world.  And the United States’ ruling class is not in the least bit serious.  This past week marked the occasion of the UN General Assembly, also in New York City.  Political luminaries like Justin Trudeau and, of course, the Honorable Volodymyr Zelenskyy were in attendance (as of course was the puppet president), and yet the only three men who can prevent World War III from becoming reality – Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin, and Xi Jinping – were all conspicuously absent.

How this might be construed: an indictment of our ruling class, the UN as an institution, or both – I will leave to the reader.  But it does bespeak an impotence in our governing institutions – and the people who preside over them – to get anything done of consequence.  The reality is that all this chaos may be assessed like a comedy, but not of the Grecian variety with a happy ending or at least moral that can help the next generation improve upon the errors of the previous.  Instead, it is a black comedy, like a scene out of Dr. Strangelove, which as any film connoisseur knows, ends with the protagonist learning how to love the bomb.

The silver lining is that the Left is failing — and that is not only suggested by President Trump’s historic poll surges, but across the board — from the indictments to the bogus legal theories to the equally bogus political attacks on conservative firebrands like Texas AG Ken Paxton, whose well-financed opposition, the product of Bush-type holdovers as much as it was a Democratic conspiracy, have all combusted.

All of which is to say: Donald Trump’s surging poll numbers are testimony to the body politic waking up, at least in part, to the all-consuming madness of the present situation.  This really is do or die for the republic once known as the United States of America; there will be no country after 2024, no last best hope of earth, if Trump does not cross that finish line in next year’s general election.  That is why re-electing Donald Trump is the most important issue, bar none.

In a sane republic, all our resources would be devoted to that most urgent task.  Every Republican lawmaker, from Kevin McCarthy to Ronna McDaniel to Mitch McConnell, all the way down to Ron DeSantis, would be doing everything they possibly can, putting their egos to one side, to back the 45th President’s bid for re-election.  But, alas, the urgency of the matter – the magnitude of the present crisis – is testimony to a republic gone mad and is thus in large part the reason for our predicament.  Post hoc ergo propter hoc.

Let us hope the laws of nature and nature’s god bend sufficiently towards that part of man’s higher reasoning to get a sufficient percentage of the population awake and onboard to the task at hand, so that we might finally put to an end to our long national nightmare – that dark blemish that might go down in history as the “Biden era.”  If not, the American experiment will have ended before it even saw its quarter millennial birthday, and ours would be that most dishonorable generation for whom freedom indeed became extinct, because we abdicated our birthright handed to us from our forefathers to pass down the sacred cause of freedom to the next generation.

Paul Ingrassia is a Law Clerk at The McBride Law Firm, PLLC. He graduated from Cornell Law School in 2022 and is on the Board of Advisors of the New York Young Republican Club. He is also a two-time Claremont Fellow. Follow him on Twitter @PaulIngrassia, Substack, Truth Social, andRumble.