We are still in need of the qualities of great leadership.
Many leading Republicans and conservatives want someone other than Donald Trump to run for President in 2024. But this judgment requires an assessment of Trump’s vices and virtues in the context of our current political and cultural circumstances, as well as an assessment of other prospective Republican presidential candidates. Among the talked-about alternatives to Trump, I have not yet seen anyone who possesses either his virtues or his backbone. I am not suggesting that everyone make way for Trump; rather that it is too early to throw him overboard.
I regularly ask Republican politicians what they think of Donald Trump. The most frequent response is some version of, “I like his policies but don’t like the rest of him.” But this formulation gets it almost backwards. Although Trump advanced many important policies, it is the “rest of him” that contains the virtues that inspired a movement.
Trump was born for the current American crisis: the life and death struggle against the totalitarian enemy I call “woke communism.” The “woke comms” have seized every political, cultural, and economic center of power in the country from where they ruthlessly push their agenda. That agenda rests on the conviction that America is thoroughly bad (systemically racist) and must be destroyed.
If there is one thing that patriotic Americans know about Trump it is that he, like them, is unequivocally pro-American and willing to fight to defend the American way of life. When Collin Kaepernick and his ilk knelt before the American flag, Trump called them “sons of bitches.” As always, he was being forceful, authentic, and unmistakably clear.
Trump stood up for America every time he violated the strictures of political correctness. Trump has said over and over exactly what political correctness prohibits one from saying: “We have our culture, it’s exceptional, and that’s the way we want to keep it.” Trump’s contempt for political correctness showed patriotic Americans that its ever-tightening grip could be loosened. As Trump and his supporters know, political correctness cripples our ability to think clearly and act decisively.