“As a Democrat who has been left homeless, who is now increasingly in the center but probably leaning increasingly right, I am left yet again with an appreciation, despite the messenger, of the message of the Trump administration because what those guys did was pretty incredible in hindsight.”
Weiss continued, “So much of the work that happened in that administration turns out to have been right. The work on the border wall? We didn’t like the messenger, so we killed the message. Turned out it was right. Issuing long-term debt to refinance when interest rates were at zero? We didn’t like the messenger so we killed the message. A structural peace in the Middle East? We didn’t like the messenger, so we killed the message.”
And finally, she asked, “When are we gonna stop shooting ourselves in the foot? And when are we going to actually see and take the time to look past who is saying things and actually listen to them word for word?”
First of all, we want to congratulate Weiss: realizing you have a problem is the first step to recovery. But it’s not the only step. There’s another, more important one, which is to actually endorse what you should have been supporting all along: that is, to endorse Donald Trump himself, the only viable candidate who has the message that you seem to newly appreciate so much. Unless Bari Weiss, and those like her, are willing to take that step, then we fear that their lamentations are as meaningful as those of addicts coming down off their latest high, and yet who are still utterly immune to the temptations of rehab. Put simply, if you want us to take you seriously, IDW, you have to endorse Trump openly. It’s more for your sake than for ours.
Now, lest Bari or her fellows – figures like Joe Rogan, Elon Musk, or Bill Maher, to name a few – accuse us of hiding the ball, let us reassure them on one point: unlike the woke, who are fond of subjecting every potential ally to humiliation for any ideological indiscretion, no matter how far in the past, those of us who have supported Donald Trump from the beginning are far more forgiving. Contrary to what they might have heard about us being a single-minded cult who won’t accept them into our ranks unless you sleep with the 2016 and 2020 RNC platforms under your pillows, there’s actually quite a lot of healthy disagreement and debate in President Trump’s coalition about what the country should look like. In fact, there’s really only two non-negotiable things you have to believe to be a part of that coalition: Firstly, you have to believe the modern-day progressive Left is an existential threat to America, which the Mahers, Musks, Rogans, and Weisses clearly already accept; secondly, you have to want Donald Trump to be president, and be willing to say so publicly.
No, that doesn’t mean you have to like everything he does, or agree with everything he says. It just means you have to recognize that he’s the only guy on the scene right now with the willingness or ability to stand between you and a political movement that has now made it explicit that their end goal is to persecute and possibly even ethnically cleanse a large section of the American population in the name of social justice/decolonization/whatever euphemism is in vogue this week. Ideally, even if you don’t think Donald Trump won in 2020, you should wish he had, and you should also admit that throwing people in prison for decades for protesting when they genuinely thought an election was stolen is un-American and wrong, regardless of the merits of their complaints.
But you know what? Let’s say that the Weisses of the world were right, and the Trump movement was some kind of cult. If we are, then the woke definitely are, and unlike them, the Trump movement – the efforts of some opportunistic malcontents notwithstanding – does not hate Jews for being Jews. We don’t think Israel should be wiped off the map; far from it, most of us support Israel wholeheartedly. We don’t march in the streets cheering for genocide under cover of supporting “resistance.” You might not have liked January 6th, but you know what? The pro-Palestinian hatemongers have now staged an “insurrectionary” protest in the Capitol, as well. Wouldn’t you rather the Nazis-in-all-but-name be the ones staring down the barrel of charges and jail time than people who did what they did because they genuinely thought of themselves as patriots fighting back against tyranny? Aren’t the hate-filled Left more of a threat? In short, even if the IDW are facing the choice between two cults, the question of which one poses more of a threat to the vast majority of Americans, Jews included, is so obvious it’s barely worth asking.
Fortunately, this isn’t a choice between two cults. In fact, it’s more like the choice between…well, Israel and Hamas. On one side, you have nationalists whose determination to fight for their right to life and liberty make them unfashionable or even despised among the globalist elite, but who are, nonetheless, firmly attached to the values that made Western civilization synonymous with the First World: values like free speech and due process, not to mention liberty and justice for all. On the other, you have a cult of terrorists whose religious, racial, and sexual bigotry would be inexcusable if it weren’t covered unconvincingly under the rhetorical patina of oppression; a group that is fashionable only because the people who fete them believe they will never have to live under their power, and who are, at bottom, being used by malicious actors determined to impose Third World values everywhere for the sake of envy, hate, and nihilistic power-hunger. Granted, joining the Trump movement will get you disinvited from a lot of cocktail parties, but you know what Trump people won’t do? We won’t disinvite from your own country. We won’t try to cancel your right to make a living, or to speak your thoughts out loud, or even to exist at all, for the sake of some fanciful, crackpot utopia dreamed up in the homegrown terror cells which are now wearing the skins of America’s elite universities. And yes, we will fight for you. President Trump will fight for you. He has to. Because the people who hate him only do so because they hate you, and he’s the one standing in the way.
So once more, to the Mahers, Musks, Rogans, and Weisses, and all those like them, we offer this advice: Stop sitting on the fence. Get down on the right side, and help us start making that fence taller, so as to keep the would-be murderers and rapists of the woke Left forever out of power. You tried to kill the message because you hated the messenger before; learn from your mistakes. Because like it or not, that messenger, and the supporters who you derided as uncouth, saw this threat long before you did. We’re willing to forgive you for being late to the party, but if, knowing what you know, you still never decide to show up? Eventually, we – and America – will close the door on you.
