OPINION:
Despite his faux conviction meted out by 12 jurors in deep blue Manhattan on May 30, former President Donald Trump is headed for reelection victory on Nov. 5.
After winning in 2016, Mr. Trump’s policies proved excellent. Some may have had reservations about his persona. But to be sure, his policies were very good, and we were better off four years ago than today. Indisputably so.
Who can argue otherwise? Our economy was healthy, not laboring as it does today under persistent inflation, high interest rates and energy prices that drain our pocketbooks. Our borders were secure. Now, people of all stripes — good and bad — stream into our country in contravention of our laws. Their first act was to break our law. Many will continue to do that, particularly those who carry drugs across our border that threaten to further wreck our society.
And who can seriously say that our foreign policy is on a firm footing when our president is not, both cognitively and physically? From Afghanistan to our inconsistent support for Ukraine and Israel fighting despicable foes, our foreign policy is discredited. Change is not just desirable; it is essential to our republic’s survival.
In recent months, many Republicans who were hesitant about supporting Mr. Trump in 2024 are reevaluating their options. They know that his policies — which are polar opposites of those foisted upon us by President Biden — were better. Yet reluctant Republicans have a more fundamental reason to contemplate: the preservation of our republic.
It should now be clear to even the most dull-minded among us that Mr. Trump’s tormentors hate him so much that they would pervert our justice system, an indispensable pillar of our republic, just so they can label him a convicted felon. In doing so, they have shown themselves willing, indeed manically so, to destroy jurisprudence for political gain. That should be despised regardless of one’s preferred political association.
Apparently, Mr. Trump’s adversaries regard destroying the justice system as a worthy sacrifice to defeat him.
Consider what has occurred since 2016. In the eyes of his most vehement opponents, Donald Trump’s original sin was that he defeated Hillary Clinton in the election. For them, defeating her was unpardonable. She was their future, indeed the culmination of feminism among those who worship such thinking. Donald Trump destroyed the altar upon which they heaped praise of her as the most qualified woman in history to rule over us. And ruling over us was exactly what they sought in her.
She was to usher in a wave of national policies and dictates that would ensconce a progressive agenda designed to dismantle our government and society to conform to her vision of America. That vision was perilous to traditional values and the acknowledged virtues our Founding Fathers saw as essential to sustaining our freedom.
Mr. Trump blew apart her rise to power. And in her eyes and those of her acolytes, he had to be severely punished. How that was accomplished mattered not. Mrs. Clinton’s efforts in devising the “Steele dossier,” laying the foundation for false assertions of Russian collusion in Mr. Trump’s victory, failed. Nor did the two impeachment efforts promulgated by far-left Democrats in Congress succeed. Yet had Mr. Trump not sought to run again after his defeat in 2020, his persecutors may have considered their failures sufficient.
But in running again, he defied them. And for that, he must be destroyed.
Mr. Trump’s inquisitors took to the halls of justice in Atlanta, Palm Beach, New York and Washington to visit upon him a spiteful and manipulated retribution that is a debasement of justice. In doing so, they have created a precedent that threatens the foundation of our system of justice and our very freedom.
As of this month, radical Democrats have normalized the misuse of courts to punish political enemies with the same vim and vigor exerted by Third World prosecutors who are the satraps of vindictive dictators. No longer is Lady Justice blind. Her scales are tipped with the weight of abuse. Her blindfold is no more. She smirks with retribution.
Some would long for the day when such injustice is inflicted on Mr. Trump’s hate-filled political enemies. That would be profoundly wrong. True American patriots must resort to the voting booth, not the jury box. And in November, the voting booths will be significantly more occupied than the jury boxes the Democrats can stuff with partisan jurors orchestrated by corrupt prosecutors and biased judges.
A significant majority of us will be in those voting booths and casting our ballots for Donald Trump’s reelection.
• L. Scott Lingamfelter is a retired Army colonel and combat veteran (1973-2001) and former member of the Virginia House of Delegates (2002-2018). He is the author of “Desert Redleg: Artillery Warfare in the First Gulf War” (University Press of Kentucky, 2020) and “Yanks in Blue Berets: American UN Peacekeepers in the Middle East” (UPK, 2023).
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