How Democrats Propelled the Rise of Donald Trump

It’s long been observed that the opposite of love is not indifference, but hate. I thought of this yesterday when someone sent me an essay titled I Hate Hate, by fellow Substack author Elliot Kirschner. What seems to have triggered Mr. Kirschner to write his essay were bad jokes told by Tony Hinchcliffe—one of thirty speakers at a recent Trump rally in Madison Square Garden. To be sure, Hinchcliffe’s joke about Puerto Rico wasn’t funny, and the comedian’s participation in the rally strikes me as yet another example (Lord there are so many) of how Trump and his people make needless trouble for themselves and their supporters.

However, instead of writing rational criticism of Hinchliffe’s bad jokes and the stupidity of the Trump campaign for including him in the lineup, Mr. Kirschner wrote a diatribe based on his assertion that hate lies at the heart of Trump’s campaign. 10-Minute Strength Tra... Deboo PT, Ed Buy New $10.63 (as of 11:16 UTC - Details)

This campaign is fueled by hate—hate for diversity, for progress, for women, for democracy, for expertise, for facts, for the truth itself. At its center is a pathetic, egotistical would-be dictator, fueled by his own petty, self-serving hatreds.

The word “hate” originates from the Old English hata, meaning “enemy” or “opponent.” Its roots lie in the divide between “us” and “them”—in the act of othering. But real hate isn’t a game; it can mean life or death, sometimes on unimaginable scales.

As the author states in his title, he too is in the grip of hate, and it clouds his ability to make rational assessments of Candidate Trump and the popular emotions he taps into.

People who strongly identify themselves as Democrats never stop to consider just how much their party elites have contributed to the rise of Donald Trump in American politics. The emotion they call hate is more accurately described as resentment—that is, the resentment of common people who perceive that they have long been abused by their society’s elites.

The spawning of Candidate Trump happened shortly before the 2008 presidential election, in the darkest days of the 2008 Financial Crisis, when Citibank executive Michael Froman wrote an e-mail to Barack Obama’s advisory team in which he proposed Obama’s entire cabinet.

When Wikileaks revealed this in 2016, it struck me as one of the most extraordinary acts of corruption in American history. Citibank, which had played a key role in the Mortgage-backed securities fraud that caused the Financial Crisis, would soon not only enjoy immunity from prosecution by Obama’s Attorney General Eric Holder, it would also be the largest beneficiary of U.S. Treasury and Federal Reserve largesse in in the Great Backdoor Bailout of Wall Street Fat Cats. This spectacular act of legalized corruption was noted by the former Federal Reserve official Andrew Huszar in his 2013 WSJ piece Confessions of a Quantitative Easer.

Innumerable commentators about financial crises in history have observed that if the financial class is never punished for its dangerous excesses, it will inevitably result in popular resentment and the perception that the political system is rigged for the benefit of the rich. This will in turn lead to the rise of a populist candidate who taps into popular resentment.

Following a financial crisis, it is therefore imperative to punish financial executives who committed acts of fraud. And yet, as the Intercept noted in a 2016 piece, Eric Holder did not prosecute a single major Wall Street executive.

In this same spirit, one of the first things Hillary Clinton did between her tenure as Obama’s Secretary of State and her presidential campaign was earn millions of dollars giving private speeches to Goldman Sachs executives in which she made statements that seemed directly inspired by Machiavelli’s Prince. This PR disaster for the Democrats was also revealed by a 2016 Wikileaks e-mail publication. Again the message was clear: As soon as Clinton announced she was running for president, she started raking it in from fat cat supporters like Goldman Sachs. The Politically Incorr... Thomas J. DiLorenzo Buy New $0.00 (as of 10:36 UTC - Details)

The DNC recognized the PR disaster of the Wikileaks dump, which is why it changed the subject from the content of the e-mails by fabricating the biggest hoax in American political history—namely, the Trump Russian Collusion Hoax. Why address the stupendous corruption on display in the Wikileaks e-mails when you can mesmerize the public with a massive lie about Russian perfidy in league with Donald Trump?

For my part, I found the Russian Collusion Hoax, which tortured the psyche of the American people for years, to be the most loathsome dirty trick ever performed by the DNC. I also strongly suspect that this hoax is connected with the mysterious murder of Seth Rich in the summer of 2016.

In a similar spirit, Hillary Clinton couldn’t resist accepting massive contributions to her Clinton Foundation from all manner of shady billionaires such as the Ukrainian oligarch, Victor Pinchuk. As was noted in a 2016 New York Times piece:

Victor Pinchuk, a steel magnate whose father-in-law, Leonid Kuchma, was president of Ukraine from 1994 to 2005, has directed between $10 million and $25 million to the foundation. He has lent his private plane to the Clintons and traveled to Los Angeles in 2011 to attend Mr. Clinton’s star-studded 65th birthday celebration.

My Democrat friends have asked me why I am so suspicious of U.S. government relations with Ukraine. I reply by sending them this report from their beloved New York Times.

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