by Paul Ingrassia
President Donald Trump heads into February’s South Carolina primary in a formidable position—the strongest ever in his political career. Following Iowa’s near-clean sweep, in which the 45th President picked up 98 of 99 counties in the Hawkeye State (and the one county he lost by just a single vote), he routed the New Hampshire primary with a double-digit victory, once again winning all but a single county in the Granite State.
The momentum he carried into New Hampshire was so resounding that it forced Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, once hyped as President Trump’s successor not so long ago, to drop out of the race days before the first official vote was even tallied. The New Hampshire result, which saw Trump thrash Haley with a 54% to 43% margin, would have been wider, but for all the former-Democrats-turned-undecideds in the state, who teamed up with left-leaning independents to artificially tilt the scales towards Haley.
Thus, to the extent Haley put up any numbers on the board, it was because of her reliance on left-leaning voters, many of whom would otherwise not vote for her in a general election matchup against Biden (or whoever the Democratic nominee will be come November).
This is confirmed by several features on cable news in which these voters outright admitted their participation in the New Hampshire primary was merely a protest vote against Trump, and they otherwise would never vote for a Republican in any race in which a Democrat was also on the ballot.
Given that fact, it further underlines the significance of the New Hampshire victory while also serving as a necessary reminder of the fraud and corruption that still exist in our elections.
Even so, President Trump’s back-to-back victories in Iowa and New Hampshire have been so prolific that they have scared some top Democratic donors, such as Reid Hoffman, from further investing in Haley until they can discern a pathway to victory. Hoffman is presently undertaking what may be described as a multipronged election interference operation by not only funding Nikki Haley but, furthermore, bankrolling E. Jean Carroll’s crazed lawsuit against Donald Trump in New York State Court. (Of note, Carroll, a well-documented narcissist, cannot recall basic facts about the incident, such as the date in which the alleged abuse took place, and bizarrely waited thirty years before telling anyone about it.)
As a billionaire tech entrepreneur and one of the co-founders of the social media platform LinkedIn, Hoffman’s role in this year’s race is emblematic of the kind of campaign that all of Trump’s primary opponents, save perhaps Vivek Ramaswamy, ran this election cycle: as empty vessels for the globalists and America’s ruling class. With DeSantis out of the race now, these donors have had no choice but to coalesce around Haley, whose campaign is basically a mouthpiece for Raytheon and Silicon Valley at this point, in a last-ditch attempt to foil Trump in his tracks. Indeed, just several days before the New Hampshire primary occurred, global elites were meeting at their annual conference in Davos; one such clip from the conference that went viral was that of Alex Soros, son of George Soros, doomsaying about the prospect of Donald Trump returning to the White House.
That concern is not without merit. There is good reason for the so-called Party of Davos to be afraid: President Trump’s poll numbers, fueled by the momentum of these unconstitutional lawsuits and now two convincing primary victories, are the best they have ever been this early in the presidential primary: the RCP average has Trump leading Biden by a 4-point spread in the general election. Several other polls considered reputable, such as Harvard-Harris and Rasmussen, have put that advantage up to nearly ten points over Biden. In general election terms, a ten-point lead over an opponent would equate to what one former president memorably described as a “shellacking.” To give things a historical perspective, Reagan trounced Carter by 9 points in 1980—tantamount to the lead the aforementioned polls give Trump—where Reagan carried nearly 500 electoral votes to Carter’s measly 49.
Now that is not to say Republicans should rest on their laurels: there remains a ton of work to be done, with many unforeseeable obstacles along the way no doubt between now and November. But it is to say that President Trump is in a very strong position, despite the ongoing election fraud and concerted efforts by the deep state to sabotage his chances, throw him in jail with one or several of these indictments, and remove him from the ballot. Luckily, the unelected judges and bureaucrats who make mincemeat of the Constitution like petty tyrants have run against a major obstacle in the court of public opinion, which increasingly recognizes these sham court proceedings, where judges hand out arbitrary and capricious decisions with impunity, for the witch hunt they are. The public also finds itself in dire straits, being unable to afford daily necessities like groceries and pay utility bills because of rising costs associated with lasting inflation, which remains at historic highs with no reversal in sight, even if the rate of inflation growth has slowly cooled off ever so slightly in recent months.
The harsh economic realities America faces are deep-seated and go far, far deeper than just the higher costs of groceries. Real wages have not increased at all over Biden’s four years in office, labor force participation rates continue to lag historic norms, higher-skilled laborers have been forced out of the markets through a combination of aging out and DEI initiatives, which ruthlessly select against generally more competent, older white professionals (see the airline industry as one notable example), and COVID mandates, reducing both the quantity and quality of the overall labor force. Meanwhile, supply chains have not, despite Biden’s insistence on the contrary, bounced back to pre-COVID levels. They remain in tatters, a condition that is not helped by Biden’s placement of climate-related initiatives, such as prioritizing electric vehicles while stubbornly refusing to “drill, baby, drill,” i.e., tap into America’s own vast oil reserves, which only compound other systemic monetary and fiscal woes.
Crumbling infrastructure, such as New York City’s century-old subway system, already in a state of chronic disrepair, is only worsened by the illegal migrant crisis that has infiltrated cities across the land, whose mayors and officials have proven themselves utterly incapable of quelling record homelessness and rising crime. The amalgamation of crime, homelessness, and illegal migrants has been an unmitigated disaster for everyday Americans. Economically, they are being forced to pay for housing, food, schooling, and healthcare for illegals—many of whom are military-age men trafficking in drugs and committing other crimes—from not only Mexico and El Salvador but from all over the world.
Many Americans now also feel like they put their lives at risk every time they leave their homes to go to work, knowing that under the Biden regime, dangerous criminals and illegals run around with impunity while law enforcement has been effectively handcuffed, such as by eliminating stop-and-frisk, from doing their jobs competently. The fact that the federal government now issues arbitrary decrees, such as the one handed down by the Supreme Court this past week involving Texas, in which the feds unilaterally and outrageously decreed that states have no right to preserve their own sovereignty and that they must let the entire third world flood their borders or else face the wrath of the FBI, is the textbook definition of tyranny. When states are handcuffed by federal authorities from being able to fight for their most basic right of self-preservation, it is the ultimate telltale that the country is on life support and liberty hangs in the balance.
Americans have long been known for their dynamism and freedom-loving instincts. At least, that was the case for most every other generation up until our own. The outcome of this year’s presidential election will ultimately come down to whether that instinct, however diminished, still exists or whether Americans, so browbeaten by the deep state into licensing their great replacement by perfidious foreign ideologies, customs, and invaders, no longer meaningfully exist.
The momentum fueling the Trump movement would suggest that a heartbeat is still there, however faint, and, with that hope, a chance for renewal. Of course, the deep state will try every trick in the book, and then some, to derail the Trump Train for all time. They will become more and more vindictive as they come to terms with the fact that it cannot be stopped.
Ultimately, their nefarious, freedom-denying playbook will not stand. The reason is simple: Americans from coast to coast cherish their sacred liberties and will fight for their freedoms to the end. While Donald John Trump is the avatar for that national renewal, the movement he spearheaded will long outlast him and, in that respect, transcend any single man or woman. If the enemies of the American experiment and its hallowed Constitution attempt to bring him down, the enemies of that project will have only signed their death warrant, for such occurrence would convert the oppressed sheeple into ravenous lions, who, like their forefathers, will fight to their graves so that they might remain free.
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Paul Ingrassia is a Constitutional Scholar; a two-time Claremont Fellow, and is on the Board of Advisors of the New York Young Republican Club and the Italian American Civil Rights League. He writes a widely read Substack that is regularly re-truthed by President Trump. Follow him on X @PaulIngrassia, Substack, Truth Social, Instagram, and Rumble.
