The Battle for the Republic

The FBI's Mar-a-logo raid demonstrates why so much is at stake

The FBI raid on Donald Trump’s Mar-a-logo home has intensified the partisan divide between the Trump reform movement and its formidable enemies within the elite establishment. The country finds itself further than ever from a resolution of the crisis that threatens to tear it apart. Despite the widespread condemnation of the raid by Republicans—including even among some of the “never-Trumper” blowhards—establishment shills in the Democrat Party and in the media have remained unwavering in their support of the raid. “This raises the stakes in the midterms as people see how dangerous the GOP has become,” maintained Jesse Ferguson, a Democratic strategist. “This isn't about political advantage for one party or the other, it's a reminder of what happens if a lawless president is allowed to take power, aided, and abetted by MAGA Republicans in Congress.”

In other words, don’t expect establishment elites to back down or give up on their attempts to permanently disable and/or take out Donald Trump any time soon. The elites in Washington see this entire conflict between Trump and the so-called “deep state” as an existential battle—a fight for their very survival. Their fear is that if Trump were to win the Presidency in 2024 and manage to clean house at the FBI and the Justice department, some of these elites could find themselves targets of federal prosecution. Just consider all the crimes they have already committed. They illegally spied on Trump's campaign in 2016; they attempted to stage what amounted to a coup with their Russia Hoax and the subsequent Mueller investigation; then they sought to impeach Trump for asking President Zelensky’s help in exposing the Biden family’s corruption in Ukraine; they sought to impeach Trump a second time at the very end of his Presidency over the so-called January 6 “insurrection”; and finally, the January 6th Congressional Committee is hard at work trying to frame Trump for his alleged role in the attempt to “steal” an election that may have been stolen from him. While the establishment elite seeks to use the Justice Department as a political weapon against Trump and his associates, they sedulously avoid applying the law against their own miserable creatures. In both 2016 and 2020, the establishment’s candidates for President were involved in serious illegalities which the deep state conveniently ignored: first, with Hilary Clinton and her illegal email server, and then Joe Biden with his son’s laptop. The nation is governed by a ruling elite that regards the judicial system as a tool to be used against anyone who threatens their power, but never used against real criminality among the ruling class.

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What can be done about these miscreants who have seized the nation’s levers of power and only know how to use them incompetently and for the detriment of the country? In his first term, it must be acknowledged that Trump made little progress against them. He could do nothing to put an end to the Mueller investigation or prevent either of his impeachments or stop Anthony Fauci and the nation’s medical establishment from wreaking havoc on the economy and killing hundreds of thousands of Americans with their incompetence and cynical efforts on behalf of the profit margins of Big Pharma. Indeed, Trump was coaxed into cooperating in the development of the mRNA vaccines with his operation “warp speed”—quite easily the greatest blunder of his Presidency. The question naturally arises: if given a second chance, will Trump be able to achieve in a second term what eluded him in the first?

Trump’s failure to drain the swamp could be ascribed to the fact that initially he was in over his head. He had no idea how entrenched the denizens of the deep seat really were in the institutions of the federal government, nor could he anticipate how unscrupulously they would fight to maintain their special place at the federal government trough. Elites don’t relinquish their power and status without a fight. A reduction of status is normally regarded as one of the worst humiliations a human being can suffer. There are people who will sell their souls to the devil before they will accept a lower position in the status hierarchy.

Rumors have arisen that Trump, incensed by how the elite has persisted in its efforts to destroy him, is devising an ambitious plan to drain swamp should he somehow manage to win the Presidency in 2024. Months before leaving office Trump signed an executive order, the notorious “Schedule F,” that would establish a new employment category that would remove civil service for protections for as many as 50,000 career government officials. This would presumably enable Trump to purge the left and other establishment creatures from the federal bureaucracy. Allegedly, there are staffers under Trump who are, according to an Axios article, busy “curating an alternative labor force of unprecedented scale.”

If this is all true, the bureaucrats who make up the core constituency of the Washington based deep state must be in a desperate state. Everything they’ve worked for, including their status in the federal government and their efforts on behalf of “progressive” causes, could be destroyed within the matter of a few years. Those that participated in crimes in their efforts to stop Trump could face prosecution. With so much at stake, these bureaucrats will likely go to great extremes to prevent a second Trump Presidency. Bernard Kerik, the former police commissioner of New York City, has gone so far as to claim that they might consider targeting Trump for assassination.

This [i.e., the mar-a-lago raid] is about one thing: [it] is about stopping [Trump] from running in 2024. And I’m gonna tell you something, I’m not into conspiracies, I’m not into anti-government rhetoric. This is the first time in my lifetime that I would say I am deathly afraid for Donald Trump. I would not put assassination behind these people.

Is Kerik guilty of exaggerating the threat against Trump? Would the neo-liberals and their cohorts on the radical left really be willing and capable of killing Trump? These are not people particularly skilled in the use of force. Sure, they have little trouble sending the polizei to harrass harmless men in their seventies like Roger Stone or Peter Navarro. But assassinating a former President who enjoys twenty-four-seven protection from the Secret Service would require a level of expertise and courage entirely lacking among nearly everyone in the current ruling elite.

So where does that leave us? There exists a thin thread of hope that just maybe, if (1) Trump can somehow manage to survive the efforts of the deep state to prevent him from running for President in 2024; if (2) Trump can further survive the deep state’s efforts to rig the 2024 election against him; and finally if (3) Trump, having secured the Presidency, is able to implement Schedule F—and we can be sure the deep state will do everything in their considerable power to stop him from doing just that—then the country has a chance to get through this crisis and make it to the other side. It is impossible at this time to determine whether any of this could ever fall into the realm of the possible. The deep state is powerful and resourceful, and they currently control the most important institutions in government, including the FBI and the Justice Department. This gives them a huge advantage. On the other side of the scale, it is no less clear that not everyone in the elite is all that smart, and none of them are wise. They are very good at seizing power; not always so good, however, at using power. After all, whose idea among the nation’s top power-brokers was to make Joe Biden, with his obvious cognitive impairment, and Kamela Harris, with her congenital stupidity and lack of elemental horse sense, President and Vice President? Perhaps there’s some kind of diabolical rationale behind these grotesque choices, or perhaps it shows that the Power Elite which governs the country is weaker and more idiotic than is commonly assumed.

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Greg Nyquist is author of The Psychopathology of the Radical Left and The Faux-Rationality of Ayn Rand.

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