Expecting to be able to manufacture enough seemingly damaging “intelligence” against the upstart from Queens, they failed. Sixty-three million Americans chose the “wrong” candidate. According to the New York Times and the Huffington Post, on the night of the election, Hillary had a more than 92 percent chance of winning. But she lost. Despite spending $1.4 billion, despite having almost all of the media on her side, despite the fact that she was running against an outsider who had never held political office, despite the defection of the Never-Trump Republicans, she failed to win the presidency because she assumed that position was hers by right of her sex and her last name. And after weeks of openly scaremongering that Donald Trump would not accept the result of the election if he lost, it was Hillary who refused to personally concede defeat, once it was incontrovertible, sending her evil éminence grise, John Podesta, out instead to break the sad news to the weeping drones assembled at the Javits Center in New York. The unthinkable had happened, and it was Hillary Clinton who refused to accept it.
But now there was real trouble. If Hillary wasn’t going to be president, then none of the Obama/Clinton cartel would stay in power. Donald Trump would get to place his confidantes—conservatives— into the top positions of the U.S. government, which would include naming a new attorney general, a new director of the CIA, and perhaps a new director of the FBI. No one in the Deep State had planned for this. All those who had conspired against Trump had reason to fear that the evidence of what they had been doing illegally against candidate Trump and his people might be exposed. What was to be done? The obvious answer: bring in a “fixer” to hide the truth, subvert the new administration, divert attention away from all their crimes, and generate a way to politically indict the new commander in chief. Enter Robert Mueller, former FBI director and close friend or former colleague to all those implicated in the largest political scandal in America’s history. The initial idea was to get Mueller reappointed to his old position at the top of the FBI, where he could deep-six all the compromising evidence forever.
Rod Rosenstein, Mueller’s former Department of Justice colleague and lackey, managed to help engineer things, and Mueller was eventually invited to the White House to meet the new president on May 16, 2017, a week after President Trump dismissed James Comey, with good reason (and Rod Rosenstein’s advice), as director of the FBI. Mueller interviewed to get his old job back and thought that as a former FBI director, and one who had served under both a Republican and a Democrat president (George W. Bush and Barack Obama), he was a shoe-in. Who better qualified than someone who had done it all before, with bipartisan support? But no. President Trump saw Mueller as past his sell-by date, a man of another time and low energy, the opposite of the new commander in chief. President Trump decided, “Thanks, but no thanks. We need fresh blood.”
For the conspirators, the question then became: how to cover up the hundreds of illegal unmaskings, the unjustifiable NSA database queries, and the unsubstantiated secret FISA warrants? There was only one answer: Mueller had to be made so powerful he could bring down the new president, and that’s exactly what the de facto acting attorney general Rod Rosenstein decided to make happen. Remember, by this time, the real attorney general, Jeff Sessions, had, on the advice of Obama holdovers, taken the fatal decision to recuse himself from anything to do with Russia investigations because he had met the Russian ambassador at a public function during the campaign and forgotten to tell Congress that he had done so during testimony.43 As a result, his deputy, swamp-dwelling survivor par excellence, Rod Rosenstein, became, to all intents and purposes, the actual attorney general on matters related to Russia. Rosenstein failed to get Mueller appointed as director of the FBI, but now he could go one better: he could make Mueller a special counsel to investigate the sitting president.44
Remarkably, less than twenty-four hours after Mueller failed so egregiously in his interview with President Trump, his friend Rosenstein called him back to Department of Justice headquarters and made him the most powerful prosecutor in the world, the man who would investigate President Trump.45 This happened without anyone in the media, or even amongst the Republicans on Capitol Hill, making the obvious observation: how on earth can a man who tried out for one of the most important jobs under the president, but who failed to make the grade, possibly impartially investigate the man in front of whom he so abjectly failed? It would be akin to interviewing with a CEO for one of the C-suite positions in his company and utterly failing, only to be made district attorney immediately thereafter and handed the job of investigating that CEO for corruption. No worse conflict of interest is imaginable. But for Obama and his accomplices, desperate times called for desperate measures, and with a complicit media and a supine GOP, they figured no one would stop them.
In the two years that followed, Mueller tried everything to get dirt on Trump, and in doing so destroyed several people’s lives. Paul Manafort may not be a salubrious character, but incarcerating people for mortgage fraud was not Mueller’s mandate.46 Similarly, it was not Mueller’s mandate to harass General Mike Flynn—an American patriot who had served his nation with distinction for decades only to lose his home and have the freedom of his family threatened after Mueller charged him with a process crime any American could fall foul of and which had nothing to do with any “collusion.”47
Remarkably, despite the tens of millions of dollars spent, the inordinate powers vested in a special counsel, the two-thousand eight hundred subpoenas, five hundred search warrants, five hundred witnesses interviewed by forty agents, Mueller couldn’t find one piece of evidence linking any American on the Trump campaign to the Russian government as a conspirator.48 So what did he do after two years of trying to take down the duly elected president of the United States? In a disgraceful display that epitomizes Team Obama’s attitude to rule of law, Mueller upended American jurisprudence on his last day on the job.
In a truly peculiar press conference—only matched in its perversion of our national principles by the one his friend James Comey had given during the presidential campaign season that exonerated Hillary Clinton despite her committing at least one hundred eight felonies by his own count49—Robert Mueller actually granted more rights to foreign intelligence agents than he did to the president of the United States. With reference to those Russian military intelligence officers he had charged with attempting to subvert the 2016 presidential election, Robert Mueller stated:
These indictments contain allegations. And we are not commenting on the guilt or innocence of any specific defendant. Every defendant is presumed innocent unless and until proven guilty in court.50
But just a few seconds later, with regard to an American citizen, who doesn’t work for Russian intelligence and who happens to be the president of the United States, he said:
[I]f we had had confidence that the president clearly did not commit a crime, we would have said so. We did not, however, make a determination as to whether the president did commit a crime.51
Never in the history of our country has a prosecutor been charged with proving whether an American did not commit a crime. In fact, it is in direct contravention of both Department of Justice regulations, as well as the rules of the American Bar Association, for any prosecutor at any level to ever comment on the guilt or innocence of a person who stands uncharged of any crime. Sean Davis of the Federalist had the very best analysis of Mueller’s betrayal of our legal system written within hours of his outrageous remarks.52 First he quoted Department of Justice rules:
As a series of cases makes clear, there is ordinarily “no legitimate governmental interest served” by the government’s public allegation of wrongdoing by an uncharged party, and this is true “regardless of what criminal charges may… b[e] contemplated by the Assistant United States Attorney against the [third-party] for the future,”
followed by the American Bar Association’s Rules of Professional Conduct:
“The prosecutor in a criminal case shall… refrain from making extraju
dicial comments that have a substantial likelihood of heightening public condemnation of the accused.”53
It is impossible that Mueller was not aware of either of these rules, since they stem from the foundational principles of British and American law: a person is innocent until proven otherwise, and the burden of proof lies on government prosecutors, not on the accused.
But this is the measure of the political opponents we face today. We are confronted by a “Resistance” that is opposed to the American Constitution and the traditional rules of law. And that “resistance” has risen to the highest levels of our government. Be it a former president raised in Muslim Indonesia54 and on the knees of Communists in Hawaii,55 who became a disciple of the radical Saul Alinsky56 and a member of the corrupt Chicago Democrat political machine;57 or a former Communist sympathizer who ended up as director of the CIA;58 or another as director of the FBI (James Comey);59 or a former first lady who interned for Communist lawyers in California60 and wrote her college thesis on Alinsky’s rules for subverting a democratic republic,61 these are the leaders of a Left that wishes to destroy all that is not theirs and rebuild what remains in their own godless image.
But they never counted on Donald Trump.
Some argue that great men are born great. Others that greatness is thrust upon normal men by circumstance, and they must rise to the challenge. In truth, both things obtain at once. Donald Trump is unique. I knew this within minutes of our first meeting in his office in Trump Tower in the summer of 2015. And it became more and more apparent as I came to advise him before his victory and then work for him as his strategist in the White House. At the same time you cannot understand how he became president and the dangers we still face today if you fail to understand what about the years before 2016 made his presidency possible, and how it was that the “forgotten men and women” of America, the “deplorables,” were able to rally round and elect a complete and utter outsider, a non-politician, to the presidency of the United States. If we are truly to save our Republic, then we must guarantee another four years of that outsider’s tenure in the White House, and that can only be done by understanding how the “elite” betrayed working-class America and how the billionaire from Queens realized that and decided that something had to be done to Make America Great Again.
CHAPTER TWOTHE POLITICAL ELITE’S BIPARTISAN BETRAYAL OF AMERICA
The ascendency of a total political outsider to the highest position in the land represents a grave threat to the vested interests of the establishment elite on both sides of the political aisle, left and right.
The fact that Donald Trump defeated the Left’s anointed candidate, Hillary Clinton, and at the same time vanquished a field of sixteen Republican candidates who themselves were mostly representatives of the establishment class, representing a largely liberal, bipartisan consensus, is remarkable. Add onto this that as a self-made billionaire Donald Trump owes nothing to the political donor class. No president in our lifetime—not even Ronald Reagan—has been more independent, less influenced, or controlled by the political establishment that believes it knows best and should make all the key decisions for the American people.
It was the arrogance—and, frankly, the ignorance—of the American political establishment that sparked the populist revolution that elected President Trump. That establishment was finally being held to account for its massive failures and its betrayal of the American people and our national interests for decades. Here we need not fancy political science theories or polling data on the evolution of political attitudes across the nation. Instead I will share with you the story of one young man, who, though he is no supporter of the president’s, through his life and through the vicissitudes his family have had to endure, perfectly illustrates our betrayal by the establishment and why the outcome of election day, November 8, 2016, was even possible.
His background was as difficult as one can imagine. His grandmother once doused his grandfather in gasoline and set him alight. His mother was a drug addict. And his father would always be a stranger. Yet he would become a U.S. Marine and his autobiography would become a national phenomenon.
Of course I am talking about J. D. Vance, the author of the bestselling Hillbilly Elegy.1
I don’t read biographies, auto- or otherwise. I only read non-fiction works of a historical or strategic nature that have a broad scope beyond one person. Oh, and the humor of the late Terry Prachett and Harry Harrison for light relief.
I can’t stand the idea of investing tens of hours of my life in reading a three- or four-hundred-page doorstop about one person, with details about what they had for breakfast on February 20, 1962, or what tie they picked for their meeting with Khrushchev. But something drew me to J. D. Vance’s story.
First, my wife praised it highly. And she is very choosey. Very. Second, it was short.
I love reading, but for some reason, I know not what, I am a very slow reader. Very. But I managed to plow through the whole of Hillbilly Elegy in one Thanksgiving weekend. This was in part because it is well written. By that I do not mean it is a work of fine literature, a book that will be talked about alongside Shakespeare and Orwell. But it is eminently “readable.” Whenever I write, I strive to make each work as accessible to as many people as possible. Having spent twenty years as a professor in Europe and the United States, I still enjoy reading relevant scholarly texts in fields I care about, even if only a handful of other people will ever read them, but long ago I concluded that, for the most part, reading should be of as broad a utility as possible, even fiction.
If you write, you should write about the truth, whether it’s about where al Qaeda really came from and what it will take to destroy the culture of jihadism, or a novel, a work of fiction that illuminates eternal truths about humanity, our loves, our travails, or our great victories in the face of overwhelming odds. And since in the age of Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, video streaming, and binge-watching, so very few people take the time to read books at all, I feel that it is incumbent upon the author to dismantle the artificial barriers of style and form when necessary, so that as many people as possible can access and consume what they have to tell us. Anyway, that’s my philosophy as an author, and it is very clear that Mr. Vance has a similar one.
If you’ve never read Vance’s book, right about now you’re saying to yourself: “Why is Gorka including in his book on the cultural civil war gripping America, a chapter on some self-professed hillbilly made good?” Bear with me.
Donald Trump defeated all comers to win the greatest contest in his life in large part because he connected with so-called “flyover” America, and with all types of Americans, including me, despite my initial reservations. Remember, I was born in London. My parents might have been refugees from Central Europe, but I went through the British education system with all it had to offer during the glorious years under Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. I had thirteen years with the Benedictines at a private school, studying Shakespeare, the royal history of the British Empire, reciting Latin declensions, joining the debating society, playing cricket and rugby, developing a stiff upper lip, and then heading off to London University to read philosophy and theology. As a result, when I received the phone call to come meet the reality TV show star from Queens to help him prepare on national security issues for the Republican debate, it was not the call I was expecting. Nor did I expect to “connect” with a man who clearly was very different in style and manner to what I had grown accustomed to in England. But I did.
Not only did I connect with the brash billionaire businessman, but once I came to work for him in the White House, I would get to see first hand the preternatural way he connects with people of all backgrounds—especially people who were life-long, working-class Democrat voters, such as the salt of the earth “forgotten men” and women of Pennsylvania or Michigan or Wisconsin.
Take a moment. Wrack your brains. Just try and think of another person today who can, on the one hand, so empathetically connect with a legal
immigrant from Europe, classically schooled, who taught strategy to the military for a living, while on the other hand expressing the thoughts, hopes, and desires of an unemployed steel worker from the “Steel Valley” of Ohio. See what I mean? That is so very, very rare an ability. Ronald Reagan could do it. But Jeb Bush certainly couldn’t, nor could Ted Cruz or John Kasich. And Hillary Clinton never would, no matter how hard she tried.
So how did he do it? How did the billionaire win over the heart of real America against the desires and expectations of the establishment and the so-called “coastal elite”? Here I must turn back to Mr. Vance’s story, because Hillbilly Elegy is the clearest expression of what the Left’s war on America’s soul did to our nation.
Even if you have read the book, indulge me. Allow me to summarize, and more importantly, reframe Vance’s story—which was written before we chose Donald Trump to lead our nation—so as to highlight how this moving odyssey of one young American man can help us understand why in fact Donald Trump did win and why he remains such a threat to the liberal establishment and the radical Left. For J. D. Vance may not be a historian or a social scientist or have a Ph.D. in political science, but if you step back and take the tale of a child born into the grinding hardship of a broken home mired within an environment of drugs and unemployment, we will better understand what actually happened on November 8, 2016. We will understand why Donald Trump was in fact the only man who could help those who love our Republic to claw back our nation from those who had misappropriated it for their own ends.
The War for America's Soul Page 4
