(You can listen to this column, read by the author, here.)
Former President Donald Trump’s action, or more specifically inaction, on Jan. 6, 2021, was unforgivable.
Stolen election or not, the nation’s Capitol was being attacked by his diehard supporters as he hid for hours.
No, he didn’t incite a riot or “insurrection,” but he did nothing to stop it. He, our chief law-enforcement officer, refused to take to a microphone until the event was basically over.
I decided there and then I couldn’t vote for him again.
And here I am today, likely to vote for him for a third time.
Those in Colorado who lean conservative or libertarian but don’t want to vote for him have an out. There is zero chance Trump will carry this state. His supporters can froth at the mouth about how he can win here, but they’re detached from reality. (And when he loses, they can froth about a stolen Colorado election, but he still won’t get our electoral votes.)
So, you can cast a protest vote guilt free — Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the Libertarian, Green candidate, whatever. It won’t cost Trump Colorado. On election night the combined votes for Trump and all third-party candidates will likely be less than for Harris.
So why don’t I just vote for a third-party guy? That was my plan. But the thought of doing it is feeling more and more wrong.
Even though I know my vote won’t count in any technical way, it’s still a personal statement I’ll remember and share. And, in the silly side-pot the press is smitten with, it will make a minuscule difference in the “popular vote.”
My vote for Trump won’t be for Trump. It won’t even be against Kamala Harris per se. My vote for Trump is a middle finger to the elitist cabal of political manipulators, including the whole Obama machine (in and out of office), bureaucratic operators inside government, Hollywood and, perhaps mostly, the press.
They cannot be rewarded for the years of command-and-control abuse, collusion and fear-based manipulation. They misdirected, covered-up and economically crushed middle America and purposely frightened the masses to stay in power. They keep us in a state of perma-crisis.
This elitist oligopoly of power has:
- Forced masks on children and toddlers to stop a cold that had nothing to do with children or toddlers.
- Shut down schools for those children to later reopen them only with draconian, dystopian social distancing rules, causing massive mental harm to our kids.
- Forced vaccinations and shut people out of society for not getting vaccinated.
- Forced people to die alone, separated from loved ones.
- Took away our constitutional right to assemble, and closed churches.
- Abused the voting system in 2020 through untested mail-in voting in states like Pennsylvania.
- Supported criminals burning down cities while telling the rest of us to stay inside and be thoughtful of others.
- Used campaign funds to pay a foreign spy to create a fake dossier that implicated the president for treason.
- Censored the truth about Hunter Biden’s laptop, which was direct interference with a presidential election.
- Emptied the country’s strategic oil reserve.
- Created the largest corporate welfare scheme in history, calling it “green energy.”
- Supported and promoted the flood of millions of illegal aliens into the country.
- Purposefully confused our children about their own gender.
- Put men into women’s sports.
- Lied continuously about and covered up Joe Biden’s cognitive loss.
- When no longer able to cover-up Joe Biden’s cognitive loss, conducted a coup against him, yet did not remove him from office, and installed a replacement who, miraculously, avoided the nomination process altogether.
- Tried to convince us Vice President Kamala Harris is not a lifelong socialist hack, far worse than Bernie Sanders, who they pushed off the ballot in 2020 because he couldn’t win.
- Refused to engage Kamala Harris in any way that takes her off a teleprompter.
- Placed Tulsi Gabbard on the Quiet Skies program intended for suspected domestic terrorists because she criticized the administration
- Proposed price controls on food. Let me say that one again — proposed price controls on food.
And that’s just a partial list (thanks to my friend David Burns who helped).
Of course, Donald Trump lies. Yes, he is a narcissist. No, he isn’t a danger to democracy — more fearmongering from the perma-crisis crowd. But he is a disrupter. The disrupter.
And the elitist power oligopoly of the media, Hollywood, bureaucrats and win-at-all-costs Democrats desperately needs a disruption.
Jon Caldara is president of the Independence Institute, a free market think tank in Denver.
