November 21, 2016
By Ed Hoffman
Like many of you, I’ve felt a little more alive over the past two weeks. No exaggeration here: I don’t think I realized how much the Obama administration, Hillary Clinton’s disastrous candidacy and the lack of hope in this country had affected my health. I think a lot of you can relate.
But as we celebrate, there are people who are literally in mourning this week. I’m not gloating in front of them, and I hope you aren’t either. They don’t know what they don’t know, and that deserves our pity. For a variety of reasons – whether it’s the naivety of youth, their lack of information, or just plain gullibility – they don’t understand why more than 60 million Americans voted for Donald Trump. And since they don’t understand it, they’re calling it something they can understand: racism. It’s ridiculous to those of us who understand racism had nothing to do with Trump’s victory, but for them, it’s all they know.
The college kids setting our country’s flag on fire in LA, the unemployed New York millennials marching in front of Trump Tower, and the protesting class who have spent the past five days inciting violence in Portland and Seattle…they all have one thing in common: They grew up with Barack Obama as President. In other words, they’ve been hearing the President of the United States and his allies in the media call Republicans racist for the past eight years. So naturally, they believe with all their hearts that Donald Trump is racist (and by association, everyone who voted for him must be too).
“But if he just hadn’t said ‘rapists and murderers’ that very first week of the campaign, they wouldn’t have been able to call him racist…” I’ve heard that argument too, and I think it’s wrong. These people would have called him racist no matter what, because it’s what the Democrats and their loyal media allies do every four years to the Republican nominee, no matter who it is – and unfortunately, the uninformed public buys into it.
They did it to Mitt Romney, they did it to John McCain, and the election after he united our post-9/11 nation, they did it to George W. Bush. They will do it to every Republican nominee for the remainder of our lifetimes, because it’s all they have. And because their President for the past eight years has been obsessed with race, it will be worse than ever. That’s what we’re experiencing now – and no matter how much he pretends to be conciliatory, he is the reason these protests have escalated. If he hadn’t gone around the world apologizing for America for the past eight years (he’s doing it in Greece this week, by the way), sympathizing with the violent demonstrations after police-involved shootings, and lecturing Christians after every Islamic terror attack, maybe the younger generation wouldn’t be so weak.
They’ve been raised to believe that’s how we should be – because after all, that’s what their President is. Then, along comes this strong presidential candidate; even if they knew who he was in pop culture or business, they didn’t know him in this capacity. He didn’t talk like the current President. He said America is supposed to be a great country. He said we have to secure our borders. They’ve never heard a President talk like this before – and so, he must be a racist. But Barack Obama doesn’t get all the blame for this; to a lesser extent, some blame falls in Hillary Clinton’s lap too. After all, she had no problem playing the sexism card for the duration of her campaign.
These people don’t know how happy they’re going to be two years from now, when everyone has a job and they’re paying lower taxes because the number of people getting a paycheck from the government is drastically reduced. These people don’t know how much better their lives will be because of the new Republican majority, and it could be years before they realize it because of how powerfully they’ve been conditioned for the past eight years.
If you voted for the candidate who held six rallies in six different states on November 7 before getting up at 4 AM on November 8 and staying up a full 24 hours until the race was called in his favor, then you have reason to celebrate; clearly, you care about having a President with energy, focus and stamina. If you decided not to vote for the creature who had nothing in her favor but the woman card, and instead voted for the candidate who fought like politicians don’t normally fight, you are earning your reward this week. You realized that we were on the edge of a cliff, and you slammed on the brakes. Because of people like you, me and President-Elect Donald Trump, we’re on our way to making America great again.
Ed Hoffman is host of The Main Event, which is broadcast on select talk radio stations in Southern California and is available on-demand via podcast. Follow him on Twitter @EdHoffman, and like him on Facebook at www.Facebook.com/TheMainEventEdHoffman.