Trump: the Dissident President

Most of those present, and who watched President Trump’s speech this week at CPAC, likely missed the two most important parts of his address. 

This isn’t surprising. It was quite the performance. About twenty minutes in, the President went off prompter and spent almost the whole next hour telling stories from his presidency. 

Tales of how he dealt with a recalcitrant government in Mexico, that was unwilling to help secure our Southern border, a reluctance that instantly evaporated when the President applied the “Art of the Deal” approach and threatened immediate and swinging import tariffs on all goods from our Southerly neighbor. 

Then there was the even more entertaining retelling of the story of Air Force One landing in Baghdad, the aircraft and runway completely blacked out to prevent an insurgent rocket attack. 

I’ve heard this story more than once, but even I was laughing out loud as I watched the President recount how afraid he was and how cool and collected his pilots were. If you haven’t watched the speech, you really should. It’s all here.

But far more important than the hilarious anecdotes and self-parody were two phrases President Trump used in the first part of his address. He described himself as a “dissident” and America as a “captive nation.” 

For many listening, especially those under the age of forty, the deep significance of these words may have been lost. But they are true and will shape our future, not good or ill.

Both expressions are seminal to the Cold War that defined the lives of billions after the Second World War and all the way to November 9th, 1989, when the Berlin Wall fell. 

“Captive Nations” was a phrase first used as a geopolitical collective by President Eisenhower to describe all those countries captured and enslaved by Communism and was then later popularized by Ronald Reagan in many of his speeches focused on the evil of Marxism. 

So why would one of the richest men in America, who enjoys massive popularity as the leading challenger for the Presidency, use such language? 

Because he is a dissident and we are fast becoming a captive nation. 

President Trump is a dissident because just like those who challenged the undemocratic powers that be behind the Iron Curtain, he too is being brutally targeted for his political beliefs. Whether it is by rogue judges who have just imposed a half-a-billion dollar fine on him and banned him from doing business in the city of New York as a punishment for a “crime” that has no victims. Or whether it is a federal Special Counsel who is using all the powers of the Department of Justice to imprison the Leader of the Opposition and an FBI who raided the former President’s private residence with its armed agents acting as thugs for a regime that has levied charges totaling more than 700 years in prison for a man who has won every primary since the Presidential nomination process has begun. 

But it’s not just about an incumbent regime and its party desperately using all the tools of the state to stop the only challenger who can dethrone them. It’s not just about one man. It’s about all Americans who believe in the government “of, by, and for” the People. 

It’s about you. 

We may not have a concrete wall topped with barbed wire separating our nation from the free world, and there are no guard towers with sharpshooters ready to kill anyone who wants to “escape” to freedom. There are no labor camps or mass graves of patriots who dared to say “No.” Nevertheless, we are fast coming to resemble a captive nation in so many chilling ways.  

Whether it is Catholics being illegally surveilled by the FBI simply because they are Catholics and thus deemed a “domestic threat,” or the hundreds of thousands of innocent Americans likewise spied upon by the state without a warrant just because they dare to support President Trump, these are the actions of a burgeoning police-state. 

The same applies to the egregious treatment of pro-life activists who were given long custodial sentences of more than a decade by the federal government because they dared to pray inside an abortion clinic. Or the January 6th protestors who did nothing violent on that fateful day, one of whom wasn’t even in Washington DC yet was sentenced to 22 years in prison. Not to mention those, like Matt Perna, the handsome young man who spent less than 10 minutes inside the Capitol that day, hurt no one, and then was charged as a terrorist by Biden’s Department of Justice. Instead of facing a decade or more in prison, Matt hanged himself. And he’s not the only “dissident” to take their own life instead of surrendering to the police state being built as we speak. 

Their blood is on the hands of all of Biden’s henchmen who have decided any tool is justified in the maintenance of power for one party, the Democrat Party. 

Yes, we are becoming a captive Nation. And President Trump is a dissident, Public Enemy Number One. And if you believe that you should be able to choose who our President should be and that it should be a man named Donald J. Trump, you are a dissident as well. 

Sebastian Gorka Ph.D. is the host of SALEM Radio’s AMERICA First and The Gorka Reality Check on NEWSMAX TV. A former Strategist to President Donald Trump, he is a member of the National Security Education Board of the Pentagon. His latest book is The War for America’s Soul. Follow him on his SubStack page and website.

The opinions expressed by columnists are their own and do not necessarily represent the views of AMAC or AMAC Action.