Why is Trump winning? The media and leading Democrats are stumped, as they would be – given all they have done. Yes, he is a proven quantity, former president. Yes, times were good economically, and there was domestic and international security. Yes, he weathers storms well. But it is more than all this.
Here is the raw truth. Trump is winning for a thousand small reasons, but mostly because people are in pain, their love of country, history, families, work, faith, and common sense being mocked.
They want someone who believes in their dreams, not the government’s dreams, their independence, their right to be free from mandates and dominance, their right to be safe from illegal aliens, drugs, Iran, China, terror, and wrong-headed, unconstitutional abuses of power.
They want to have Washington’s elites back off, back away, stop profiting from all the abuses, unchecked insider trading, private deals with America’s enemies, and subjecting those that believe in truth and integrity to harassment, arrest, prosecutions, fake crimes, oppressive acts with no place in the lexicon of America.
They do not want more masks, shutdowns, firings, lost businesses, closed schools and churches, arrogant teachers’ unions, socialist lessons, the end of two sexes, and ridicule from national leaders who line their pockets with money taken from their calloused hands. They want the freedom they know is theirs to make choices.
They are sick of all the public corruption, electoral corruption, racial, radical, and social justifications for violence, giveaways, loan forgiveness, and entitlements.
They disdain those who cry victim and make others pay, who harass those of faith, who invade girls’ bathrooms, locker rooms, and privacy, who take away the aspirations and competitive rights of girls, who make parents terrorists, push provocative, anti-American redefinition of words like girl, woman, boy, man, illegal alien, illegal drug, illegal bribe, impeachment, insurrection, and the woke, broken, leftist ideas that dismiss, distort, and disrespect history, biology, and law.
They are sick of being talked down to, brazenly lied to, and accused of not knowing what they know. They are sick of being disrespected as hardworking taxpayers, consumers, parents, thinkers, and believers – the people who, unlike many in government, get things done, fix things, sweat, suffer, and make the nation run.
They are tired of being told children late in a pregnancy are not children, that murder at birth is fine, that standing up for life deserves an arrest, and that peaceful protests are violent while violent ones are peaceful. BS.
They are tired of lies, half-truths, and abuses by leaders in the US State Department, Justice, Homeland, and Defense Departments, and lies by leaders at FBI, FISA, IRS, EPA, Transportation, Education, and White House – all unpunished.
They are tired of anti-democratic people in power dictating to the rest of us, making big money by corrupt acts, then calling those who call them out undemocratic, “enemies of the people,” enemies of “democracy.” Bull.
They are tired of top-down, do-as-I-say, definitionally fascist actions covered as this, that, and the other “justice,” somehow permissible, socially acceptable. Crap.
They are tired of leaders who stay in power forever, live off taxpayers’ toil while spending and stealing them blind and broke, robbing future generations for fancy dinners.
They are outraged by the lack of accountability, one-party privilege, and the audacity to lie big, cover, target, and harass those who question, then let felons go, turn innocents and those who dissent from a concentration of power into criminals.
They do not want the sky. They do not want some transformative new form of activist government. They do not want an end of American history, a new narrative, more COVID money, bailouts for bad debtors, reparations, or anything else.
They want the simple rights promised in the Bill of Rights. They want those rights honored, like freedom of speech, religion, gun ownership, self-defense, defense of others, no warrantless home invasions, federal violations of privacy, or unfair trials.
They want their government to be limited, accountable, not large, lumbering, repressive, and uncontrolled. They want a free market economy, not one twisted by mindless socialism, backbreaking debt, high inflation, high interest, taxes, and overspending.
They want a border treated like a border, one side this country and the other another, and no free entry. They want a military ready, equipped to fight and win.
In short, they want what most American citizens throughout our noble, hard-bitten history have had: the right to be free and to be free of corrupt, overreaching, untethered, off-their-nut arrogant, increasingly lawless leaders.
What they want is not too much to ask, not long ago understood by those in power and those seeking power. They want their Constitution back, their rights, government, control over their lives, families, money, language, and laws back.
They want leaders who appreciate and respect their God-given freedoms. Trump does. That is why Trump is rising across every region, religion, and demographic slice of America and in every recent poll. People want their country and lives back.
Fear and freebies matter far less than freedom and fairness. Americans are finding their voice, increasingly unafraid to speak up, and have had enough. That is the raw truth. America is voting for America. Trump gets it. That is why he is winning.
Robert Charles is a former Assistant Secretary of State under Colin Powell, former Reagan and Bush 41 White House staffer, attorney, and naval intelligence officer (USNR). He wrote “Narcotics and Terrorism” (2003), “Eagles and Evergreens” (2018), and is National Spokesman for AMAC.
