The Left’s Smear Machine is Faltering

Despite dominating virtually every cultural institution, from Hollywood to the mainstream media, the left’s efforts to smear and destroy their political enemies have begun to falter in recent months, pointing toward a broader cultural rejection of leftist dogma and cancel culture. 

Here are just a few high-profile figures who have not only survived the left’s attacks, but have punched back and exposed the corruption and dishonesty of the liberal establishment.

Donald Trump

Any list of individuals who drive the left mad and consistently thwart their attempts to destroy them has to begin with Donald Trump.

Since Trump left office in 2020, the left has continued its full-scale smear campaign in the media, while elected Democrats at every level of government have weaponized the justice system to attempt to disqualify Trump from the 2024 ballot and even throw him in prison.

Joe Biden’s FBI has raided Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home, while Biden himself has made multiple nationally televised addresses claiming that Trump, as well as anyone who supports the former president, is a “threat to democracy.” Liberal judges have even placed a “gag order” on Trump to prevent him from publicly defending himself.

But with each attack, Trump only seems to become more popular with Republican voters and with the American people more broadly. He has consistently led Joe Biden in the RealClearPolitics 2024 polling average, and recently tallied his highest-ever level of support at 47.2 percent, compared to Biden’s 44.9 percent.

In the key swing state of Georgia, where Trump is currently under indictment from far-left District Attorney Fani Willis and has received nonstop negative coverage, he has a 42-point lead in the primary race – one of his largest anywhere in the country.

Even after eight years of a relentless defamation campaign that included the Russiagate hoax, two impeachments, countless false news stories, and thousands of malicious whispers and rumors, the left has seemingly only succeeded at making Trump more popular.

Clarence Thomas

The left’s campaign to destroy Clarence Thomas began more than 30 years ago with an effort to derail his confirmation to the Supreme Court by bringing forward last-minute unfounded allegations of sexual harassment that Thomas would denounce as a “high-tech lynching for uppity blacks who in any way deign to think for themselves, to do for themselves, to have different ideas.”

Unfortunately, that high-tech attempted lynching has continued throughout Thomas’s distinguished career on the Court, with the left continuing to harass him to this day.

The latest manufactured Clarence Thomas “scandal” was sparked earlier this year by a hit piece from ProPublica, a left-wing propaganda outlet masquerading as an “independent nonprofit newsroom,” claiming that Thomas improperly accepted gifts from a wealthy family friend.

The piece ignited a media firestorm and even a congressional hearing and a flood of proposed bills “reforming” Supreme Court ethics rules. Multiple high-profile Democrats called for Thomas’s impeachment, while others demanded that he resign immediately.

As the Wall Street Journal Editorial Board wrote back in April, “The claims of corruption are intended to smear the conservative Justices and tarnish the Court to tee up case recusals, impeachment or a Court-packing scheme if Democrats get enough Senate votes to break the filibuster.”

But all of these efforts have so far failed. Thomas is still on the Court and remains one of the most respected jurists in the country. Democrats’ Supreme Court “ethics” bill, which cleared the Judiciary Committee, has gone nowhere and has dim prospects for a hearing before the full Senate.

Despite the left’s best efforts, the public has once again shrugged off this latest politically motivated hit job against Clarence Thomas as just that.

Speaker Mike Johnson

Following a tumultuous few weeks for House Republicans last month, Louisiana Representative Mike Johnson emerged as the leading candidate to become the next Speaker of the House.

Predictably, the media and elected Democrats reacted with outrage, accusing Johnson of being a “Christofascist” who would “undermine the 2024 election.”

The liberal establishment has taken particular issue with Johnson’s strong Christian faith, portraying his traditional views – which would’ve been considered commonplace just a few years ago – as some sort of extremist ideology. Axios declared shortly after Johnson’s ascension to the speakership that his “20-year paper trail is an opposition researcher’s dream.”

But for all the left’s effort, Johnson is still in a strong position as Speaker of the House. He successfully averted a government shut down just before the Thanksgiving holiday and still seems to have the support of his caucus. Despite outsize negative media attention, Johnson’s net favorability rating is the second best of the “big four” congressional leaders at -3.4, ranking just behind media darling Hakeem Jeffries (-2.7) and ahead of Chuck Schumer (-10) and Mitch McConnell (-36.4), although he remains far less well known as a national figure.

Tucker Carlson

No conservative media figure is more reviled by the left than Tucker Carlson. When Fox News fired Carlson in April, liberals celebrated what they thought was a successful attempt to cancel a popular conservative figure.

But Carlson quickly re-emerged as a force on X (formerly Twitter) with a new independent show that has in some cases far eclipsed the reach of his old cable news program. Carlson now posts unfiltered content directly to his 10.7 million followers – more than the four million or so viewers that Tucker Carlson Tonight typically enjoyed. Carlson’s most recent installment, an interview with Argentina’s president-elect Javier Milei, has currently garnered more than 426 million views.

Once again, the left seems only to have succeeded in making Carlson more relevant, popular, and influential than he was before.

Elon Musk

Elon Musk’s commitment to free speech and allowing conservative voices back on X has made him a top target of the left’s smear machine. Following his acquisition of Twitter last year, the left has done everything it can to hurt the world’s richest man financially – most notably by pressuring large advertisers to abandon X.

In the most recent case, Media Matters America, another left-wing “watchdog” dedicated to ginning up outrage against conservatives, released a report alleging that X places ads next to “neo-Nazi” content. This triggered a number of major companies, including Disney, Apple, and IBM, to announce that they would stop advertising on the platform.

But instead of backing down, Musk continued his pattern of taking the fight to the left by announcing that he would be filing a “thermonuclear lawsuit” against Media Matters for concocting the entire scandal. According to Musk’s legal team, Media Matters created fake accounts that followed only extremist users to manipulate the X algorithm into displaying ads next to unsavory content, and then used screenshots of those ads as the basis of their hit piece.

As the New York Post reported last week, Musk’s case won’t be an easy win, but it will “[make] Media Matters’ life a living hell if the suit survives the inevitable motion to dismiss” and could force Media Matters to “make significant disclosures on its reporting process and the sources of its funding.”

Musk’s refusal to submit to the left’s threats and intimidation tactics have caused the effort to destroy him to backfire dramatically.

All of these examples suggest that the American people intuitively understand that the media is not to be trusted and that the left’s attacks and cancellation attempts are not as potent as they once were. Moreover, as “Twitter Files” author Michael Shellenberger has written, liberal efforts to censor their political enemies have actually backfired and exposed Democrats and their allies in the media as the ones worthy of criticism and condemnation.

Although liberals still have daunting advantages in the mass media and popular culture, the dismantling of the left’s smear machine is nonetheless a noteworthy and heartening development for conservatives.

Shane Harris is a writer and political consultant from Southwest Ohio. You can follow him on Twitter @ShaneHarris513.