https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2022/07/i_was_wrong_about_trump.html
I recently wrote a column about why I believed Trump should not run in 2024. I was wrong. I allowed my distaste for Trump’s personality to override his virtues, which are considerable. Some people want Trump without his vices. I was among them, until yesterday, when I watched and listened to Tom Klingenstein’s speech titled “Trump’s virtues.” It was masterful and shamed me that I did not make the distinction between Trump’s character and his virtues, the former being deeply flawed, the latter being almost perfect. I need to man up in my defense of the former President’s virtues. The speech was among the most pointed I have heard and deserves some exposure. Klingenstein says:
Other Republicans say some version of “I like Trump policies but I don’t like the rest of him.” This gets it almost backwards. Although Trump advanced many important policies, it is the ‘rest of him’ that contains the virtue that inspires the movement… Trump was born for the current crisis, a life and death struggle against a totalitarian enemy I call woke communism… that controls all the cultural and economic powers in America…
[Trump] revealed, not caused, the divide in this country. In war, you must make a stand… Trump is a manly man… traditional manhood, even when flawed, is absolutely essential… Trump plays to win… There are no clean hands in a fistfight…Trump is unreservedly, unquestionably pro-America… Trump is a refreshing break from the guilt and self-loathing that marks our age…
It is anti-Americanism that makes so many of us very angry: The Left have trashed America’s Founding and her history to the point where some believe it virtuous to hate America. Rather than advocating forgiveness for sins, the Left is advocating hair shirts, self-flagellation, and perpetual guilt. It is un-American and certainly un-Christian.
Trump thinks we can vanquish all comers if we just put our minds to it, and he’s right… Courage never demands perfection… Trump over and over said exactly what political correctness prohibits one from saying… Trump said Haiti is a shithole and that representative Maxine Waters has a low IQ. These were not racist lies. They were uncouth, politically incorrect observations with which most of us would agree but would not dare say.
In 2016, we loved Trump for his outspokenness. But many seem to have changed their minds without cause; Trump is the same today as he was before he was elected. The very things we disdain today are the things that made him the man for our time.
From morning to night, we were told that Trump is a racist. But endless repetition does not make it true. It isn’t. Trump’s contempt for political correctness showed patriotic Americans that its ever-tightening grip could be loosened… It is difficult to overestimate the significance of Trump’s fight against political correctness, a fight in which most Republicans are reluctant to engage… Trump treated the woke media with the same contempt he treated political correctness, provoking their outrage and revealing their utter corruption… it must be defeated.
