For four years, Democrats branded Donald Trump an illegitimate president and treated him as such. Even though election night ended with Trump easily surpassing the 270 Electoral College votes needed to unquestionably secure him the victory, the left refused to accept the political outsider’s victory.
“[H]e knows he’s an illegitimate president,” Hillary Clinton seethed in a CBS News interview from last fall, before implying Trump stole the election. “I believe he understands that the many varying tactics they used, from voter suppression and voter purging to hacking to the false stories — he knows that — there were just a bunch of different reasons why the election turned out like it did,” Clinton claimed.
Former President Jimmy Carter likewise branded Trump’s presidency as “illegitimate” during a panel discussion at an event held in June 2019 at his nonprofit organization, the Carter Center. Explaining his theory of illegitimacy, Carter posited that Trump “lost the election, and he was put into office because the Russians interfered on his behalf.”
The left’s attacks on Trump were not limited to labeling the duly elected president illegitimate. No, Democrats, the media, Never Trump Republicans, the outgoing Obama administration, holdover political appointees, and a swamp of career bureaucrats attempted to first undermine, and then undo, Americans’ choice for the 45th president.
The spying that began during the campaign continued throughout the transition period. Then-President Obama and Vice President Joe Biden then plotted with FBI Director James Comey to devise a way to oust Trump’s pick for national security advisor, Michael Flynn. Leaks of classified information and a sham-investigative interview followed; the scheme succeeded, and Flynn was out.
Then came Comey’s leak of memoranda he wrote after private meetings with the president. Comey handed them to a friend who fed them to corporate media, prompting the appointment of Special Counsel Robert Mueller. But even after two years and $30-plus million in taxpayer dollars, the anti-Trump special counsel team came up empty.
But still they resisted, pushing a phony whistleblower complaint that eventually led to Trump’s impeachment. For four years Trump’s opponents, including corporate media, have refused to concede a clear electoral victory. And for the last several months, the same team has planted the seeds to steal an election with the mass mailing of ballots. Now, Republicans are seeing Democrats reap what they have sowed, with hundreds of thousands of late-returning ballots flipping red states blue in the Electoral College.
So if there is anyone who has a right to call an election leaning towards Biden illegitimate, it is Trump. And in one sense Trump will be right—even if lawful votes would have given Biden the electoral advantage, because the media meddled in this election in a way that would make Russia blush.
Yet Russia is a geopolitical foe. Our media is supposed to be a friend to America, but for the last four years, and especially the last four months, they have acted as an enemy of the people, all for the benefit of Biden.
If after all this Trump pulls out a victory, it will be a miracle. But if he doesn’t, the illegitimate moniker will be the media’s to own.
