“They misunderestimated me,” then-President-elect George W. Bush famously said about his political opponents after his 2000 election victory. While it’s perhaps easy underestimating someone so prone to malapropisms and mangling syllables, “Dubya” was right. There’s a lesson there, too — one that, more than a generation later, the Democrats still haven’t learned.
Just consider President Donald Trump. The Left, and the GOPE, laughed and laughed and laughed at him — and then laughed some more. They’re still laughing. But the laughter has now taken on a crazy, plaintive character, reminiscent of a man in a straitjacket and rubber room rocking back and forth and, amid sobs, breaking out in intermittent, maniacal cachinnation, as he blocks out a reality he cannot accept.
One person who would likely second this assessment is the Arizona Republic’s Phil Boas. “At first I laughed at Trump,” he confessed Tuesday. “Now I know not to underestimate him.”
Boas isn’t a Democrat, but his traditionally Republican paper did endorse Hillary Clinton over Trump in 2016. But a Democrat who has seen the same light is none other than former Barack Obama advisor Van Jones. He confessed fairly recently that leftists’ failure to understand Trump “doesn’t mean he’s dumb.” Rather, “We don’t understand it,” he continued — “that means we’re dumb.”
In fact, it’s why, he said, Democrats “woke up in a body bag.”
Laughing All the Way to Loserville
Really, as Mark Twain might’ve appreciated, we could say of Trump that rumors of his political death are greatly exaggerated — over and over and over again. Democrats (and others) laughed it off when, in 2015, pundit Ann Coulter correctly predicted Trump would win the GOP nomination. They laughed at his electoral chances when he made impolitic comments, such as those about late Senator John McCain. They laughed, states Boas, in 2022 when Trump announced he was again running for the presidency. “The conventional wisdom was that Trump was actually not running for president,” writes Boas, “but running from the law.” And they’re laughing now, too, saying the president folded like a tent on the Mexican and Canadian tariffs.
But, states Boas, “Laugh at your peril.”
Critics claim that Trump got nothing for his tariff threats except what Canada and Mexico had already resolved to do. And Canada’s promised $1.3 billion border enhancements were, in fact, announced in December.
As even Newsweek confessed, however, this was in response to Trump’s tariff threats.
Moreover, by following through on the threats, Trump extracted a “$200 million bonus” from Canada, as Boas puts it.
As for Mexico, critics claim the 10,000 troops the nation is sending to the border were already scheduled to go. But, states Boas, this isn’t what The New York Times says. Is the Gray Lady now peddling pro-Trump fake news?
Boas adds that, in addition, the tariffs aren’t off the table. Trump just paused them for a month, leaving them like a Sword of Damocles dangling over Ottawa and Mexico City.
Then there’s Colombia’s and other Latin American nations’ capitulation on accepting their illegal-alien nationals. There’s also Panama’s agreement to expel the Chinese from the Canal Zone, which has left Beijing squealing.
“Still laughing?” Boas rhetorically asks.
A “Phenomenon”
Even more striking were Van Jones’ comments about Trump, made in mid-December during a long conversation with journalist Chris Cillizza.
“We woke up in a body bag on Election Day and didn’t even know it,” Jones, a CNN commentator, said of Trump’s victory. He then addressed all of the Democrats and others who, for years, have been calling the president “stupid” or “dumb.” As The Blaze reported, Jones stated:
“Let me just be very clear: Donald Trump is smarter than me, you, and all of the critics. You know how I know? Because he has the White House; the Senate; the House; the Supreme Court; the popular vote; he has a massive media [ecosystem] bigger than the mainstream built around him and for him; and a … religious fervor in a political movement around him; and his best buddy is the richest person in the history of the world; and the most relevant Kennedy is with him,” said Jones. “This dude is a phenomenon. He is the most powerful human on Earth and in our lifetime, and we’re still [saying], ‘Well, how is this guy…?’ We look like idiots.”
Jones stressed that the liberal establishment’s failure to understand Trump “doesn’t mean he’s dumb. We don’t understand it — that means we’re dumb,” adding, “We got beat by something that we don’t understand.”
Perspective
And to understand the “phenomenon,” perspective is needed. To wit: Trump first becomes a flashy billionaire real-estate magnate, enjoying far more successes than failures. He later reaches the pinnacle of the reality TV business, which isn’t easy; it requires incredible personality.
Trump then runs for president in 2016. Despite being viciously attacked by media and significantly outspent by Clinton, Trump wins. He becomes, too, the first man to capture the presidency without ever having been in political office or the military.
Trump then, still under withering Establishment assault, becomes the first president to be impeached twice. He subsequently has, many would say, the 2020 election stolen from him. He also is banned by some social media and is targeted with lawfare designed to put him in prison. Why, his Mar-a-Lago resort is even raided, in an unprecedented move.
Despite this and again being greatly outspent — and surviving two assassination attempts — Trump wins reelection in 2024. In this, he becomes only the second man in history to win non-consecutive presidential terms, and the first since Grover Cleveland in 1892.
In other words, love him or hate him, Trump is a phenomenon. His life is historic.
As for the Democrats, one thing I learned young, as an aspiring athlete, is that you never underestimate an opponent. That’s how you lose. But acknowledging a disliked adversary’s strengths requires humility — and wisdom. This gets at why leftists are unlikely to make such an acknowledgment. They often derive self-esteem from the idea they’re part of an intellectually and morally superior group: “progressives.” They’re not like those dumb yahoos, those MAGA-billies, you see. And that’s true — they’re not. They’re out of power.
It all could remind you of why the Bible warns, “Pride goeth before a fall.”
