TDS- A rare disease with no known cure

Love him or hate him, during Trump's presidency, the economy was strong, markets were up, inflation was under control, gas prices were low, illegal border crossings were down, crime was lower, trade deals were renegotiated, ISIS was defeated, NATO allies were stepping up, and China was stepping back (a little). Deny all that if you want to. The point here is that something like 100 million Americans believe it, strongly, and are bewildered and angered by elite hatred for the man they think delivered it. ---Michael Anton

This is not a note on Donald Trump. You can like him or not, vote for him or not, that's up to you. This is a note on a not-so-rare disease called Trump Derangement Syndrome (TDS). If TDS is not formally recognized in the public health literature yet, it will be someday; it's a serious mental illness that afflicts tens of millions of Americans and has no known cure. Political divides are nothing new in U.S. politics. Those divides go back to the Founding Fathers when Thomas Jefferson favored an agrarian society of independent craftsmen and farmers and Alexander Hamilton favored a more urban manufacturing approach with significant foreign trade. Such debates have lasted over 200 years and have brought a lot of acrimony and name-calling with them. But in the end, there was always room for compromise or a practical result with two sides taking turns as we saw with LBJ in the 1960s (the progressive advocate of The Great Society), and Ronald Reagan in the 1980s (a conservative advocate for free enterprise). TDS is different. It allows no room for compromise and, in fact, requires unrelenting 24/7 opposition in the form of media bombardment, undermining Trump from within the government (variously called The Deep State or The Resistance), continual investigation (always on phony charges such as "Russian collusion"), continual accusations, and personal ostracization; (Melania Trump is a highly attractive former model; why did she never get a magazine cover like other First Ladies? The answer is TDS). One might think that TDS would fade once Trump was out of office. That has not happened as we can see from the January 6^th Committee (actually a Stalinist-style show trial), and ongoing civil and criminal investigations of Trump and his businesses by prosecutors in New York, Georgia, and the Department of Justice. Where will it end? Part of the answer is found in this article. It's written by Michael Anton, who is a brilliant public intellectual and played a mid-level role in the Trump administration on the National Security Council staff. Anton supports many Trump policies, but he's not an apologist. He can be as critical of Trump as anyone. But he does not have TDS; he keeps his critique in traditional political bounds. What he does in this article is to look at those who do have TDS. He says the depth of opposition to Trump can only be understood by the fact that Trump is an existential threat to everything the Trump haters stand for. The elitism, snobbery, condescension, control, censorship, climate alarmism, interventionism, globalism and a lot more that the TDS crowd stand for is under direct threat from Trump, even if Trump himself doesn't understand the depth of opposition. The TDS gang must continue to destroy Trump. Let's hope they don't destroy the country in the process.

Jim Rickards