OPINION:
The same left-wing crowd that wasted three years screaming “Russia! Russia! Russia!” has a new chant: “Dictator! Dictator! Dictator!”
President Biden said in September, “Donald Trump and his MAGA Republicans are determined to destroy American democracy.”
That month, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, New York Democrat, declared: “This is truly about having a strong front against fascism in the United States.”
Mr. Trump “will imprison, he will execute whoever he’s allowed to imprison, execute, drive from the country,” MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough hyperventilated on Nov. 21. “Just look at his past.”
But the former president’s past does not reflect Mr. Scarborough’s feverish hallucinations.
One cable news outlet warned last week that a second Trump administration would be filled with “loyalists.” How shocking that Mr. Trump would hire people who support him and his program — just as Democratic presidents do. Is Mr. Trump supposed to surround himself with saboteurs?
Meanwhile, hide The Atlantic’s next edition from the children. This adults-only installment brims with dictatorship porn. It should be wrapped in brown paper.
“In The Atlantic’s January/February 2024 issue, 24 writers imagine what a second Trump term would look like.”
“Trump Will Abandon NATO,” the headline above Anne Applebaum’s piece reads. “If reelected, he would end our commitment to the European alliance, reshaping the international order and hobbling American influence in the world.”
Mr. Trump showed America’s NATO partners the tough love they needed. This inspired them to pledge $400 billion in higher spending for the West’s collective defense. Mr. Trump did not abandon NATO. He fortified it.
“This is unprecedented progress, and it is making NATO stronger,” Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said on Nov. 29, 2019.
Michael Schuman’s article is titled “Why Xi Wants Trump to Win.” Mr. Schuman must have missed Mr. Trump’s constant rhetorical attacks on China, his relentless trade sanctions, and his July 2020 closing of the Chinese Consulate in Houston, among other Beijing-bashing policies.
Mr. Trump was the toughest president on China since U.S. troops occupied it during the Boxer Rebellion under William McKinley.
Xi Jinping wants four more years of that?
The Atlantic’s David Frum is a quick-witted and affable man whom I know and have admired, although our paths have not crossed in years. He is severely allergic to Mr. Trump and just wrote about “The Danger Ahead.” His previous headlines include “Can Germany Resist the Trump Disease?” and “Never Again Trump.”
David Frum has become the Larry Flynt of dictator porn.
These apocalyptic visions might be less hair-raising if Mr. Trump were a neophyte with no political record. But he was president for four years, and they were anything but authoritarian.
This dictatorship/anti-democracy myth is the left’s 2024 weapon of choice. A recent poll might reflect what’s at play. A Nov. 5 Siena College poll of registered voters found Mr. Trump beating Mr. Biden in five swing states, by a 3 percentage-point margin in Wisconsin up to an 11-point lead in Nevada.
Mr. Trump topped Mr. Biden by 12 points on his approach to immigration and national security and 22 points on the economy.
But Mr. Biden edged Mr. Trump on “democracy” by 3%.
So, Democrats grabbed the only box of grenades at their disposal and started hurling “Democracy!” and “Dictatorship!” bombs at Mr. Trump and the GOP.
Democrats want Americans to forget Mr. Trump’s pre-COVID economic boom, 1.4% inflation, 2.66% mortgages, a much tighter border, and peace in the Middle East. They want voters to ignore Mr. Biden’s 3.2% inflation, 7.64% home loans, “border” bedlam, and the Middle East in flames.
So, Democrats pursue an icily brilliant strategy: Erase the heartwarming past, deflect from the heartburn-inducing present, and instead, terrorize voters with a dystopian fantasy about the near future: an American Reich with Herr Trump as its fuehrer.
Never mind that the censorship, weaponization of the judiciary, and attempts to jail political rivals supposedly on Mr. Trump’s agenda are being implemented by Mr. Biden and Democrats right now. Psychological projection is the carbon-free fuel that propels today’s left.
To paraphrase a far more momentous president: Democrats have nothing to offer but fear itself.
• Deroy Murdock is a Manhattan-based Fox News contributor.
Please read our comment policy before commenting.