OPINION:
In recent days, former Rep. Liz Cheney has been on a media tour promoting her new book and engaging in the Washington swamp’s favorite pastime, bashing former President Donald Trump.
What’s illuminating is not that she’s doing this — the Washington establishment has a well-established, pathological hatred of Mr. Trump — but what it reveals about the priorities of Ms. Cheney and those like her. They’re more concerned with getting Mr. Trump than getting our country back on track.
In one interview, Ms. Cheney indicated that she would rather cede power to Democrats in 2025 than elect Mr. Trump, despite purporting to “disagree strongly” with President Biden’s disastrous policies. In another, Ms. Cheney declared “I will do whatever it takes” to stop Mr. Trump from being elected.
Doubling down on the histrionics, when asked whether America can survive Mr. Trump, Ms. Cheney warned that “the notion that we would be OK is naive,” adding that “the single most important issue is making sure Mr. Trump doesn’t have that awesome power of the presidency.”
Note that her most important issue is not stopping the reckless spending that unleashed the record inflation that has reduced real wages, ending the unprecedented border crisis that is overwhelming our cities and killing our children, halting self-destructive energy policies that are eating into Americans’ paychecks, fighting violent crime that is destroying lives and communities, putting parents back in charge of their children’s future, extinguishing wars in Europe and the Middle East, or resolutely confronting China’s aggression against American interests.
No, her vendetta against Mr. Trump is more important to her than any of that.
Most Americans can’t afford to be as unserious as Ms. Cheney about the presidential qualifications that actually matter. What should be most important is what the next president will do to make our nation safer and more prosperous.
To be clear, this isn’t about Ms. Cheney. Her sentiment is symptomatic of a larger problem in our society that deserves more honest scrutiny: The levers of power in this country are held by an elite, out-of-touch establishment that is so worried about Mr. Trump disrupting their sweetheart status that they can’t see that a Trump presidency was far better for regular Americans than the malaise of President Biden’s America.
Put differently, we have a media, corporate and political class whose interests are completely misaligned from the interests of most Americans.
In a form of government that is literally predicated on systems that distribute power based on majority rule, the interests of the 99% should not be subordinated to the interests of the 1%. But in today’s America, that’s not so obvious.
Indeed, when I talk with Tennesseans every day — parents and grandparents who have had to bury their children due to fentanyl pouring across our border, workers who feel like they must choose between paying for gas or groceries, military families who worry about a deteriorating world order, or small-business owners who feel under siege from a deluge of government regulations — most do not see Mr. Trump as an existential threat.
In their eyes, the existential threat is four more years of the Biden administration’s destructive and self-defeating policies.
That’s because, under Mr. Trump’s administration, our border was secure, our nation was safe, domestic energy production was increasing, and our citizens were enjoying record wage growth and a prosperous and inclusive economy. Strong American leadership paved the way for relatively peaceful times around the world. Under Mr. Trump, there were no new foreign wars that threatened American lives and interests.
It is unlikely that the crises in Ukraine and the Middle East would have taken place under a Trump presidency. By contrast, Mr. Trump held Russian leader Vladimir Putin, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, and the Iranian regime at bay while brokering historic peace agreements in the Middle East.
Americans wonder why the Washington establishment is committed to doing “whatever it takes” to keep Mr. Trump from the Oval Office, but not “whatever it takes” to secure our border and keep our kids from dying of fentanyl poisoning, not “whatever it takes” to make our communities safer, and not “whatever it takes” to make it easier to start a business, get a new job, or make ends meet.
Washington elites like Ms. Cheney can afford to be unserious about what a president does. From the comfort of establishment enclaves largely protected from inflation, open borders, regulatory fusillade, and crime, they resent that Mr. Trump has shaken up the system that benefits them.
He doesn’t act or tweet like their preferred version of a politician. Though they cloak their objections in overwrought, amorphous hysteria about dictatorship and democracy, their real disagreement is with Donald Trump the person, not Donald Trump the president.
Ironically, what the Washington establishment really seeks is to protect its own outsized power over government, which is the opposite of democracy.
The reason so many Americans love Donald Trump is the same reason Liz Cheney hates him. It’s because she benefits by ignoring them and he benefits by fighting for them.
Most Americans who have to worry about declining wages, gas prices, surging violent crime or fentanyl overdoses don’t have the luxury of ignoring what the president actually does and how it affects their lives. They can’t afford to focus on tweets and trivialities instead of safety and prosperity.
Our nation is at a tipping point. And Washington’s Never Trump elites could learn a thing or two from sensible, hardworking Americans who live by the adage that a man is judged by his deeds, not by his words.
• Bill Hagerty has served as the junior U.S. senator from Tennessee since 2021. He served as U.S. ambassador to Japan from 2017 to 2019.
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