OPINION:
Does MAGA equal extremism? The Bidenites want you to believe that; it’s the only strategic message likely to topple former President Donald Trump in 2024 if embraced by the broad electorate. So what’s the truth?
I was there at the dawn of the modern Make America Great Again movement when Mr. Trump first laid down his MAGA principles during his 2016 campaign. At the top of his list was fair trade rather than simply free trade.
Mr. Trump was the first president to expose massive unfair trade practices worldwide, not just those of China. He rightly called out the corrosive cheating of countries including Germany, India, Brazil and Vietnam.
There was nothing extreme about Mr. Trump imposing tariffs on these trade cheaters to level the globalist playing field and protect American workers and factories. In fact, fair trade is the most sensible policy in the world — and it was this core MAGA principle that served as the primary catalyst for Mr. Trump’s 2016 sweep of the beleaguered battleground states in America’s Rust Belt.
As a second MAGA principle, “build the wall,” Mr. Trump embraced secure borders. Today, under the open-border policies of the Biden regime, America is undergoing the worst invasion in our history — more than 2 million illegals a year.
While President Biden’s Democrats think every new immigrant will help turn the red states purple or blue, Mr. Trump’s supporters know this: Illegal immigrants depress the wages of Black, brown and blue-collar Americans; import crime, disease and drugs; crowd our schools and emergency rooms; and threaten our national security.
Consider here that the latest Biden wave of illegals includes national security threats including Chinese military infiltrators, Islamic extremists, drug cartel kingpins and human traffickers. There is nothing extreme about securing our borders from such assaults.
As a third core MAGA principle, Mr. Trump has promised to end the kind of endless wars propagated in places like Iran and Afghanistan by RINOs like former President George W. Bush and ex-Vice President Dick Cheney and perpetuated by Democrats like former President Barack Obama and Mr. Biden.
Mr. Trump’s message of peace has been particularly well received in blue-collar, flyover country where MAGA families provide the U.S. military with a highly disproportionate share of the cannon fodder our endless warmongers have sent overseas. Many of these sons and daughters of MAGA return without limbs. Many do not return at all. Meanwhile, Mr. Trump’s middle-class MAGA taxpayers have funded these endless wars to the tune of trillions and are fed up with this drain on the public fisc.
There is, therefore, nothing extreme about opposing endless wars like those emerging in Ukraine and the Middle East. One MAGA battle cry here is to protect our southern border before spending billions trying to secure Ukraine’s eastern flank while our NATO allies shirk their responsibilities. No sensible American can disagree with that.
Because this iron MAGA triangle of core principles is so appealing to a Trump base that increasingly includes independents, blue-collar Democrats, and Blacks and Hispanics, Mr. Biden and the Democrats are trying to use the hot-button issues of abortion, election integrity and vaccination mandates to advance their toxic “MAGA equals extremism” narrative.
Here, it is true that many MAGA supporters are pro-life, particularly in our Christian communities. Yet few, even in these ranks, embrace the extremist view that abortion, even in cases of rape and incest, should be banned.
More to the point, a significant fraction of MAGA’s rainbow coalition nation is either agnostic on this divisive social issue or supports abortion access. God help us all if the Democrats succeed in turning the 2024 race into an abortion referendum.
As for election integrity, after the 2020 election, I released a three-volume report on fraud and election irregularities in the battleground states of Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. My conclusion then, as it remains today, is that Mr. Biden and the Democrats stole the election from Mr. Trump as surely as John F. Kennedy stole the election from Richard Nixon. I have no doubt history will eventually bear that out as surely as it has unmasked the 1960 election steal.
To believe that the 2020 election was likely stolen is not extremist. It is skepticism based on hard facts, and history will likely treat legacy media outlets like CNN, MSNBC, The New York Times and The Washington Post harshly for their malfeasance in not bringing tough investigative journalism to the table.
Now, here’s some breaking news: Dr. Anthony Fauci and Pfizer, along with the Food and Drug Administration, hid important data about the real dangers of the COVID-19 vaccine from then-President Trump and the American people. Within this cloud of disinformation, amid needless lockdowns and Orwellian vaccination mandates, we were fed the lies that the vaccine was safe and alternative treatments like hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin were dangerous.
Today, we know from an increasing flood of data that just the opposite is true: The COVID-19 jabs have killed or injured millions. Hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin could have saved millions more if physicians had been able to freely prescribe them as off-label medicines.
Who, then, are the real extremists? Commonsense Americans who refused the jab, or the vaccine industrial complex that foisted their poisons upon us? What’s your answer, CNN?
It will be a long and winding road to the November 2024 election. Along the way, expect MAGA nation to continue to bear the slings and arrows of Never Trump forces using the E-word. You now know at least a bit more of the truth. Perhaps this truth will help set MAGA nation — and America — free from the chains of Mr. Biden.
• Peter Navarro served in the Trump White House as manufacturing czar and chief China strategist. This column originally appeared at http://peternavarro.substack.com.
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