I have followed you for decades: your engaging anecdotes, your grace and wit when embracing the English language, your love of our true national sport (where kneeling at our National Anthem never took root), your manifest intelligence, and your classical conservatism. That is why I feel I can at least appeal to you, that you at least can listen to someone who will vote for Donald Trump in October 2024. While I speak with you, I invite other NTs to listen in.
I am an Orthodox rabbi. Under the delicate and gentle ways of the Torah, there are clear guidelines for proper behavior. We should be humble and modest. We should avoid exhibitionism and materialism. We should speak with clean language and should not criticize others, except in discrete situations for specific compelling purposes. But we should not randomly mock others. We should not lie. We should not deceive. We should speak with sagacity and kindness.
You get the idea. And the religious Christians I know, whether devout Catholic or Protestant, share similar values. These are the values of a good and wholesome society that will be blessed by God, particularly if it also abides by Genesis 12:3.
Thus, I well understand why you and the community of NTs recoil from voting for President Trump next year. I actually get it.
Here is the problem and challenge, Mr. Will. We do not live in a perfect world. Moshe Rabbeinu (Moses our Teacher) will not be the nominee of either major party in 2024. At a time when the Biden years have left our nation and Wall Street bereft of profits, there will be no prophets to select: not Samuel, not Elijah, not Elisha, Isaiah, Jeremiah, or Ezekiel; not even Zephaniah, Haggai, or Habakkuk. The choice will be between Joseph R. Biden (D-Burisma) and Donald J. Trump (R-Fla.). That’s the only choice we will have.
Mr. Will, even if we mutually could agree some other Republican is better for now, the
polls have clarified that Trump, now at nearly 60 percent, will be the GOP nominee. There is nothing anyone can do to change that; the dial hasn’t moved after two robust GOP presidential debates and millions in campaigning and advertising.
All possible mud that can be thrown at Trump has been hurled.
Nothing has stuck. A Soros DA in New York indicted him for sending hush money to the pole dancer. Another Democrat DA, this in Georgia, indicted him for truly believing, as
many other people do, that the 2020 Georgia presidential election was stolen from him and trying to ward off the inexorable doom it augured. It is not a crime to believe — even if wrongly — that one has been cheated in an election.
Hillary Clinton wrongly believes she was cheated out of the 2016 election.
Al Gore believes he was cheated in 2000. Sports fans emerge from every Sunday’s football games believing that at least one of their teams was cheated. It is not a crime to believe one has been cheated — especially since
Democrats, in fact, often steal elections.Another biased Biden DA indicted Trump in Washington, D.C., for trying to ignite an insurrection on Jan. 6, a manifest lie. Jan. 6 was no insurrection but a mess, hardly different from a week ago when woke Jew-hating supporters of Hamas slaughtering peace activists at a Trance dance rave, raping women on top of murdered women, beheading scores of babies, tearing fetuses out of live mothers and then stabbing the fetuses and burning the mothers,
all broke into the Capitol building until they were arrested.
These were cases of mass disorder, not insurrection. Our constitutional democracy never was in jeopardy, and Trump assuredly
did not plot a coup. At most and at worst, he wanted a brief delay in certifying certain states’ electoral votes. It was not his best look, and I wish —
even more than you — that he would stop relitigating 2020 because 2024 is the prize,
so attainable.
Yet another DA indicted him for taking secure documents to his Florida compound, something he most assuredly was forbidden to do. Just as Hillary was forbidden to bring top secret documents to a server in her bathroom and as
Biden was forbidden to bring such records to his Pennsylvania office and his private garage.
All the dirt that can be thrown at Trump has been thrown: four indictments, lies that he hates Blacks and Hispanics (something never seriously alleged in all his years as a public figure until he become a Republican who tried securing the southern border and naming conservative justices and lower court judges), lies that he hates Jews (
too ridiculous for me, an Orthodox rabbi with deep institutional roots in the American Jewish community, to address anymore), lies that he called the
White supremacist Nazis at Charlottesville “good people,” and so many more lies.
Despite all, he is polling at 59.3 percent with the GOP base, while his closest opponent, Gov. Ron DeSantis, is at 13 percent. By now, it is clear no one will defeat him. Of course, he skips the debates.
Even if all four indictments result in a conviction, they will not move the dial. A conviction by a D.C. or Manhattan jury or any other loaded courtroom carries the power of law, but it means the same as a Los Angeles jury voting unanimously that O.J. Simpson did not murder Nicole. The law set him free, but we know who is guilty. A Soros jury may convict, but Republicans will regard Trump as not guilty. So many juries are composed of bigots and idiots. For example, both leftists and conservatives know that many murder convictions are
wrongly decided.
I personally have sat in three Los Angeles jury pools over the years and have encountered the fish schools swimming therein. As I once sat in a prospective jurors’ holding room, drafting a legal motion for a client, a sudden commotion diverted me. All other prospective jurors were huddled at the room’s television, glued to a live telecast: a typical L.A. freeway police pursuit of a soda truck that had just been hijacked by dirtbags. As the chase ensued, every single person in that room except me was cheering for the truck hijackers to outrun the cops.
These slimes soon would comprise the juries of peers deciding carjacking cases. Afterward, the TV switched to Jerry Springer, where the prospective “sworn and true” stood chanting: “Jer-RY! Jer-RY! Jer-RY!” Ah, the jury pool — the water’s fine!
So Trump will be the GOP candidate, Mr. Will. America will be led from January 2025 until January 2029 by Donald Trump or Joe Biden. That is not wish or conjecture but reality. Nor would you hope quietly that your Biden vote is antiseptic because he will die or be institutionalized soon after. First, you maintain a posture of decency, too refined to wish that. Second, even if not, that would mean four years of Kamala — hardly an option for the sane.
We are left with this:
Four years of Biden are not guesswork: War on fossil fuels. Thus, geometric cost increases in gasoline at the pump and winter home heating. Increased fuel costs mean higher costs to produce and transport food to market, so food prices explode. As tyrants, despots, and terrorists gauge our president’s feebleness of mind and frailty of spine, they engage in adventures: Putin invades Ukraine, Iran dispatches weapons and mercenaries to Iraq to murder American allies, to Yemen Houthis to fight Saudi Arabia, to Syria, Lebanon Hezbollah, and Gaza Hamas, destabilizing those areas. China makes moves on Taiwan. North Korea resumes testing ballistic missiles that can nuke America.
Four years of Biden mean shortages in baby formula, supply line chaos, schools under siege with rules imposed to groom children to accept transgender perversions and LMNOPQ abominable behavior, one-sex bathrooms, drag queens at school library hour, and men competing in all women’s sports.
Biden years mean
devastating forestry practices giving rise to horrific and deadly wildfires and
coercing utility companies to spend less on safety and fire prevention to meet “clear air” mandates that barely dent climate change. Millions more illegal immigrants, overrunning even blue states and “sanctuary cities,” guaranteeing increased dangers that terrorists are infiltrating.
Terror supporters like Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar, Cori Bush, and Ocasio, will have seats at the table. Four years of Biden mean continued weaponizing of the Justice Department, with
spies assigned to sit in suspect churches and political opponents indicted as in banana republics. And four years of Biden mean the appointment of manifestly underqualified judges like Whatsername Who Cannot Define What a Woman Is.
By contrast, we also know what four years of Trump mean. A fair amount of chaos and an occasional Omarosa. Media will stop asking puff questions and
Go Acosta. But it also means Putin engages in no more adventures and starts backing off. NATO gets tougher. Iran sanctions lock tight. North Korea behaves.
Top terrorists get pulverized, dead as a doorknob, leaving
nothing but a ring finger for ID. It means free-flowing American energy: hydraulic fracturing, oil pumping, and exploration where sensible in ANWR, America again a net exporter of clean energy. It means gas dropping from $6 a gallon to $2.50, and the drop in fuel and home-heating costs redounds throughout the economy: cheaper food prices, airfares, and clothes.
Four years of Trump mean reliably conservative and brilliantly qualified judges and justices, thus conservative values enshrined into law and infused into culture. Children’s school curricula cleansed of sexualized focus, parents’ voices restored, and charter schools revived. Religious freedom expands. Four years of Trump mean a tighter southern border, a return to deporting illegals, and restored agreements with Mexico to keep them out in the first place.
Trump means tougher trade laws and effective tariffs protecting America’s steel and other strategically critical industries. It means rebuilding our depleted armed forces and refocusing them on military strength, ending experimenting with LGBTQIA+ initiatives. Trump means wiser forestry practices, tougher laws on crime, an end to federal funds and tax breaks financing anti-Semitism on college campuses, and calling out
racist groups like
Black Lives Matter.
Trump presumably will hit the road running on cleaning out the Justice Department, will get his attorney general right the first time, and will de-weaponize enforcement. That alone would justify his election.
Mr. Will, I know you and the NTers will hate four years of Trump. But, despite the messenger and the attendant patches of chaos, those four years can save this Republic. And four years of Biden–Kamala will sink us. I can only hope you all love America more than you hate Trump.
Rav Fischer’s memorable two televised debates with a national leader of CAIR, the leading anti-Semitic Arab Muslim body in the United States, can be found here and here.