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By the rude bridge that arched the flood,Their flag to April's breeze unfurled,Here once the embattled farmers stood,And fired the shot heard round the world. -Ralph Waldo EmersonYou maniacs. You finally did it. You finally made people like me actually want to vote for Trump — not just vote for him because he’s a Republican, and he’ll do the dirty job of putting the brakes on “gender-affirming care.” I was already there. But actually wanting to vote for Trump specifically, to believe that only Trump can finally end this ongoing insanity in our government, culture, and country? Well, that seemed impossible. I know the cost of crossing into enemy territory. I know that it means— into the garbage can with me. I know that it is social and career suicide. But I can’t watch them go after him like this, busting through norm after norm, relishing his humiliation, and not want to, at the very least, use my vote to protest what they’ve done. Here is Tulsi Gabbard:The first thing people will say to me is “stop lying, you were always a Trump supporter. You’ve just finally unmasked yourself.” They probably believe that’s true - it certainly makes it easier for them to sleep at night knowing their monstrous, unforgivable behavior was justified in their minds. I was with them when they protested Trump’s win in 2016. I was with them when we marched in protest throughout Trump’s presidency. I was with them all the way up until the election of 2020, when I saw for the first time the threat the new left posed to our formerly free country. I live in California, so my vote hardly matters. It’s more symbolic to say that I do not consent to my government or my tax dollars being used this way. I do not consent to a partisan, weaponized DOJ. I do not consent to show trials, performative indictments, or a two-tiered justice system. And I certainly don’t consent to mugshots of former presidents. It weakens our standing in the world. It makes us look small. It makes us look insane. It makes us look corrupt. Here are Glenn Greenwald and Patrick Bet-David:Trump must prevail because otherwise, they’ve shown us there will be no end to any of it. Once they’re done with Trump, they’ll move on to the next threat. More power for them means less freedom for us - in our lives, online, and in our culture. They will never stop on their own. They have to be stopped. #resistance cosplayLike the raid on Mar-a-Lago, the mugshot was totally unnecessary. It was petty and vindictive, yet another episode in their ongoing melodrama that casts themselves as the oppressed victims beating back centuries of White Supremacy and racism that they somehow see embodied in Trump. The Netflix series Black Mirror has two great episodes, and both offer up criticisms of what life on the Left has become. One is Nose Dive wherein people are given credit scores and worry about being judged by others. By the end, the only way out is to abandon all of it and learn how to live with people who say things that might offend. The other is Hated in the Nation, where social media users attack people using a hashtag. A hacker programs armies of robotic bees to attack those who engage in dehumanizing swarms against others.The Left believes this is Trump’s episode of Black Mirror. He is their crazed fascist racist white supremacist traitor insurrectionist seditionist rapist supervillain at the mercy of an extreme partisan Democrat DA who forced him into the worst jail in Georgia and made him take a mugshot. MAKE HIM SUFFER. Make him PAY. But maybe this is really their episode of Black Mirror. No matter what they do, they can’t kill the love the people have for Trump. Everything they do backfires on them, and his popularity only grows. This was especially true for Black voters on Tik Tok:In all of the Left’s hysteria and mania over the past seven years, they’ve done nothing to address those who have felt abandoned by what our government has become. Why? It is much easier for them to kill the messenger. Money drives politics; everyone knows that. But when Trump’s small money donors chipped in and raised $7 million almost overnight for Trump’s defense, it was proof enough of the widespread affection so many people have for Trump, and it was threatening for people who have all the money and believe that entitles them to all of the power. Well guess what? It doesn’t.Un-electable?I feel Ben Shapiro’s pain when he points out, as he does every day, that this is the grand plan for the Left, just as they did in 2022 to great effect - boost Trump and MAGA in the primary, destroy them in the general. The Daily Wire has laid out the trial dates, set conveniently to line up with the election year — they aren’t even bothering to hide it anymore and the media will never call them out on it — and this is meant to tie Trump up with court cases, win or lose, that will keep him from campaigning or make his entire campaign about his legal troubles, and not, say, the failings of the Biden administration and the cult that has overtaken the party.While it’s true DeSantis won’t have legal troubles to contend with, he, like most of them, never found a way to appeal to the energized wing of the GOP, aka MAGA.It’s more likely than not that any GOP candidate could defeat Biden - probably even Mike Pence. But for any of them not to harness the grassroots energy embodied not just in MAGA but in the rising counter-culture movement, is leaving too much money on the table. They would be fools to ignore what turned Oliver Anthony into a superstar overnight and landed Sound of Freedom higher than Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny and Mission Impossible Dead Reckoning on the annual box office chart. Besides, I actually think Trump could win. While it’s true his presence in the race will allow the Democrats to do what they did in 2020 - use their deep pockets to drive around operatives to collect ballots, Republicans can do that too. Trump still won Iowa, Florida, and Ohio - that tells us he was very close to winning, even with the war against him during his presidency.Trump has one secret weapon. That would be Vivek Ramaswamy’s mission should he choose to accept it. Ramaswamy has said he does not want to be anyone’s Veep. But if Trump asks him and he accepts, he could be helping to take America through a 1980s-Reagan-like moment where the entire ship turns around. He can serve not just four years as Trump’s Veep, but he could theoretically do eight years after that as president. Vivek Ramaswamy has what Trump has - the ability to instantly go on offense when attacked. He can do this anywhere, in any setting, facing down any opponent - the wokest of the woke, traditional Conservatives, the media. He can help grow the multi-ethnic, multi-generational movement Trump already started and finally, America can be rid of the monopolies controlling it at the top. The Left has all of the power, wealth, status, culture, and institutions. But they can’t offer the people what Trump can, the essentials for winning a presidential election: Hope. Optimism. American exceptionalism. We’re in trouble as a country if the current regime gets away with what they’ve done to Trump. Every American must stand up against it and send a message to DC that we don’t go along with this grotesque overreach and abuse of power. No, we do not believe in that kind of America, and no, we do not want that kind of America.For the last three years, I’ve been accused of so many things online that, shockingly, many friends went along with: I was a “white supremacist,” a “rape apologist,” a “TERF.” As a Hillary supporter, I was accused of being a “rich, white feminist,” a “neocon,” a “Wall Street shill” and a “cat lady.” If you’ve been online as long as I have, you know how to handle online bullying. You must remind yourself that they don’t know you. They are targeting a version of you they see in their heads, one that gives them free rein to dehumanize and attack at will. But the worst thing I could have been called, and I always knew this was true, was a “Trump supporter” or MAGA. And yes, not only have I been called that, but people have written things about me online that I’d gone to the dark side. One guy thought I’d had a brain tumor. Another thought I was having a mental collapse. In all of that time, I was able to say, “I voted for Biden,” or “I’m not a Trump supporter,” or “I’m not a Trump voter,” or “I would never vote for Trump.” But then they took the mugshot. // This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.sashastone.com/subscribe