Community organizer Saul Alinsky was right — ridicule really is the most powerful political weapon.
A relentless stream of anti-American positions and incendiary rhetoric from members of the Democratic Party has reached critical mass and catapulted the entire party into psycho territory. Their extremist policies have become so unhinged and dangerous, that they can no longer claim to be a serious party.
But their embrace of Marxist ideology has left them vulnerable. And on Tuesday night, President Donald Trump exploited that vulnerability and delivered one of the most forceful — and unforgettable — State of the Union addresses in recent history.
On Wednesday morning, as clips began to circulate of the Democrats’ near unanimous refusal to stand up if they agreed that protecting Americans, not illegal aliens, was the government’s first duty or to honor the mother of Iryna Zarutska, a young woman who was brutally stabbed to death on a Charlotte, North Carolina, train last year, the realization of what this once-formidable party had become finally registered.
Those moments packed a powerful punch — and Republicans have already turned them into campaign ads.
Trump’s use of ridicule to demonstrate what charlatans and hypocrites Democrats have become left them seething. Perhaps the highlight of the evening came when he accused Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) of benefiting from insider trading.
She was not amused. As the camera cut to Pelosi, she was doing that revolting thing she typically does with her mouth when she gets nervous.
Pelosi deserved this public humiliation. Financial website Insider Finance has been tracking Pelosi’s trading activity since October 2014. According to their data, the value of Pelosi’s portfolio has skyrocketed from $118 million to $587 million (as of February 26), a gain of 385%, outpacing most hedge fund managers as well as the S&P, which rose 251% over the same period.
When you consider that Pelosi first arrived in Washington, D.C., in 1987, we can only wonder what her profits were during the 27-year period between 1987 and 2014.
During a Thursday press conference, Vice President J.D. Vance said, “I have never seen a person more angry in my life than Nancy Pelosi when the President of the United States was calling out insider trading.”
“My hope for all of you is that you’ll find somebody who loves you as much as Nancy Pelosi loves insider trading, because then, you will have a very good life indeed.”
Mercifully, Pelosi, who will turn 86 in March, announced in November that she will not be seeking reelection.
Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) grew visibly incensed when Trump addressed the scope of the recently exposed fraud in Minnesota and condemned state officials for obstructing ICE officers from executing lawful deportation orders. Her cries of “You have killed Americans!” and “You should be ashamed” were drowned out by applause for the president and shouts of “U.S.A., U.S.A.”
The biggest takeaway of the night came during a discussion of blue-state governments’ support for the transition of minors without parental consent. By any standards, this policy is indefensible and represents an egregious assault on parental rights. Yet Democrats continue to fight for it.
Trump rightly called the Democrats “crazy” for rallying behind this direct challenge to the primacy of parents in guiding their children’s lives. He said:
Surely we can all agree, no state can be allowed to rip children from their parents’ arms and transition them to a new gender against the parents’ will. Who would believe that we’re even talking about this?We must ban it, and we must ban it immediately.Look, nobody stands up. These people are crazy, I’m telling you. They’re crazy.Amazing, isn’t it? Boy, oh boy. We’re lucky we have a country with people like this.Democrats are destroying our country, but we’ve stopped it just in the nick of time, didn’t we?
Clearly, Trump had hit a nerve. Democrats were positively apoplectic over this taunt. In an after-action interview, CNN’s Jake Tapper, who suddenly discovered Biden’s senility once he’d left office and capitalized on it, told Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy, “He said, ‘these people are crazy I’m telling you, they’re crazy.’ That’s not something we ever heard from Obama or Biden from that stage.”
Duffy shot back, “We’ve never had a Speaker rip up a speech either.”
Trump humiliated the Democrats before the entire country. While not every American watched the SOTU live, millions have seen the clips circulating across social media.
If Republicans have been too polite or restrained to call Democrats out in such embarrassing fashion in the past, Tuesday night marked a turning point. The formula was hardly complicated. He merely shined a light on the increasingly flawed policies they’ve championed and the abuses of government programs they’ve turned a blind eye to for so long in their quest for power.
Trump’s example provided the GOP with a simple roadmap for the midterms: draw the contrast, press the argument, and above all else, use ridicule to make the point stick.
The Democratic Party has become ridiculous.
Elizabeth writes commentary for Legal Insurrection and The Washington Examiner. She is an academy fellow at The Heritage Foundation. Please follow Elizabeth on X or LinkedIn.
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