It’s no secret that Hollywood and the Democrat Party are joined at the hip. Television shows and movies regularly promote leftwing messages, and whenever a project embraces even a minimally conservative worldview, commentators blast the aberration as “far right” propaganda.
President Obama’s young staff often compared their jobs to scenes from The American President or The West Wing. Aaron Sorkin, the writer responsible for both the movie and television series, even influenced the speech patterns and behaviors of the Obama White House. From the speechwriters to the press secretaries, it seemed as if B-list actors were running the country.
Hollywood went all in for Hillary Clinton. First came the 2012 miniseries Political Animals, in which Sigourney Weaver plays a brilliant former first lady now serving as secretary of state. In that production, the Hillary stand-in is encouraged to challenge a history-making Hispanic president in the Democrat primary (real subtle, huh?). When the Clintons backed Obama’s re-election in exchange for his promise to support Hillary’s 2016 run, Madam Secretary came out, in which the lovely Téa Leoni plays another brilliant secretary of state who is much more likable than Hillary could ever be.
Even though Julia Louis-Dreyfus’s Veep seems to capture Kamala Harris’s buffoonery perfectly, the low-IQ ladder-climber actually went out of her way to recreate the final scene from The Contender, a movie about a female senator nominated to be vice president. Leftist publications had repeatedly made the comparison during the 2020 race, and when CNN declared Biden and Harris the winners four days after the election, Kamala managed to capture the moment on video while out jogging — wearing nearly identical running attire as actress Joan Allen wears when she learns that she’ll be vice president (what are the odds?).
The Contender does what Hollywood does best: It white knights for leftist Democrats, while portraying conservatives as villains. Still, there is a memorable scene in which Jeff Bridges’s fictional President Jackson Evans addresses Congress: “Napoleon once said, when asked to explain the lack of great statesmen in the world, that ‘to get power, you need to display absolute pettiness. To exercise power, you need to show true greatness.’ Such pettiness and such greatness are rarely found in one person.”
It’s a good line, even if it includes an apocryphal attribution to Napoleon. It’s also one of the better descriptions of the rise to power and presidency of Donald J. Trump. Ironically, Hollywood might have predicted this very moment in history.
Describing President Trump as “petty” might sound like an insult, but I do not mean it that way. After decades of watching Republicans surrender to Democrats on everything from the culture war to socialized medicine, I had pretty much concluded that elected Republicans were wholly invertebrate Swamp lizards incapable of defending conservative policy. In chameleon-like form, they pretended to be conservative during election season and then voted with Democrats.
Trump changed all that. He called RINOs out by name. He questioned why Republicans failed to get things done. He wasn’t afraid to lump Establishment Republicans with Establishment Democrats. Trans-republicans such as Paul Ryan, Mitt Romney, and Jeb Bush despised Trump’s truth-telling more than they despised the devastating consequences of Democrat Party policies. Those Swamp RINOs and many of their two-faced colleagues no doubt voted for Hillary Clinton in 2016!
Trump’s in-your-face style of political combat certainly isn’t for the faint-hearted, but his take-no-prisoners approach is undeniably effective. In an environment where Deep State operatives are willing to rig elections and imprison Trump and his supporters, this is no time for shrinking violets.
Many politicians are petty, though. The Clintons are so shameless that they destroyed the lives of women who accused Bill of sexual violence. Dementia Joe Biden de-banked President Trump, prosecuted him on bogus charges, and sent armed FBI agents to rummage through Melania’s underwear drawer. Greasy Gavin Newsom, “You Didn’t Build That” Barack Obama, and “Extra Pie, Please!” JB Pritzker are all exceedingly petty. And nobody will ever remember them for being great! In fact, they’ve actively campaigned against making America great!
What’s remarkable about Trump is that his capacity for pettiness against his opponents is eclipsed by his dedication to success. They said he couldn’t close the border. He did. They said he couldn’t rebalance American trade. He is. They said he couldn’t end protracted wars or negotiate his way toward peace. He’s doing both. Time and again, Establishment politicians in D.C. tell him he can’t achieve what he wants, and more often than not, he proves them wrong.
During his first term, Trump’s adversaries at home and abroad laughed at his ambitions. Look around the world today: Nobody’s laughing. Too many naysayers have been proven wrong, and Trump has too often been proven right. He is the rarest of statesmen.
If you listen closely to some of Trump’s fiercest critics, the smarter ones already understand what he’s become. Some realize that his presidency is reshaping America and the world. Between breathless denunciations of the man, there is even quiet admiration.
Will Hollywood ever make an honest movie about President Trump? Probably not, but then again, who thought that MAGA Americans would be winning the culture war in 2025? Like any good film, the bad guys have to look invincible before the good guys fight and win.
Image: Gage Skidmore via Flickr, CC BY-SA 2.0.