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The Left is more crazed than ever with Trump Derangement Syndrome. Debunked conspiracy theories such as Russiagate and the relentless lawfare campaign conducted against Donald Trump, the former president and presumptive Republican presidential nominee for the 2024 election, are not enough to satiate the appetites of the Trump-haters. They want to see him in jail and ruin him financially while trying to marginalize any persons whoever worked with or supported Donald Trump as extremists determined to destroy democracy.
For example, the Left has been salivating at the prospect of New York Attorney General Letitia James’ seizure of Mr. Trump’s prime properties to enforce the judgment against him in Attorney General James’ civil fraud case. Mr. Trump faced the prospect of losing his properties if he could not arrange a nearly $500 million bond in time to cover his liability while he appeals the New York court ruling against him.
Squad leader Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) claimed there was a significant “risk in not seizing these assets.” She lives in an alternative universe.
To put into perspective the huge bond that Donald Trump was required to come up with in his civil case, consider what happened in two prominent criminal cases. Bernie Madoff was released on a $10 million bail in 2008 after confessing to his $50 billion Ponzi scheme. Sam Bankman-Fried, the founder of FTX, was released on a $250 million bond in a case for which he was ultimately convicted on multiple criminal counts. Yet AOC and her left-wing comrades believe that Donald Trump’s properties must be seized in a civil case to avoid an imaginary risk.
AOC and her fellow travelers wanted to put Donald Trump into a box with the outrageously high bond requirement but they did not get their wish.
Joy turned to anger and outrage on the Left when an appellate court reduced Mr. Trump’s bond requirement to $175 million, which is still extremely high but a requirement that Mr. Trump said he could meet.
Attorney General James’ office said in a statement that “Donald Trump is still facing accountability for his staggering fraud” even though her case for alleged “staggering fraud” is built on quicksand.
The civil fraud lawsuit itself is a shining example of lawfare initiated by an attorney general who campaigned on the promise to get Donald Trump once and for all. She used an obscure New York law meant to address consumer fraud in an effort to destroy Mr. Trump financially. Judge Arthur Engoron, who presided over the case, decided that Mr. Trump was liable for fraudulently inflating his assets to obtain favorable loan terms. Judge Engoran reached this decision without a jury trial or any trial at all for that matter where Mr. Trump’s defense team would have had the opportunity to present its own evidence and cross-examine the attorney general’s witnesses.
The non-jury trial that followed focused only on the punishment that Judge Engoron would impose on Donald Trump for being found civilly liable for fraud by Judge Engoron himself without any trial. There were no victims in this case. The loans were paid back in full, with interest. The banks did not complain and were happy to continue doing business with the Trump Organization. Nevertheless, Judge Engoron rendered his judgment that Mr. Trump would be liable for $464 million plus interest – an enormous amount in such a case and even more than Attorney General James had sought.
Judge Engeron’s kangaroo court violated Donald Trump’s right to due process and imposed a huge monetary judgment that amounts to an excessive punitive fine in violation of both the U.S. Constitution and the New York State Constitution. But the Trump-haters are so deranged that some are claiming that Mr. Trump was accorded special privileges that ordinary Americans would not be entitled to in court, as if a nearly half a billion-dollar bond requirement were an everyday occurrence in a civil case.
In another example of the Trump Derangement Syndrome going into overdrive, the leftist “star” anchors and staff at NBC News revolted against NBC’s hiring of Ronna McDaniel, the former chairwoman of the Republican National Committee, as an on-air commentator. NBC News’ top brass capitulated and cut its ties with Ms. McDaniel just days later.
Rachel Maddow, a leading “star” anchor at MSNBC, led the charge with a 29-minute tirade lambasting NBC News’ hiring of Ms. McDaniel, calling it “inexplicable.” She compared hiring Ms. McDaniel to hiring “a made man like a mobster to work in a D.A.’s office” or “a pickpocket to work as a TSA screener.” Maddow also accused Ms. McDaniel of being “part of an ongoing project to get rid of our system of government. Someone who still is trying to convince Americans that this election stuff, it doesn’t really work.”
Rachel Maddow’s unhinged malicious slander against Ms. McDaniel is a projection of her own journalistic malpractice. Maddow questioned the legitimacy of the 2016 presidential election and spent the next four years peddling one false conspiracy theory after another to undermine the Trump presidency.
Rachel Maddow was not alone at MSNBC in denouncing NBC News’ hiring of Ronna McDaniel.
For example, MSNBC anchor Jen Psaki, President Biden’s former press secretary who spewed White House propaganda to the press on a regular basis, still delivers to viewers talking points in support of her former boss. Taking umbrage at comparisons between herself and Ms. McDaniel as both presenting their partisan viewpoints from opposite sides of the political spectrum, Psaki accused McDaniel of putting “democracy at risk” while serving as chairwoman of the RNC.
“Look, this isn’t about Republicans versus Democrats,” President Biden’s former press secretary told her viewers. “This isn’t about red versus blue. This is about truth versus lies. Service to the country versus service to one man committed to toppling our democratic system.”
Jen Psaki fits right into MSNBC’s toxic political culture where only the Left is considered to be on the side of truth. Diversity of political opinion is not a value that MSNBC aspires to. Only left-wing, anti-Trump points of view are welcome.
Nicolle Wallace is another left-wing sanctimonious MSNBC anchor who spoke out against the hiring of Ronna McDaniel. Ms. Wallace said that NBC had opened the door for “election deniers” to spread falsehoods “as paid contributors to our sacred airwaves.”
There is nothing “sacred” about the trash talk broadcast on MSNBC that is coming out of the mouths of MSNBC anchors like Wallace, or the hosts of MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” Mika Brzezinski and Joe Scarborough, for that matter.
Joe Scarborough complained that he and his co-anchor “weren’t asked our opinion of the hiring” and said that they would have objected if they had been asked. Mika Brzezinski smeared Ms. McDaniel as “a person who used her position of power to be an anti-democracy election denier.”
The rebellious inmates at the MSNBC insane asylum prevailed. On March 26th, just a few days after Ms. McDaniel’s hiring was announced, Cesar Conde, the chairman of the NBCUniversal News Group, reversed course and announced that NBC had cut its ties with Ms. McDaniel. He sent a memo to the staff explaining his rationale for this announcement:
“No organization, particularly a newsroom, can succeed unless it is cohesive and aligned. Over the last few days, it has become clear that this appointment undermines that goal.”
There is a simpler, more accurate reason for the firing. The NBC brass, demonstrating unprincipled moral cowardice, caved under pressure from their rebellious subordinates.
Expect the Trump Derangement Syndrome to get far worse as this year’s presidential election approaches.