Several months ago, I wrote a column, “Why do you still hate Donald Trump?” and asked readers to give me a good reason why they felt that way. Over 99% of the responses to my query came from those who agreed wholeheartedly with the column. Only one  response criticized Donald Trump, yet the writer did state that if Trump ran in 2024, he would vote for him again. Not one genuine, Never-Trumper or Biden supporter contacted me, and I found that rather puzzling.

Of course, the poor response could have been because I’m basically a nobody in the leftist environs and not worth their interest. But the column was published in American Thinker which gets a million users a month. The column was also posted on lucianne.com which also gets big traffic. In addition, the link to my column was inserted in an email campaign ad for the 2024 Trump campaign but I have no idea how many received that correspondence because the campaign never bothered to contact me for permission. If they had, I would have gladly approved it.

Posts on Facebook and Twitter also did not trigger any TDS minions to vent at me with a heartfelt defense of their opinions. Thus, I can only conclude that they cannot debate Trump’s negatives without resorting to juvenile personal insults. His tweets, his name-calling insults, his braggadocio personality do not count as oratorical substance in a debate about his presidential qualifications. To ponder on the worthiness of a presidential candidate, one must vet the candidate’s past performances at previous occupations.

The recent release of the Durham report that clearly exonerated Trump has actually not made any difference in the minds of the TDS cult. They still hate him and the syndrome is still powerful and spreading on both sides of the aisle. Now the Never-Trumpers and Rinos in the GOP are fomenting discord by seeming to back Florida governor DeSantis’s candidacy for the 2024 presidential race. Improbable candidates like Chris Christie are running apparently for the sheer purpose of financial opportunities rather than thinking they have a chance in hell of surviving a primary.

Conservative pundits are dealing with the challenge of choosing between two individuals they have previously supported. There are so many fake polls out there that one wonders who is being polled. The most ridiculous one claims that Biden is outpolling both Trump and DeSantis. That one must have been taken at the White House conference room, the Oval office and Biden’s Delaware bunker.

I’ve been a conservative pundit for over 25 years and have always given due diligence to vetting any political candidate before I dare to suggest my support. My opinion is just that and is not influenced by one’s style rather than substance, No one is sponsoring that opinion, which I will now share with anyone who is willing to read it.

Ron DeSantis is an excellent governor and I wish there were 49 others as responsible and courageous as he is. This is a nation that is a republic, and states' rights should be as important as the federal administration’s in D.C. DeSantis is scandal-free with a lovely family and a perfect spouse who would be a superb First Lady. He is also a genuine Catholic, unlike the heretics like the deceitful Biden and Pelosi, who spread their poisonous political decisions completely against the moral precepts of the Catholic Church. But does he have the global experience to deal with the tinderbox of world concerns simmering due to the current administration’s incompetence? Will he be able to survive the endless attacks on his family from the vicious leftist minions in the media?

Then we have Donald J. Trump. I voted for him in 2016 and 2020, but he was certainly not my first choice for president because of what I knew of him while he was a private citizen. He is a native New Yorker as I am, and I had negative views about what he was doing to Manhattan as a real estate mogul. I watched as he built his empire at the expense of neighborhoods with inexpensive rentals. Mayor Koch gave him lots of tax breaks to do this and in my naivete I ignored the municipal benefits to my hometown.

My husband then went to work for him when Trump co-owned the Grand Hyatt for 12 years and we both watched the complete revival of the once-depressed midtown. I viewed him as a typical amoral billionaire but a very astute and brilliant businessman. He was also not a racist as alleged, and in 1999, Jesse Jackson praised Donald Trump for his lifetime of helping black and minority communities. After I watched a telecast of a tour of his penthouse in the Trump Tower, I wrote a snarky column of “The Donald” which I hope will never turn up again.

Then after the disastrous (IMHO) Obama administration, I saw many good possibilities for a new president, but Donald Trump did not yet register as a good choice. Mitt Romney, whom I had voted for in 2012, was again in the race but I wasn’t impressed by his debate performance against Obama. I much preferred Rick Perry, the charismatic, successful Texas governor, and mentally dismissed Trump before the debates.

My brother Joe was suffering from late stage colon cancer but was heavily obsessed with all election news. He was also the only Republican, besides me, in the family and we spent many hours on the phone exchanging his views. After the first debate, he was wildly enthusiastic in the Trump camp and managed to convince me to take a second look. Sadly, he did not live long enough to see Trump win.

My husband also joined the Trump bandwagon because he knew firsthand as his employee for 12 years that Trump had a reputation for always delivering on his promises. He told me that in the debates, Trump spoke directly to his own concerns. He had witnessed his business acumen and what a hard liner he became when it came to fixing problems at the hotel. His judgment about Trump was confirmed by the next highly successful four years of the Trump administration.

In 2024, we have to choose between a great governor and a much-hated, despised, frequently attacked former president who happened to be quite good at his job. Let me rephrase that. Who happened to be the greatest at the hardest job in the world so I guess it’s no secret who’s my pick.

The knives are out to do everything to stop Trump in 2024. They’ll indict him, sue him and endlessly persecute him, but Trump supporters will still back him. The media will call us a cult and ask us why we keep harping on the 2020 election, but if we don’t find out what went wrong, how can we prevent the fraud from happening again? Liberals do not understand common sense so they dismiss our skepticism about election results rife with blatant fraud.

MAGA!

Editor's note: Through an error, a suggestion of a Trump/DeSantis ticket appeared in an earlier edition of this piece. Because of the constitutional limits on a ticket drawn from residents of the same state, this is impractical, and was not intended for print. It has been removed. 

Photo credit: Gage Skidmore CC BY-3.0 license