Donald Trump has won 151 contested presidential primaries. Across the aisle, Democrat party defenders of democracy are jawboning their voters into swallowing a ballot headed by Kamala Harris, an Obama-Biden regime candidate who has never won a presidential primary in her own right.  Trump has earned a presidential nomination.  Harris hasn’t.

In 2016, Kamala Harris sat out the presidential race while Donald Trump won 41 contested presidential primary elections.  Trump faced down aggressive Republican opponents like John Kasich, Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio, Ben Carson, Jeb Bush, Jim Gilmore, Chris Christie, Carly Fiorina, Rick Santorum, Rand Paul, Mike Huckabee, George Pataki, Lindsey Graham, Bobby Jindal, Scott Walker, and Rick Perry.

In 2016, Candidate Trump’s de facto primary opponents included a hostile media, party elites, and the Republican National Committee (RNC).  Nominally conservative radio show host Hugh Hewitt attacked Trump daily on the air.  In June 2016, Hewitt called on the RNC to change convention rules to freeze out Trump.  A month before Trump’s Election Day 2016 victory, Hewitt even took to the airwaves to urge Trump to pull out of the race altogether.

In 2020, Senator Harris finally threw her hat into the presidential ring, but pulled out of the race before the Iowa caucuses.  Instead, Harris rode into the White House on Joe Biden’s coattails.  Harris’s only discernible contribution to the 2020 Biden campaign was a lackluster October 8, 2020 debate with Vice President Mike Pence.

In 2020, as Harris’s campaign swiftly cratered, President Trump won 56 contested presidential primaries.  He faced three Republican primary opponents:  William Weld, Joe Walsh, and former South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford.

In addition to the by-then apoplectic anti-Trump media, party elites, and Never Trump Republicans, in 2020 President Trump also faced a hostile Intelligence Community, partisan national security “experts,” and politicized front offices at the Justice Department and Federal Bureau of Investigation.

Senior Pentagon officers barely concealed their contempt for their democratically elected Commander-in-Chief.  Others, active and retired, were applauded for misusing their armed forces credentials to attack the president, from his private life and even from the National Security Council.  Several state governors, including at least one Atlantic seaboard Republican, sanctimoniously attacked Trump’s every move, including his successful effort to regain control of the border.

During the 2020 election cycle, the judiciary entered the anti-Trump fray.  Robed judicial activists like Emmett Sullivan in Washington D.C. blatantly abused judicial office for partisan anti-Trump ends.  Others allowed unfounded lawsuits against Trump under the Emoluments Clause.  Congress lent a hand to the Trump opposition with Star Chamber committees run by anti-Trump partisans.  At 3:30 in the morning of January 7, 2021, a joint session of Congress obliged the Trump opposition by ratifying controversial Electoral College results and handing the presidency to Joe Biden.

In 2024, Kamala Harris decided against running to unseat her 2020 benefactor.  Instead, she rode Joe Biden’s coattails again to easy victories in the Democrat presidential nomination contest.  During the same election cycle, Donald Trump won 54 hotly contested presidential primaries.  Once again, Trump willingly faced an army of capable Republican primary opponents and prevailed:  Nikki Haley, Ron DeSantis, Chris Christie, Vivek Ramaswamy, Asa Hutchinson, Tim Scott, Douglas Burgum, and Mike Pence, to name a few.

In addition to the usual suspects, including a hostile press, an elite political culture, and the Republican Never Trump faction, Trump also beat back challenges from de facto primary opponents Alvin Bragg, Jack Smith, Fany Willis, and Juan Merchan.  Merrick Garland, his weaponized Justice Department, and the Federal Bureau of Investigation kept up the pressure on Trump.  The Intelligence Community appears to have engaged in serious efforts to mislead American voters about Trump and protect the Biden family from scrutiny.  Simultaneously Trump overcame furious efforts in Colorado and 30 other states to knock him off the ballot.  Finally, Trump defeated another undeclared primary opponent on July 13, 2024:  a Pennsylvania psychopath with a rifle.

Few American presidents have been tested more heavily than Trump by the hatred of political adversaries and unprecedented emergencies at home and abroad.  Every American voter appalled by the Democrat party elite’s unilateral installation of an untested and unelected candidate as their eleventh-hour standard bearer has another option.  Donald Trump.  In the 2024 race, he is the only candidate who genuinely ran the gauntlet for a presidential nomination and prevailed at the ballot box.

In three presidential election cycles, against enormous odds, Trump secured the Republican presidential nomination the old-fashioned way:  by facing the voter in 151 contested primaries and earning it.  Trump is the tested candidate all Americans deserve.

Richard J. Douglas is a Navy veteran of Iraq and submarines, former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense, and Texas attorney.

Image: Public domain.