Life will never be the same for Donald J. Trump.  Nowhere was this more evident than the Al Smith Dinner in New York this past Thursday.

At first glance, Trump’s delivery seemed a bit lackadaisical compared with the passionate loquaciousness we’re used to hearing at his rallies.  Perhaps some thought he was tired, but it’s more likely he was tired of playing the game.

There’s no other way to say it: Trump belongs to us now.  He’s become something more than a man of the people, more than a populist orator.  He has a palpable empathy for the common folk and understands real America — from the Bronx to the boonies (like a field in Butler, Pa.).  History will likely show he’s visited more American cities than any other politician.  He’s been listening to our stories, holding our hands, laughing with us and mourning with us.  He’s been giving encouragement and hope, even sending supporters cryptic messages with songs like “Hold On I’m Coming.”

Looking at Trump sitting up there on the dais in his fancy suit, raising money for Catholic charities — well, he just didn’t seem to fit in anymore.  Trump is soiled with the dirt of the common man now, and he’ll never be part of the sequestered elite again.

As the wealthy and powerful sat smirking with derision at the man they once accepted as one of their own, it was hard to believe that in years past, many of them desperately sought his patronage, his attention, or any crumb that fell from his table.

For the rest of us, it’s never been more apparent why we like the brash, bold, on-the-offense manner of the phenomenon known as Donald Trump.  It’s because when a “handful of apartment complexes in America are taken over by Venezuelan gangs,” or when children are being given chemical castration drugs and having their breasts lopped off, or when six million unvetted, often criminal illegals have been ceremoniously welcomed into our country to take our jobs and murder us at will...we know it’s time to throw Emily Post’s Etiquette out the window and man the proverbial battle stations.

Many attendees on the dais at the Al Smith dinner could be seen shaking their heads in disapproval and disgust throughout Trump’s remarks.

They looked especially upset when Trump told them that if they really wanted Democrat candidate Kamala Harris to attend the fundraiser, they “should have told her the funds were going to bail out the looters and rioters in Minneapolis and she would have been here, guaranteed.”  Trump was referring to the destruction that raged during the George Floyd protests and Harris’s corresponding tweet urging people to help post bail for “those protesting on the ground” in Minneapolis.  The tweet is still live on her account.

The Al Smith crowd was more than happy to laugh at Trump’s remark that it was “really a pleasure [to go] anywhere in New York without a subpoena” for his appearance, but what kind of people can laugh at President Biden’s weaponization of the Department of Justice, as well as state and local prosecutors continually using lawfare in an attempt to silence those they disagree with?

New York’s Chuck Schumer — a poster child for term limits, having served in the U.S. Senate for 26 years — was more than happy to talk to Trump when he wasn’t worried about the cameras rolling, but during Trump’s remarks at the podium, Schumer made sure to avert his eyes, keeping a solid grimace on his face that was evocative of having a bowel movement.

Schumer’s reaction is not surprising, considering that many of Trump’s remarks were directed at him, with Trump publicly sharing that he believes that Schumer was responsible for convincing President Biden to withdraw from the presidential race: “[H]e’s the one that got him out — that’s the guy.  Much more so than crazy Nancy [Pelosi].  I will tell you because I know him — he did it.”

At one point, Trump admitted, “You think this is easy, standing up here and doing this in front of half a room that hates my guts and the other half loves me?”

But Trump Derangement Syndrome (TDS) isn’t just about hating; it’s hating with an irrational and excitable passion that whips one into a drooling frenzy.  Gwen Walz is an excellent example.  Moreover, a TDS affliction means not caring about consequences.

If the dinner’s New York elites thought they were being polite by not mentioning the unparalleled assassination attempts on Trump’s life, they were gravely mistaken.  Sure, the dinner is a Catholic fundraiser for New York’s needy children, but it’s still a “religious gathering,” led by the archbishop of New York, Timothy Dolan, who should have used his prayer time to condemn such unprecedented violence and thank God for sparing Trump’s life.  Ending with a divine request for continued protection for both candidates would have been appropriate.  But he didn’t.  Instead, it was business as usual.

That’s probably why Trump had the intrepidity to reference his near-death experiences as joke material, quipping, “I guess I just don’t see the point of taking shots at myself when other people have been shooting at me.”  He went on to remind the upper-crust faithful that he’d survived two assassination attempts as he credited God for his survival.

Trump said what many of us feel: that he’s been the most maltreated POTUS and presidential candidate in history.  He rightly added that the “people aren’t happy about it.”

More than that, a look at the footage from the infamous Butler, PA rally clearly proves that Trump’s supporters are all in — willing to put their own lives on the line for the man at the forefront of the fight to save America. As Trump recounted in his RNC speech, when tens of thousands of people realized shots were fired, it was a miracle that they didn’t run in panic; they stayed to see if their president was okay — many can even be seen scanning the crowd for shooters.

I’m convinced that the average Al Smith Dinner attendee doesn’t have an inkling of the magnitude of the MAGA movement, and worse yet, they’re clearly ungrateful to the man who helped resurrect the greatest city in America.

The fundraising dinner’s host, Jim Gaffigan, correctly pointed out that “this entire room is filled with some of the most powerful people in New York City.”  Sadly, they are the same people who have chosen to ignore what Donald Trump did for that city even before he was president.  As the New York Post wrote in 2016, Trump came into a crime-ridden, degenerating city and, “almost by force of will, rode to the rescue.  Expressing rare faith in the future, he was instrumental in kick-starting the regeneration of neighborhoods and landmarks almost given up for dead.”  Years later, the churlish children of New York’s aristocracy could not care less.

But that doesn’t matter, because Trump is one of us now — a true man of the people and a phenomenon that history has yet to get its mind around.  It doesn’t matter if he can’t go home to New York, because his home is with “we the people.”

Susan D. Harris can be reached at www.susandharris.com.

Image: Gage Skidmore via Flickr, CC BY-SA 2.0.