If anyone comes close to being a contemporary version of Dana Carvey’s Church Lady, it is leftist journalist, Anne Applebaum. The spectacle of Trump’s campaign rally in Madison Square Garden had her clutching her pearls, aghast at the display. People in the crowd not only liked Trump, but they liked his rejection of the left-wing orthodoxy that the ruling elite have worshiped. She realized that her own power to influence the future course of America was ebbing away. The ruby slippers were out of her reach.

When Trump said at the rally that the United States is now an occupied country, but it will soon be occupied no longer, she was right to infer that he was threatening the power of her class, which has left the country bankrupt in a real and metaphoric sense. The subsequent electoral victory of Trump has resoundingly demonstrated the little guy’s ability to triumph over those powerful and sinister forces.

Anne is part of the Washington establishment that has held sway over our Russian foreign policy for over three decades. Instead of applauding the Russians for throwing off the shackles of eighty years of Soviet oppression and welcoming them back into the European fold, the Washington establishment pushed to weaken Russia. It allowed the Russian economy to convulse for a decade under an ill-conceived Western plan of shock therapy, and then moved to constrain Russia with expansion of NATO right into the former Russian heartland. When Russia finally got on its feet and pushed back on Western demands, Anne and her foreign policy contemporaries surmised that the Russians, not just their Soviet jailers, were not to be trusted. Their answer? Promote regime change and if necessary, the further dissolution of the Russian state.

On November 8th, the American electorate ignored Anne’s sage opinion that Trump represented an assault on democracy and the rule of law. In the coming months, let us hope that the electorate will also reject the claim made by Anne and foreign policy elite that U.S. interests are best served by continuing the war in Ukraine.

Image: YouTube video screen grab.