During his address to the joint session of Congress on Tuesday night, President Donald Trump displayed more moral clarity than many other conservatives and even evangelical “leaders” when he said there’s absolutely nothing you can do to make leftists happy.
“This is my fifth such speech to Congress, and once again, I look at the Democrats in front of me, and I realize there is absolutely nothing I can say to make them happy or to make them stand or smile or applaud. Nothing I can do,” Trump said in the first 10 minutes of his speech.
The next hour and a half proved the president right. When Trump acknowledged a young female volleyball player who sustained a traumatic brain injury at the hands of a male opponent, Democrats scowled. When he recognized a 13-year-old who has spent half his young life battling brain cancer, they refused to stand. When Trump honored the families of Laken Riley and Jocelyn Nungaray, two girls brutally murdered by illegal immigrants, Democrats continued to sit defiantly. When he praised the bravery of Corey Comperatore in defending his wife and daughters at the hands of the Pennsylvania rally shooter, it was more of the same.
Nothing true or virtuous or praiseworthy could elicit approval from Democrats.
We didn’t need Tuesday night to know there’s no point in Trump and his voters trying to make friends with Democrats, however. For that, we’ve had the past decade. Trump derangement has so infected the Democrat Party, Never Trumpism, and neoconservatism that absolutely no win — for women, workers, taxpayers, Christians, free speech, law and order, children, parents, seniors, veterans, or the country at large — will ever please his detractors.
“I could find a cure to the most devastating disease, a disease that would wipe out entire nations, or announce the answers to the greatest economy in history or the stoppage of crime to the lowest levels ever recorded,” Trump said, “and these people sitting right here will not clap, will not stand, and certainly will not cheer for these astronomical achievements. They won’t do it, no matter what.”
It’s sadly no surprise when the Nancy Pelosis of the world refuse to honor victimized Americans or cheer for historic achievements. But Trump’s comments did more than call out those Democrats; they also underscored the problem of “conservatives” and self-described Christian leaders who, in trying desperately to appease the unappeasable left, have become equally callous. The more they’ve tried to win favor from Democrats, the more they’ve become indistinguishable from them.
The reaction to Dobbs v. Jackson is a great example. When the historic Supreme Court decision overturned a half-century-old “right” to abortion fabricated by Roe v. Wade, Russell Moore, a longtime pro-lifer and then the chairman of public theology at Christianity Today, couldn’t be bothered to celebrate because Trump had something to do with getting the job done. After all, the president had appointed three of the conservative justices who were instrumental in overturning the legal precedent — a hope that motivated much of the Christian support for him in the 2016 election. When Moore finally did break his silence, he did so not to praise Roe‘s demise but to trash Trump’s “character” and his supposedly “triumphalist” short-sighted voters.
This was after years of Moore fine-tuning his “winsome” approach to Christian political engagement — or, as Jackson and Emma Waters have rightly called it, “cultural accommodation dressed as convictional religion.” In other words, in an effort to make unhappy leftists happy, Moore ensured a good, pro-life victory couldn’t make him happy either.
The same mind virus that’s infected Moore and congressional Democrats has also infected the likes of David French, who so badly wants to see The New York Times editors smile that he can’t cheer eminently qualified Trump appointees like Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth taking over the post of his failed and frequently MIA predecessor Lloyd Austin, who oversaw the deadly withdrawal from Afghanistan (and “who is Black,” French notes for his race-obsessed Democrat audience).
Meanwhile, former Republican Bill Kristol is so desperate for Democrat acceptance that Tuesday he was using his platform to “stand with trans Americans.” In his commitment to earn favor from leftists, it seems sourpuss Kristol’s only remaining “conservative” principle is supporting other people’s kids dying in forever wars.
It’s a tale as old as Trump: The only way to earn praise from Democrats is to become one. Absent taking the well-worn and well-paying route of Moore, French, Kristol, and their ilk, “there is absolutely nothing [you] can say to make [Democrats] happy,” and you can learn a lot about the people who continue to try.
To borrow a line from the president’s speech, “It’s very sad, and it just shouldn’t be this way.”
Jesus Christ is King
