I was shocked at how good a president Donald Trump was in his first 3 years in office.

Admittedly I had very low expectations. Having been born into and raised in an elite-dominated environment (my parents were both academics) I was very put off by Trump’s rhetoric and mannerisms, his crudity and his personal vindictiveness, and his tendency to speak at a 4th-grade level.

In other words, I was culturally offended by Trump. He just doesn’t behave as a president should.

But despite this fact, I warmed up to him quickly as a chief executive. He still made me cringe on a personal level, but the country became far better off under his leadership–at least on a material level. The shade our allies threw at the United States was actually a plus–after all, they have been taking the US for a ride for decades, and Trump was actually bullying Europe to get its foreign policy act together. And if they had listened more to him they would have been much better off.

Imagine how much better off Germany would have been if Merkel had listened to Trump on immigration and energy dependence on Russia.

Trump’s Middle East policies were proof that coddling the Palestinians was a mistake, and his son-in-law Orthodox Jew Jared Cushner brokered historic peace agreements between Israel and its Arab neighbors. Trump was isolating Iran, and despite his supposed coddling of Russia, Putin was held in check until Creepy Joe got into office.

Trump, in other words, served the role of the gunfighter who gets hired to clean up a town. He may be too rough for civilized times, but when the chips are down he rode in to save the day.

Then COVID happened, and his presidency collapsed.

As soon as COVID hit I knew Trump was the wrong guy to deal with it. Not because he isn’t smart enough in principle. No, for a more simple reason: Trump is at his best when he can bully his opponent into submission.

Trump is a negotiator. A showman. A bluffer. He reads people and situations well and acts immediately using his well-honed instincts.

But a virus? There is no bullying a virus. His particular skill set is not doing deep dives into issues, but in reading the room and developing a strategy to get what he wants out of a negotiation. The art of the deal.

The rest is history. Fauci, Birx, shutdowns, panic porn, the whole nine yards. Zuckerbucks. Election law changes. The whole 2020 rigging of the election.

Trump lost when he handed the country over to Fauci and company. They ran rings around Trump because he simply wasn’t equipped to fight a virus. And, contrary to his assertions, he never hires the best people. He usually hires the worst people.

🚨LISTEN! Trump AGAIN says he did a great thing locking the country down.

“We did a great job with COVID. Has never been acknowledged, but it will be in history. We did a great job with the ventilators.”

He would do it again! pic.twitter.com/XUEs9rfsSO

— Chris Nelson 🇺🇸 🏝 (@ReOpenChris) August 29, 2023

I would feel much better about Trump if he simply admitted that he was taken in by Fauci. In fact, that is what some of his supporters say in his defense because you simply can’t defend his actual policies and choices. Trump’s most ridiculous defenders attack DeSantis as being worse than Newsom or Cuomo on COVID, which is absurd on its face and shameful to say.

Instead of acknowledging he made some mistakes–something he seems incapable of doing–he keeps insisting that he was right all along. The man who on his last full day in office gave Anthony Fauci an award–Fauci, who clearly conspired to take down Trump–still brags about how great his COVID policies were.

If by now Republicans can’t face the fact that the greatest abuse of our liberties in several generations stemmed from COVID policies then I have no hope for our future. Most of those abuses were not done directly by Trump, but on the other hand, Trump criticized Republican governors like Kemp and DeSantis once they began fighting back.

And Trump’s team is attacking DeSantis today for his COVID policies while praising Andrew Cuomo.

That, to me, is unforgivable. Whether you support Trump, DeSantis, or anybody else in the race is one thing, but supporting Trump’s COVID narrative over DeSantis’ is delusional. And by that, I mean literally delusional, as in disconnected from reality altogether.

People who believe that “15 Days to Slow the Spread,” then 30, then months, and eventually years of on-again-off-again shutdowns and mandates was a good plan…well obviously they went crazy at Warp Speed.

If The Don is the nominee I will unhesitatingly vote for him over the alternative. But man, it still angers me whenever I hear a defense of 2020 COVID policies. We are still paying a huge price for the mistakes of 2020–including Trump, who lost because he cooperated with the most abusive people in America.

Trump, in a way, made rigging the 2020 election easy for them. The least he could do is quit bragging about how great a job he did in doing so.