I totally agree, and I would like to add another point to this debate.
I’ve had numerous discussions with Never-Trump Republicans – some of whom I know personally – and our conversations often follow a predictable pattern. Whenever I bring up a political topic unrelated to Donald Trump (I consciously avoid the topic around them), the Never-Trump Republican invariably steers the discussion towards a tirade about how exceptionally malevolent Donald Trump is, always labeling him as a “fascist” and/or an “authoritarian” who either currently is or will in the future abuse the government and the Constitution. I counter their claims by referencing Trump’s actual actions during his first term, where he did not exhibit any of those traits. Nonetheless, the Never Trumpers disregard my arguments and persist in their viewpoint. In response, I highlight the actions of both Presidents Obama and Biden, asserting that they more fittingly embody the labels of “fascists” and “authoritarians” due to their history of governmental and constitutional transgressions. Despite this, the Never-Trump Republican still intends to support Biden (and later Harris).
Then, the Never-Trumper ignores my argument again and triples down on his TDS.
This leads me to emphasize the following point – Democrats Barack Obama and Joe Biden, both individually and collectively, have clear track records of behaving in an authoritarian and fascistic manner that contradicts the tenets of the U.S. Constitution. They have utilized government resources to advance their personal interests, bolster their political party, and undermine the Republican Party and conservative causes.
Here are just some examples:
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An illustration of this behavior can be seen in Obama’s Department of Justice (DOJ) intervening to shield two members of the New Black Panther Party who, in 2008, intimidated voters at a polling place in Philadelphia by donning full paramilitary attire and hurling racial epithets at voters. One of the individuals even wielded a nightstick towards voters.
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Obama sicced the IRS on Republican/conservative non-profits when they applied to the agency for tax-exempt status, starting in 2010. This delayed or even prevented the formation of such groups leading up to the election of 2012.
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Obama had Jack Smith of the DOJ implement a lawfare campaign to destroy the political career of Bob McDonnell, the (then) popular Republican governor of Virginia who was a threat to Democrats (he could have run for U.S. Senate or for president).
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Obama deflected blame for the 2012 Benghazi terror attack in Libya that killed several Americans and threatened Obama’s reelection by blaming an innocent filmmaker and having him prosecuted and jailed (by local government).
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Obama’s Associate Attorney General of the DOJ’s Civil Division invented a new form of “Honest Graft” by creating a federal system where judicial settlements became the vehicle for paying off left-wing political allies.
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Obama’s CIA Director — and occasional communist — John Brennan spied on U.S. Senate staffers, including Democrats.
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Obama’s government spied on the Republican presidential campaign of Donald Trump. (I wonder if Obama also did that to Mitt Romney? Sadly, we will never know.)
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Obama’s CIA Director — and occasional communist — John Brennan brought Hillary Clinton’s bogus “Russia, Russia, Russia” scandal into the federal government and made it public, giving it a patina of plausibility. And the DOJ and the other elements of government then ran with it as a fake “scandal.”
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Obama’s FBI destroyed the career of Gen. Michael Flynn, a man who had actually worked for Obama at the DIA. (Full disclosure – my Democrat wife worked with Flynn and never had any issues with him.)
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Obama and Biden’s DOJ chose not to prosecute Democrat Hillary Clinton and Democrat Joe Biden for allegedly violating classification rules but did choose to prosecute Republican Donald Trump for allegedly violating them, even though Clinton and Biden’s cases were far more serious, as neither was a U.S. president (Biden was a senator and then vice president) with the power to declassify information at the time.
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Obama and Biden’s DOJ chose not to prosecute Attorney General Merrick Garland, former Attorney General Eric Holder, and Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas for contempt of Congress, but they did go after Steve Bannon and Peter Navarro for that very same crime.
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Post-2020, the Biden DOJ soft-pedaled prosecutions of the BLM and Antifa left-wing goons that rioted and pillaged during 2020, presumably because they undermined then President Donald Trump, but the Biden DOJ did go after, quite strongly, the January 6 rioters and non-rioters alike.
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Biden and his DOJ plotted and implemented the lawfare campaigns against his presidential opponent, Donald Trump. Both the DOJ federal prosecutions under Jack Smith and, almost certainly, the state attempts in New York and Georgia.
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A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit unanimously agreed that the Biden White House, Surgeon General Vivek Murthy, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), and the FBI had “coerced” or “significantly encouraged” the platforms, “in violation of the First Amendment,” to suppress speech that federal officials viewed as dangerously inaccurate or misleading.
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Biden’s Attorney General Merrick Garland targeted the free speech of U.S. citizens regarding school issues, issuing a memo that directed the FBI to involve itself in local school board meetings under the auspices of anti-terrorism statutes due to supposed threats and/or violence directed against board members. This was then followed by another memo, released by the U.S. Attorney in Montana, which directed law enforcement to “contact the FBI” if a parent calls a member of a school board simply “with intent to annoy,” which “may serve as a basis for a prosecution” under federal law. Garland and the DOJ/FBI were forced to disavow the latter memo.
For the above reasons, it is hard to take the Never-Trump crowd seriously when they preach about Donald Trump being a uniquely fascistic and authoritarian figure yet have nothing to say about Barack Obama and Joe Biden’s actual records.
I encourage all my readers to make this point when next they are stuck debating a TDS-afflicted Never-Trumper Republican. Just don’t be nasty about it. (I am not encouraging violence here.)
