Treacherous and malicious though it was, the Democrats’ coordinated and strategic 2016 campaign to portray President Donald Trump as an agent of Russia proved to be a resounding success.
Initiated by the DNC and the Hillary Clinton campaign, the effort quickly drew in high-ranking Obama administration officials, the federal agencies they led, Democratic leaders in both houses of Congress, and of course, the legacy media.
We would later learn that then-CIA Director John Brennan had briefed President Barack Obama on the plan during a July 2016 Oval Office meeting.
Though the saga ended with a whimper in March 2019 when Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s deeply partisan team of Democrats came up empty-handed, it had already cast a long shadow of illegitimacy over Trump’s first term. And Trump’s pushback against these venomous attacks was framed as further evidence that he was unhinged.
But as time wore on, and the collective case of Trump Derangement Syndrome among his critics deepened, their assaults grew less tactical and disciplined, and more reactive and desperate.
As we know, Trump’s November victory left the Democrats reeling. They’d used every tool in their arsenal, including lawfare, in a relentless effort to prevent it. Yet there he stood on January 20, sworn in as the 47th president of the United States.
No longer the political outsider, naïve to the entrenched resistance of the administrative state, Trump was back. And he was armed with full knowledge of the hoaxes, smears, and sabotage they had deployed against him for nearly a decade. In their eyes, that made him even more dangerous.
Leaderless, divided, and increasingly out of touch with everyday Americans, Democrats now lurch from crisis to crisis. Their once unified, precision-driven offensives have deteriorated into a chaotic, reactive scramble — a reckless, seat-of-the-pants struggle to remain relevant.
At present, the party is up in arms over the due process rights of so-called “Maryland father” Kilmar Abrego Garcia. While Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-MD) was en route to El Salvador last week to fight for Abrego Garcia’s immediate return to the U.S., newly released documents revealed that his wife had twice sought restraining orders against him, and that two judges had identified him as a member of the notorious MS-13 gang.
Additional reports indicated that in 2022, Abrego Garcia was stopped on a Tennessee highway while transporting eight undocumented immigrants from Houston, Texas, to Maryland. Officers became suspicious of human smuggling when each of the passengers provided Abrego Garcia’s address as their own. They also saw that none of them had luggage. Although the FBI was notified, they directed authorities to release him.
It emerged on Wednesday that the van Abrego Garcia was driving belonged to Jose Ramon Hernandez-Reyes, an undocumented migrant who was convicted of human smuggling in 2020.
Moreover, according to court documents obtained by FOX45 News, in August 2018, Edwin Ramos—who claims to be the father of Jennifer Vasquez Sura’s (Abrego Garcia’s wife) two youngest children—requested an emergency custody hearing. He wrote in the filing that he was concerned about his children’s safety because Vasquez Sura “is dating a gang member.” Although the documents did not state Abrego Garcia’s name, Vasquez Sura was pregnant with his child and the two were living together. The report said the case was eventually dismissed due to a jurisdictional issue.
The new revelations forced Democrats to shift their messaging. Abrego Garcia’s background, they now argue, is beside the point. Their fight is centered on due process and the rule of law. And they warn that if he could be abruptly seized on the street and deported to a prison in El Salvador, it could happen to any one of us.
This week, four House Democrats traveled to El Salvador to fight for Abrego Garcia’s freedom: Reps. Robert Garcia (D-CA), Maxwell Frost (D-FL), Yassamin Ansari (D-AZ) and Maxine Dexter (D-OR).
While their grandstanding may please their base, it doesn’t play well with the vast majority of Americans who want to see the illegals who poured into the U.S. during the Biden years, deported.
As many have noted, granting full due process to every illegal immigrant in the U.S. would stretch deportation proceedings out across decades—which, I suspect, is precisely the point.
They violated our laws to enter the country, and now they insist on invoking our legal system to remain here. Trump emphasized this hypocrisy in a Truth Social post this week. President Joe Biden, he said, allowed “Millions of Criminals into our Country, totally unchecked and unvetted, with no Legal authority to do so, yet I, in order to make up for this assault to our Nation, am expected to go through a lengthy Legal process, separately, for each and every Criminal Alien.”
Cherie Currie, the lead singer of the 1970s punk rock band The Runaways (which included a young Joan Jett), walked away from the Democratic Party last fall and became an outspoken member of the MAGA movement.
After watching the Democrats’ pathetic posturing over Abrego Garcia, she’d had enough and took to X to voice her opinion. I think she speaks for many Americans who are disgusted by the party’s resistance.
I simply can’t sit back anymore and let these lunatics continue to hurt people!
They LIE!
They keep their sheeple IN FEAR!
Ruin their LIVES!!
All to gain power!
Not an ounce of integrity or respect!
How DARE you scare ppl when you know they’re not in danger!
That what is…— Cherie Currie (@CherieCurrie3) April 24, 2025
The Democrats missed the message of the 2024 election. Rather than pivoting back to the center even modestly, they’ve veered further to the left. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s (D-NY) emergence as a leading candidate for the 2028 Democratic presidential nomination says it all.
Out of fresh ideas, lacking a clear leader, and bound together only by their opposition to Trump, the party has lost its sense of direction. Once a dominant force in American politics, the Democrats have devolved into an incoherent coalition of embittered activists.
A previous version of this article appeared in the Washington Examiner.
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