My Response to Column "To Beat President Trump, You Have to Think Like His Supporters"

This column stood out for me because it has the iconic picture which I have seen used time and again. This photo was taken at Martin Luther King Jr. Park in Berkeley last August.

Even though Antifa thugs followed me, harassed me, and stole me Trump gear, the day turned out to be quite a success for the Trump Movement and the Free Speech movement as a whole. Antifa lost all legitimacy that day.

Here's the photo:

I showed this photo to my father yesterday, too. This was a stunning encounter I had with these two liberals. We did not agree on ... well, just about anything. But we were talking. The older man in the center seemed intent on trying to silence me with interruptions, but I kept sharing my views and making my points.

Eventually, he and I started talking and we found common respect for each other.

The lady on the right insisted on allowing me to be heard, enough that he would quiet down the man in the middle a few times so that I could get my points across. We didn't agree on a lot of things, either, but we were civil with each other.

These encounters need to be the focus of attention, not the evil acts of Antifa afterwards.

Here's the column printed in The Washington Post and its subsidiary newspapers:

Column: To Beat President Trump, You Have to Think Like His Supporters.

Almost a year later, Donald Trump is still president. Powerful men in entertainment, media and even politics have seen their public lives implode under scandal almost instantly for months now, but Trump holds on.

Trump holds on because he has not sexually assaulted and abused other women. For the Left, all the "War on Women" rhetoric falls squarely on the Democratic Party and their liberal, progressive cohorts. The liberals are the people who have been abusing women and children (and also men). They have been suppressing the stories about harassment against women.

It's about time that they were called out on their hypocrisy.

If you’re among the majority of Americans who oppose Trump, you can’t understand why. And it’s making you furious. I saw the same thing happen in my native Venezuela with the late Hugo Chávez, who ruled as precisely the sort of faux-populist strongman that Trump now loves to praise. Chávez’s political career (which only ended with his untimely death) seemed not only immune to scandal, but indeed to profit directly from it. Why? Because scandal is no threat to populism. Scandal sustains populism.

The fact that this writer is comparing President Trump to the now dead dictator Hugo Chavez shows how unhinged the anti-Trump factions have become in this country. Trump has overseen a massive expansion of the free market and free enterprise. Under Chavez and his brutal successor Maduro, the economy has collapsed, wage inflation is spiraling out of control, citizens have lost average of 18 pounds because of food shortages and intense scarcity. The oil-dependent economy cannot generate any wealth since the price of oil has fallen worldwide.

President Trump is expanding liberty and respects the constitutional framework of our country. He restored Congress' primary authority on immigration when he handed the DACA problem back to Congress.

Trump’s overall approval rating has dwindled to below 40 percent, but his base — the only people Trump appears to think he needs to answer to — still loves him. In one November poll, only 7 percent of his supporters from last year said they’d vote differently if they could. Which is to say, in the face of all this scandal, Trump is not even close to collapse. He and his supporters are simply grinning back at you.

Absolutely we love Trump! He has fulfilled one promise after another, and we recognize that the corrupt media is dedicated to shutting down this President one hit after another. Polling and media bias are prevalent in our journalism culture. Trump was projected to lose by a wide margin on Election Day 2016. We all know how that turned out. No matter how distasteful the two major Presidential candidates may have been, Trump turned out to be the anti-establishment answer for millions fed up with the greedy, self-satisfied political class.

I imagine that the polling remains as skewed as ever.

It is clear that 2017 Trump is not very different from 2016 Trump on his way to power. The basic premise remains: that the restoration of the country lies in the destruction of its enemies. The only difference is that Trump, now in power, paints himself as a fighter under siege. What you call scandal is only a sign that he is fighting back. Indeed: that he is fighting you. To his supporters, this is no scandal at all — he’s doing exactly what he promised he would do.

The restoration of this country lies in Making America Great Again. That does not mean that every enemy must be crushed, although many enemies have been trying to destroy or fundamentally transform this country.

His supporters are convinced that you are to blame. Until you can convince them otherwise, they will cheer him on. The name of the game is polarization, and the rookie mistake is to forget you are the enemy.

In the above photo, I spoke with those two liberals among many others in the East Bay area. Not once did I ever conclude that those individuals were causing all the problems in this country. Even Antifa, for all their violent hatred and disregard for our laws, are not the major cause of trouble in our country. In fact, their numbers are dwindling considerably.

Normal politicians collapse in the face of scandal because the scandals show them dozing on the job or falling back on their promises. To get elected, they offer a bargain: "Vote for me: I will make you richer/fight for your rights/assure your progress." Scandals reveal they can’t do that, and thus, they tumble.

President Trump offered more than a bargain to the American public. He presented a simple plan of restoration, recovery, and opportunity. What's not to like? Oh, and he's following through on these promises. Again, why would anyone have a problem with Trump? Only a corrupt, hateful media dedicated to stomping on him because of their rabid anti-American, anti-liberty bias.

However, like all populists, Trump offers a much different deal — "Vote for me: I will destroy your enemies. They are the reason you are not rich/have less rights/America is not great anymore." Scandal is the populist’s natural element for the same reason that demolishing buildings makes more noise than constructing them. His supporters didn’t vote for silence. They voted for a bang.

Nope. What a bunch of garbage. The anti-Trump animus is palpable. They froth at the mouth the moment someone shows them a picture of President Trump. Incredible.

So where you see Robert Mueller making progress at getting to the truth of Russian interference last year, Trump supporters see an altogether different scandal. When Trump’s aides are indicted, but Hillary Clinton isn’t, the probe serves as proof that the system is corrupt.

There was Russian interference through Hillary Clinton. The system is corrupt because of clearly established bias from the investigators. How else should any of us react when key investigators in the FBI are donating huge amounts of money to the Clinton campaigns or receive large donations from friends and political contacts with the Clinton clan?

The scorn of his adversaries, in the eyes of his supporters, proves that he’s doing exactly what they voted for him to do: dismantling a rigged system that they believe destroyed their hopes.

The system has been rigged, and activists in both parties have recognized that. Why do you think that so many Bernie Sanders supporters ended up voting for Trump in the general election?

I know how you feel. You are outraged. Each day that goes by, it makes less sense to you. As Venezuelans used to tell one another: Chávez te tiene loco. Trump is making you crazy. But don’t start by trying to convince Trump supporters that he is a hypocrite who must be impeached, that the news is not actually fake, that your statistical charts and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights are in dire need of their attention.

I have asked anti-Trump activists to show me how Trump is a hypocrite. I even pressed two college journalism students to show me proof that the President views the press as an enemy which must be slayed. They could not provide me substantive evidence to prove their point ... because there is none. The corrupt corporate agenda in key media outlets, the repeated reprinting of Fake News is the target.

Before you try to persuade them that they are being racist, or worse, ignorant by believing in Trump, you should ask yourself: Will this help convince them that I am not their enemy? Because what can really win them over is not to prove that you are right. It is to show them you care. Only then will they believe what you say.

I have talked to many liberals and left-leaning activists. Some of them demonstrate caring, but many of them have resorted to silencing me, to trying to scare me off, or attacking me outright. Not much caring, I must say.

Sheer outrage at the president’s scandals is pointless. Worse still is directing your anger at his supporters. Then you’re doing the same thing Trump is: believing your side is all right and the opposite side is all wrong. Rejecting your common humanity and sense of country, you’re playing into the polarization game instead of defeating it.

I have never once said that I agree with everything President Trump is doing or has done. I do not accept everything that he campaigned on. No one is perfect. But I am amazed and grateful that President Trump is exceeding expectations on so many issues. The market turnaround from the failed leadership of Barack Obama is so refreshing that I cannot take offense or exception with is victories.

This is not a call for appeasement, only for efficiency. Trump’s solutions to nation’s problems may be imaginary, but the problems are very real indeed. Populism is and has always been the daughter of political despair. Showing concern is the only way to break the rhetorical polarization.

Trump's solutions are a reality. He is rolling back a considerable number of regulations. His foreign policy leadership has decimated ISIS and put the screws to North Korea and China.

Finally, there is indeed a place for your legitimate moral outrage: not the dining table, but the voting booth. Just ask Alabama Democrats.

The Alabama US Senate race is a total fluke. I would not advise Democrats to place all their hopes on that special election.

So as the second year of Trump’s administration approaches, stop. Take a deep breath. Let all the hatred circle from afar. Don’t let it into your echo chamber. Try to hush it, pause it. Don’t let it close your eyes and tear your own society, your own family, apart.

Notice that it's the Left that has all the hatred. How sad indeed.

Andrés Miguel Rondón is an economist living in Madrid. He is a Venezuelan citizen who was born and raised there.