As I’ve often written, The Spectator of London is not only the oldest magazine in the English-speaking world but the most elegant by far.  (As, of course, is Chronicles.)  I’ve been fortunate to have a column in the Speccie, as readers lovingly refer to it, for 40 years, a lifetime when it comes to journalism.  Needless to say, I trust the judgment of the editor—all seven of them whom I have written for.  Spectator editors usually end up as cabinet ministers, Boris Johnson, the foreign secretary, being the latest example.  (He was the fifth.)  And our own Freddy Gray is the Speccie’s deputy editor.

Hence I was surprised when I read the Diary by David Frum in a recent issue.  Frum is a vulgar neocon, a fat slob of Canadian extraction whose loyalties lie with Israel’s Likud Party.  He went on and on about Trump and the Russian connection, hinting darkly that The Donald and Vlad are connected at the waist.  Never mind.  This was a one-off, and The Spectator made up for it on the very next page by running Andrew Bacevich’s brilliant piece on Kaiser Donald.  I am a great admirer of Bacevich, a retired professor of history, a West Pointer and commissioned warrior who lost a son in the useless Iraq war for Cheney’s profits and glory, and the author of several important books on Uncle Sam’s limits of power and follies in the Middle East.

I don’t agree with Bacevich’s take on Trump, but it is a valid one.  He compares him to Kaiser Wilhelm II, a man who like Trump operated on instinct and bluffed a lot.  The historian’s fear is that The Donald, whose vow is to make America great again, might do a Kaiser and creep toward the edge of the precipice after having his bluff called by Kim.  Now that’s what I call criticism, not that puerile b.s. a bum like Frum and his fellow hacks come up with daily in order to besmirch our 45th president.

Who is not doing that badly, mind you.  He has signaled to the East Coast elites and insiders that he’s his own man, is not about to go nation-building, and—as I write—is deporting 4,000 Somalis.  Never in the history of this country has a new president had such vituperation hurled against him by the media—the very people who played along when true crimes were being committed by the neocons and their poodle, George W. Bush.  Talk about fake news: I believe the Russian Connection is a made up story by the losing side and its Amen Corner in the media, as is, I suspect, the Kushner-Bannon Feud.  The media insiders will stop at nothing, as in the case with Bill O’Reilly at FOX News.  His case is even worse than that of the great Pat Buchanan, who was dumped by MSNBC for daring to write a book (Suicide of a Superpower) with chapters about the “End of White America” and the “Death of Christian America.”

O’Reilly was the most popular commentator on television, yet his career was killed by liberal groups that launched a brutal campaign of character assassination.  It was a smear campaign orchestrated by the New York Times and far-left organizations bent on destroying O’Reilly for political and financial reasons.  Predictably, advertisers ran scared and pulled their ads just as soon as some unnamed women surfaced, claiming sexual harassment.  Nearly ten years after the fact, one such accuser, a black woman who worked as a temp at FOX, is claiming that O’Reilly stopped by her desk, grunted like a wild boar, and called her “Hot Chocolate.”  Really?  And it took ten years for her to come out with it?  Being egged on by UltraViolet, a women’s rights group, helped.  In fairness, O’Reilly has had trouble with women before, but FOX settled the complaints by paying out close to 13 million big ones in return for dropping them.  The moment that became known, numerous new complaints surfaced.  It doesn’t take a Sherlock Holmes to suspect that the fix is in.

It actually comes down to this: If somebody becomes very popular, like Pat or Bill, but does not adhere to the rules laid down by the New York Times, the Washington Post, and the three major networks, sooner or later advocacy groups of the leftist persuasion will start a campaign and force the cowardly advertisers to withdraw their spots.  The Nazis did it in a more obvious manner: They would burn you down.  The communists would throw you in the Lubyanka.  The Times, the Post, and the TV networks start a whispering campaign and have the protesters in the street do their dirty work for them.

If this is democracy, I’m a banana.

All the usual suspects tried the same with Trump, and will continue to try to bring him down until hell freezes over.  Unfortunately for them, The Donald knows how to fight dirty also, so he called a spade a spade by coming up with the phrase “fake news.”

The mainstream media is the enemy of the people, and the vituperative campaign against the 45th president is proof that it is.  Keep reading Chronicles for the truth.