Bette Midler is enraged, and the object of her rage is all too predictable. The America-First President has been out of the White House for nearly a year now, but the Left still focuses on him with passionate intensity, using him as an all-purpose scapegoat for everything that has gone wrong (and there is so much) since they took over. Now the washed-up chanteuse, whose claim to fame is that time she brought us a stiff, lukewarm remake of the Andrews Sisters’ “Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy,” wants the threat neutralized once and for all: she is demanding that Trump be locked up and charged with attempted murder for trying to infect Old Joe Biden (everyone’s idea of a competent, capable president) with COVID-19.
When did Trump try to kill Old Joe, you ask? Why, it all goes back to the sensationalistic recent fake news claim that Trump had tested positive for the dreaded killer disease with a 99% survival rate before his first debate with Biden. As my PJ Media colleague Matt Margolis noted here Thursday, Trump’s test was actually a false positive, followed by two negative tests before the debate, so Old Joe was never actually in any danger.
Midler, however, was unmoved by these facts. She tweeted Friday to her two million Twitter followers, “#DonaldTrump should be arrested for attempted murder. He tried to infect & kill #JoeBiden at the debate; by turning up too late to be tested, knowing full well he was positive; then screeched, sputtered, spit, and foamed at the mouth, hoping to infect Joe. He IS the devil.” And then: “How many people did #TyphoidTrump knowingly infect with #Covid after he tested positive last year? Between that & producing Don Jr., Eric & Ivanka, it seems like #trumps fluids are hell bent on destroying the world.”
Trump Derangement Syndrome has long been a pandemic on the Left, but Midler is suffering from a particularly virulent strain. She has consistently been one of the most hysterical among the ranks of Leftist hysterics. Back in 2018, when one of Senator Rand Paul’s (R-Ky.) neighbors savagely beat him and put him in the hospital, Midler applauded the attacker. In August 2020, she mocked “this awful person,” Melania Trump: “Oh, God. She still can’t speak English.” In February 2021, it was the late Rush Limbaugh’s turn: “#RushLimbaugh has gone to his reward. Bet it’s hot.”
No one, however, gets it from Midler as fiercely as Trump does, and that’s a reflection of his larger significance for the people who are running our country today. Trump is the political elites’ Emmanuel Goldstein: in Orwell’s 1984, the regime required the people to gather together every day for the “Two Minutes Hate,” in which they would scream and shout abuse at dissident Emmanuel Goldstein. This was one of the ways the regime rooted out other dissidents (those who didn’t hate Goldstein passionately enough) and kept the people in a state of agitation over the alleged imminent threat of the monster, thus cementing their loyalty to the regime that opposed him.
Midler is an eager participant in the Left’s Two Minutes Hate against Trump. Actually, the contemporary Leftist establishment has gone Orwell one better, as they don’t just hate Trump for two minutes every day; they do it 24/7. A fading singer/actress is one thing, but Midler’s view is not hers alone. Jen Psaki herself echoed it, saying that “apparently, reportedly, [Trump] didn’t even share with people he was going to interact with that he had tested positive for COVID himself.”
If everything the Leftist political and media establishment has told us about Trump over the last few years were remotely true, he would long since have been locked up and the key safely thrown away. But the supposedly imminent indictments have not appeared, and every attempt to discredit him has been shown to be a hoax. Future historians will note the Left’s astonishing frenzy over this man and their numerous attempts to destroy him on false pretenses. Clearly he posed, and still poses, such an immense threat to their hegemony that no false charge, no hoax claim, is too low for them to distribute.
Bette Midler is an example of the kind of person one becomes when one believes uncritically every single false claim from the Left. For her, and for so many others, Donald Trump has become the very source and sum of evil in the modern world — as Midler said, “He IS the devil.” But it may be that the real demons are screeching so loudly over this man because, like no one else, he effectively exposes what they’re all about. Without saying a word to Midler, Trump has exposed her rancid, hateful soul. And she isn’t the only one.
Robert Spencer is the director of Jihad Watch and a Shillman Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center. He is author of 23 books including many bestsellers, such as The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (and the Crusades), The Truth About Muhammad and The History of Jihad. His latest book is The Critical Qur’an.
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