Bob Ehrlich
The ability to overcome obstacles is a well-recognized element of success, regardless of profession. Everyone knows it. But not everyone has the wherewithal to get it done — to be undeterred by the curve balls life has thrown your way.
I keep thinking about this life lesson as a new Trump term dawns — a highly unlikely event from the perspective of a few short years ago.
Talk about obstacles. The end of Trump I and the arrival of President Joe Biden was as bad as it could get for a departing president. It was a time of recounts and recriminations, of cabinet resignations and negative press coverage and even a post-election impeachment. And, of course, the Capitol riot of January 6, 2021, a shockingly bad final chapter to Trump 45.
The resulting bad press and historically low approval numbers had even die-hard MAGA types doubting the plausibility of a Trump comeback four years later.
And then, additional obstacles popped up. The FBI famously raided Mar-a-Lago (including gratuitously Melania Trump’s private wardrobe area), the precursor to a federal indictment over the alleged (mis)treatment of classified documents.
A Jack Smith-led second federal indictment followed, this time pertaining to the so-called “Insurrection” of January 6. And then there were the two additional (state) indictments by avowed anti-Trump local prosecutors. No politician could survive the combined weight of all that legal trouble — right?
But lawfare’s enforcers had even more arrows to fire. This time, it was blue state attorneys general and secretaries of state seeking to ban former President Donald Trump from the 2024 ballot, efforts that were accompanied by continuing legal challenges to voter photo ID requirements and the cleansing of voter rolls to prevent ineligible/illegal voting.
Then came two assassination attempts in the span of four months and the [still] unexplained gross negligence from what is alleged to be the preeminent protective security detail in the world.
All the while, Biden’s Justice Department was engaged in a speech control initiative that sought to intimidate social media platforms to conform to the administration’s preferred (anti-Trump) narratives. Here, dissenting opinion was dismissed as “disinformation” — a particularly cynical effort to chill free speech.
Alas, the suppression efforts were especially successful in casting doubt on the (Trump supported) Covid lab leak theory and continuing the ludicrous but always useful Trump-Russia fallacy.
To boot: America’s bi-coastal, anti-MAGA collection of self-appointed cultural value makers never missed a beat, as the usual suspects maintained a (deranged) focus on the orange menace from Queens.
This cycle, it was Hollywood’s A-Team of Trump haters — including — but not limited to Messrs. DeCaprio, Legend, Ruffalo, and the out-of-control DeNiro — joined by the ever-present Oprah, Eva Longoria, Jane Fonda, and even the newly-minted twenty-three-year-old Snow White herself — actress Rachel Zegler (“another four years of hatred,” subsequently retracted).
But no list of anti-Trump activists would be complete without the legacy and public media doing their usual number on the GOP and particularly Donald Trump. This cycle’s tally: 78% positive coverage of Harris as opposed to 85% negative coverage of Trump (per the Media Research Center) — although many MAGA types wonder where and when the 15% positive reporting occurred…
So, remember, the next time life throws you for a loop, think back to the obstacles Donald Trump was forced to confront: relentlessly demonized by legacy media —targeted by a weaponized Department of Justice — accused of being a Russian asset — prosecuted in state and federal court — assessed an unprecedented civil fine — the target of two assassination attempts (one within a half inch of his life) — and the focus of repeated attempts to throw him off the presidential ballot.
Winston Churchill once famously observed: “You will never reach your destination if you stop and throw stones at every dog that barks.” Fortunately, Donald Trump did not let the legion of barking dogs deter him. Instead, the obstacles were turned into opportunities. A life lesson for an America that will benefit from one man’s steadfast resilient refusal to let even outsized obstacles stand in his way.
Bob Ehrlich is a former governor of Maryland, member of Congress and state legislator. He is the author of five books on American politics and opinion pieces that have appeared in America’s leading newspapers and periodicals. He and his wife, Kendel, can be seen and heard on their weekly podcast, “Bottom Line with Bob & Kendel Ehrlich.”
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