Strassel details how ‘The Resistance’ has damaged America with Trump hatred, but only one side will care

Review by Doug Gibson

In the new book, “Resistance (At All Costs) How Trump Haters are Breaking America,” (Twelve, 2019), Kimberley Strassel, a member of the Wall Street Journal Editorial Board, relates the misadventures of Sally Yates, an acting attorney general, a holdover from the Obama administration.

So much partisan chicanery from the left has gone on in three-plus years that one can almost be forgiven for having forgot about Yates, but here goes. Early in the Trump administration, when a travel ban designed to curb terrorism was implemented, Yates ordered the Justice Department not to defend the ban. It was a petulant act of defiance and a violation of her responsibilities. As Strassel notes, if Yates felt personally obligated to oppose the executive action, she should have resigned.

Yates was appropriately fired. She was then lauded as a hero in the already mostly anti-Trump Washington/national press. She was also praised by a host of workers within the federal bureaucracy. As Strassel notes, it was a rallying cry for workers within our intelligence agencies to use their individual power to oppose the presidency.

“The Resistance” of Trump haters began with the Hillary Clinton campaign, along with the DNC, contracting with Fusion GPS, an opposition research firm, to dig up dirt against then-likely Republican Party candidate Donald Trump. As Strassel writes, the contract was through Perkins Coie law firm, which worked for Clinton and the DNC. 

In the fall, what became the fabulist Steele Dossier was pitched to FISA judges as a reason to investigate Trump and his campaign. The political origins of the dossier were not revealed to the judges. Besides this, both our FBI and Justice Department utilized its powers to investigate the Trump campaign, for example, sending out spies to try to entrap low-level Trump advisers, such as George Papadopoulos, into revealing Russian "conspiracies."

These efforts morphed into the current effort to reverse a presidential election and remove President Trump from office. It’s a drama that continues despite the wasteful failure of the Mueller investigation. It’s now morphed into a wasteful investigation regarding false charges of a quid pro quo with Ukraine. Although too recent to be delved into by Strassel, it involves faux whistleblowers who were not privy to the information they are allegedly revealing, a so-called whistleblower who reveals to a Democratic lawmaker and travels with a Democratic presidential candidate. The case is so weak that Democrats in Congress have refused transparency, preferring a secretive process.

In “Resistance At All Costs …,” Strassel laments how the effort to destroy one man and a presidency has badly contaminated once-revered institutions. The emergence of a press that has allowed its reporting divisions to have a permanent bias against a president and most of his party is turning organs such as The New York Times into boutique publications, revered by advocates who will only tolerate adverse coverage of the administration; and ignored and despised by those who are either neutral or supportive to the president.

The FBI and Justice Department's interference into how we select and retain presidents have harmed the presidency and, as a result, damaged public trust. Just one example: Strassel recounts the deliberate leaking by Comey of information to a friendly academic who then leaked to major media. Also, within the federal government, Strassel notes, there are lower-level “Resistance” members undermining the administration they work for, either by illegal leaking or hamstringing efforts to implement policy.

This effort to reverse an election, rather than simply try to regroup and win an election, has created a poisonous atmosphere. Today in social media there are hundreds of thousands of “corporals” and “privates” of the Trump-hating “Resistance,” echoing what they hear from the puppeteers.  The tragedy of this constant one-upping of bad behavior is that it likely means that opposition to the next Democratic administration (after all, politics is cyclical), will be worse. And that’s frightening to ponder.

It’s not only self-described conservatives like Strassel who are worried about the effect of this perfidy.  Earlier this week, leftist writer Matt Taibbi wrote about the “permanent coup” era we exist in where one major official, soon joined by others, decides they don’t like the results of an election and decide to use their power to push back.  We’ve avoided this authoritarian state abuses, until now, Taibbi writes. The implications are ominous. Read his column here.

Taibbi is the exception, though. Most of the liberal major media has been co-opted into this effort to unseat an elected president. They have joined one side of the tribal politics we exist in today. And therein lies a key, unfortunate weakness in Strassel’s otherwise well-researched book. It will be either ignored, or mocked, by a substantial majority of the media. Chuck Todd, or one his mimics at MSNBC or CNN will perhaps dismiss it as “Fox News propaganda.” Their many minions on social media, if they even hear of the book, will echo the jeers and smears.

Consensus will not be reached on the effort to destroy the president. He will be impeached. Democrats cannot fail to impeach him. Their base will get angry, and then demoralized, if they fail too. But he will not be convicted.  The only drama will be if one Republican senator will vote to convict.

Strassel’s book, while consigned to be tagged as propaganda today in our partisan-anger era, is nevertheless a detailed, accurate account of a disgraceful sequence of events. One can be optimistic and hope that in the future it will get its due and receive bipartisan acknowledgement.

As Strassel concedes, President Trump can be a difficult pol to admire. His behavior can be childish and insulting. His tweets and other public comments are sometimes the opposite of dignity. But bad behavior does not excuse an attempt by powerful interests in our government to reverse an election though illegal means. That these efforts receive enthusiastic support by a sizable percentage of Americans and media is something to be deeply concerned about.