I didn’t use to be a Trump voter, much less a Trump supporter. I can’t say I’m hard-core MAGA or what they call a “Triple Trump voter.” But as I’ve watched him over the past six years, my support for him has only grown. I could lie and pretend it hasn’t, maybe save myself the tiny bit of credibility I still have left, but that would not be the truth.
As I watch Trump deflect attacks from both the Left and the Right over the war with Iran and various other things, I still see the Gray Champion of the Fourth Turning — The one guy who has the right stuff to stand in the breach and do the right thing, even if it’s not the popular thing.
Whatever it is in Trump that guides him, some will say God, some will say a gut instinct, it gives him the necessary focus to blur out the distractions and the noise, take aim, and hit the bullseye.
No president has ever faced the kind of opposition Trump has, not just from the world, but from the establishment in the United States, most especially the Democrats. Even now, they have no plan for any of us, no vision for the future. They only have their hatred of and their attacks on Trump and his MAGA base.
What they want is for people like me to disappear, or else decide that all of their attacks on Trump have been justified. I was a fool, they want me to say, and I regret my vote. Except that I don’t.
They want X to reflect real life, with all of these influencers and podcasters studiously dropping their support and regretting their vote, “I’m done with Trump,” they insist.
But X isn’t real. It’s avatar life. Whatever is happening there, it’s the result of algorithms and engagement by people who spend way too much time doomscrolling and getting caught up in mass hysteria. Most people aren’t that plugged in. They’re just living their lives.
I didn’t just vote for Trump to stop the Left from overtaking this country and leading us into their dystopian, 1984-like future, but that would be reason enough.
No, I have come to genuinely admire Trump, flaws and all. I am sickened by the snooty Left and how they turned their noses up at Trump and his supporters when he tried to revamp the Kennedy Center. I vomited a little in my mouth when I saw Ben Stiller demand that Trump remove Tropic Thunder from a meme.
Every time the elite gather and trash Trump, as they did at Jesse Jackson’s funeral, much to the horror of his own son, I see our potential future, which is really our past, a past we desperately need to leave behind.
This is not their country. It never was. This country belongs to all of us.
The Gray Champion
Nine years ago, one of the authors of The Fourth Turning, Neil Howe, was asked if Trump was the Gray Champion. He didn’t know because it was too early to say. This was before 2020 and before January 6th, way before Trump’s second win in 2024.
The key point he makes, though, is that a Gray Champion is full of ego and has an idea that if he breaks it or if he fixes it, he’ll be okay. It’s that combination of self-confidence, certainty, and recklessness to do what almost no one else would do that defines the one man who can stand up to not just the forces that oppose him but his own peers.
It is the willingness to take big risks that, I think, makes a Gray Champion. Who else would even dare try? That makes them hated in their time, but history remembers them well.
Lincoln was the target of assassination plots and was eventually assassinated.
Winston Churchill was blamed for military failures during World War II:
And Roosevelt was a target too:
The bombing and neutralization of Iran is very Gray Champion-like, as is much of what Trump has already done both in the US and abroad in his second term. He is moving fast and perhaps breaking things to make his short time back in office matter.
He also knows that if the US abandoned support for Israel now, Iran got a nuke, they would not hesitate to wipe Israel off the map, and though many on the MAGA Right would cheer that decision, it would be a disaster for the world. The allies would have no choice but to go to war with Iran anyway. Pay now or pay later.
As with other Gray Champions of the past, Trump will have to take the bad with the good. The bombing of a school killing over 100 girls on the first day of the war — probably due to outdated intel — will have to be part of his legacy, no matter the outcome, which is still under investigation, but it looks like the US did it.
This will put Trump in the Democrats' crosshairs should they take back power in 2026 or 2028. They might impeach him again or put him on trial for war crimes. The bombing of the school, along with the killings of Alex Pretti and Renee Good, will be amplified by the establishment media, and whatever Trump’s successes will be won’t matter.
I understand this war from a strategic perspective, to end a threat to both America and Israel, one of the three world powers that could be fighting us in a world war, along with Russia and China. That wasn’t the case with the Ukraine war. That, to me, had nothing to do with the United States. But this war does.
But I also can’t cry about obliterating a regime that was that oppressive with its people, not that it’s our job to liberate them. As with Venezuela, it’s hard not to feel some American pride that our president did what no one else had the courage to do.
So yes, those girls died tragically, but hopefully, future daughters of Iran will not have to live under the kind of oppressive tyranny the Democrats pretend they’ve been living under for the last ten years.
This was something all of us on the Left used to understand, which is why Hollywood made Not Without My Daughter in the 1980s, a true story about an American mother fleeing Iran to ensure her daughter lived free in America.
And the end of the movie, the most miraculous sight of all, an American flag:
In case you’re wondering why Trump is in power now and why he’s the Gray Champion, that’s why. There was once an America that looked at the flag and saw freedom and safety. That is now threatened by a massive alignment of power that has decided to change everything about this country and transform it into a fundamentalist cult.
There is no such thing as a moderate Democrat
Okay, maybe John Fetterman counts. But, as we’ve now seen from the unearthed tweets by the Great White Hope in Texas, the crazy is baked in. It is more than just a fad or trend. While it’s true that “dark woke” seeks to break their rules of behavior, it’s also true that their newfound religion is unshakable.
The Democrats are counting on winning elections without changing anything about their party. Trump hate sells, and they can’t pivot away from it even if they wanted to.
To fix a problem, you have to first name it, and in ten years, the Democrats never have. They’ve left people like me with no choice but to walk away. Even though poll after poll tells them how unpopular they are, even though the box office is now a ghost town, and you almost can’t pay people to watch movies or television shows, or cable or network news, they still seem to believe they are superior to the other half of the country and that all of America wants them back. They don’t.
There are plenty on the MAGA Right, at least online, who see this as their moment to pull away from Trump and forge a new path toward an America First utopia of their own making. Count me out. I know what is waiting on the other side if they hand power back to the Left.
In the Melania documentary that just dropped on Amazon, there is a great shot of a massive, gleaming luxury car, The Beast, and on its license plate it reads 45-47. It is as spectacular and hilariously funny as Trump himself. Who else but a Gray Champion would even try to run again, much less actually win?
The critics’ spiteful, negative reviews of Melania, compared to the audience reviews, say it all.
I still remember another quote from a guy in East Palestine, Ohio, who called Trump, “a Man of the people” when he pulled up in his motorcade to visit them. The Democrats should spend every day for the rest of their lives pondering why.
Trump supporters are not in a cult. They see in Trump a flawed hero. They also know he is spending what’s left of his life trying to make America Great Again. His supporters believe in him, and the ride or die ones will stick it out to the bitter end.
They waited in the freezing rain, in the suffocating heat of Summer, through assassinations and celebrations. Always, Trump is there with a smile and a thumbs up, the only guy who saw them at all, let alone represented them in the country they love.
I might not have been there from the beginning, but as a discarded outsider, I have more in common with Donald Trump than just about any Democrat. I wish for his survival and that his last years will be spent playing golf at Mar-a-Lago and that history will remember him well.
So you won’t find me regretting my vote or wishing for a different leader. I’ll take the guy who can get the dirty job done. I don’t want a United States that is like Europe. I’ll take an America that is like its current president, a chaotic work in progress that always lands on its feet.
Godspeed Trump and MAGA. Godspeed.
