Hey MAGA, for Xmas How About a Truce?
““We must all hang together, or assuredly we shall all hang separately,” Benjamin Franklin, 1776
I suppose it was inevitable. We are a big party tent — welcoming Americans of all color and stripe, excluding no one who shares our values — responsibility for self and soul. White, black, Hispanic, Asian, Americans, some descended from the Mayflower and many more who came on more recent conveyances. God, flag and family, that’s us.
But ever since the president of the Heritage Foundation was forced to resign over embracing Nick Fuentes — a right-wing activist known for promoting white Christian nationalism and antisemitism, ever since Tucker Carlson gave Fuentes a platform to spew his bigotry and Ben Shapiro called for condemnation and cancellation, there has been an unraveling.
When the patriots defeated the Red Coats at Yorktown, a British band played a song called, “Our World Turned Upside Down.” That’s how it feels now.
Maybe Charlie Kirk was holding our coalition together the whole time — combining a great political mind with the heart of a Christian martyr. Maybe without him we are broken in a million pieces, factions, where once we were the broadest coalition. Maybe this is the opening Candace Owens smelled when she started spreading conspiracies about Charlie’s brutal assassination, attacking Erika Kirk.
And now Vivek Ramaswamy, running to win the GOP nomination for governor of Ohio, chooses to start a row — in the bigoted NYT of all places — over what defines an American. Is it heritage or core values, nation or ideals? Really? You want to have this conversation now, with Dem snipers looking for weaknesses they can exploit to take back Congress in 2026? Until now I have been a Ramaswamy fan. But this strikes me as bad timing. Turns out Ramaswamy is an anchor baby, the first born in America to his immigrant Indian parents. Is he defending Hindus over Christians?
Whatever his motives, I stand with Harmeet Dhillon, our brilliant assistant attorney general heading the Civil Rights Division. It is unseemly, and disorienting, for conservative influencers to be screaming at one another. It’s as if conviction were our rite of passage, consensus our enemy. If the Dems take back the House, Trump will become a lame-duck, his hands tied by impeachment motions and attempts, again, to bankrupt and imprison him. Hey Tucker, do your ratings outweigh 47’s mandate?
As we approach the birth of our Lord, to say nothing of next year’s 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, we Americans have much to be thankful for.
On the political front, President Trump has righted the economy and started the long, difficult journey of repatriating the illegal immigrants who should never have been allowed to come here, some of them criminals and many of them ignorant of American ways and language, with no interest in assimilating. If anything, those Somalis in Minnesota and Ohio are eager not to accept our ways but to feed off our generosity to import theirs. He has made peace around the world, retaliated against ISIS, and pressured dictator Nicolas Madura to leave both Venezuela and Cuba.
On the health front, Bobby Kennedy’s Health & Human Services is restoring science and common sense. Vaccines are no longer required. Foods are being improved. And medical castration of children has been banned. “Men are men,” Deputy Secretary Jim O’Neill began a press conference last week banning so called transgender-affirming care. “And they can never become women. Women are women and they can never become men. Children are innocent, and they need our protection.” Hallelujah.
On the aesthetic front, Melania Trump has transformed the White House into a glittering jewel that gives life to the golden aura her husband promised on the campaign trail. She has a new documentary cementing her own legacy in a media landscape where she is only ignored, vilified, and snubbed. In theaters January 30. She must write her own story, because the media won’t even acknowledge her. Now, history will not soon forget her beauty or her strength, a truly stunning first lady.
True, there is much to worry about. Jews & Christians are being slaughtered, as Islamic terrorists wave their Palestinian flags shouting "Allahu Akbar” in search of world conquest. Free speech rights are being canceled in Britain, where parents protesting the rape of their young daughters at the hands of Pakistani immigrants are silenced with jail sentences. France and Germany are bending the knee to Islamic terrorists, canceling Christmas markets and New Year’s celebrations in fear of violence, instead of rounding up the usual suspects to preserve western civilization. Federal judges like James Boasberg are still trying to encroach on Trump’s presidential authority. For instance, “Maryland Dad” Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a gang member and wife abuser embraced by Dems, still has not been deported.
Against this backdrop of Trump’s wins and the world’s dangers, this intramural fight has broken out among MAGA. Vice President Vance has been trying to coral it within the tent. At TPUSA’s Amerifest, he rebutted the idea that America’s ideals are more important than either its ethnic diversity or its Christian heritage. “The only thing that has truly served as an anchor of the United States of America is that we have been — and by the grace of God, we always will be — a Christian nation.”
He did not mean that we all have to be Christians, only that we all define our nation by its morality, its adherence to godly grace. He did not mean that we all have to agree on everything, only that we hold hands in unity over our principles.
“President Trump did not build the greatest coalition in politics by running his supporters through endless, self-defeating purity tests. We have far more important work to do than canceling each other.
“We don’t care if you’re White or Black, rich or poor, young or old, rural or urban, controversial or a little bit boring, or somewhere in between… [P]eople of every faith come to our banner because they know that the America First movement will make their lives better. And they also know that the Democrats don’t care about anything other than maybe trans-ing their kids."
“So if you love America, if you want all of us to be richer, stronger, safer, and prouder, you have a home on this team. I didn’t bring a list of conservatives to denounce or to deplatform, and I don’t really care if some people out there – I’m sure we’ll have the fake news media – denounce me after this speech.
“I know some of you are discouraged by the infighting over any number of issues. Don’t be discouraged. Wouldn’t you rather lead a movement of freethinkers who sometimes disagree than a bunch of drones who take their orders from George Soros?”
The crowd of 30,000 — twice the number who attended last year’s Amerifest — roared.
When General George Washington led a small band of boats across the Delaware River on Christmas 1776, the Continental Army was on the ropes, and some were calling for him to be fired over losing New York. He aimed to surprise the Hessian soldiers at Trenton, perhaps sleeping off a drunken Christmas, gaining an upset victory. Years later, in 1851, a German artist named Emanuel Leutze painted a portrait of the crossing, with Washington kneeling to pray as the American flag flew overhead.
But in fact Congress had not yet approved the American flag. On that cold night, on that Christmas night, the Continental Army flew under the Pine Tree flag, with its appeal not to nation but to heaven. New England’s white pines were highly desired by Great Britain, and they became a great source of symbolism for the colonists, a resistance to colonization and a desire for independence.
Next year, on the 250th anniversary of Thomas Jefferson’s majestic Declaration of Independence, my new novel is published, in which I bring the founding fathers — and one founding mother — down from heaven, to participate as actors in a re-enactment at the National Archives. Their interactions with 21st century Americans are hilarious — Ben Franklin debates Elon Musk on history’s best invention, Scott Bessent hosts his counterpart Alexander Hamilton for lunch at the Fed. More profound is the running conversation among the founders about whether this is the America they intended to leave us.
The book is called Trump’s Superpower: A Historical Novel About the Founding Fathers & One Founding Mother, and if you pre-order it now on Amazon it will help boost sales — good for me, good for you (I think you’ll like it), and good for MAGA.
Merry Christmas.
Powerful piece!! What weight of analysis. Everything you said is so important and we should all take it to heart and keep it in mind.