{"id":2691664,"date":"2026-10-26T07:24:02","date_gmt":"2026-10-26T11:24:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/utm_sourcerssutm_mediumrssutm_campaignthe-anti-trump-left-has-descended-into-a-persistent-hallucinatory-state\/"},"modified":"2026-10-26T07:24:02","modified_gmt":"2026-10-26T11:24:02","slug":"utm_sourcerssutm_mediumrssutm_campaignthe-anti-trump-left-has-descended-into-a-persistent-hallucinatory-state","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/utm_sourcerssutm_mediumrssutm_campaignthe-anti-trump-left-has-descended-into-a-persistent-hallucinatory-state\/","title":{"rendered":"The Anti-Trump Left Has Descended Into A Hallucinatory State"},"content":{"rendered":"<aside class=\"mashsb-container mashsb-main mashsb-stretched\"><div class=\"mashsb-box\"><div class=\"mashsb-count mash-medium\" style=\"&quot;\"><div class=\"counts mashsbcount\">18<\/div><span class=\"mashsb-sharetext\">SHARES<\/span><\/div><div class=\"mashsb-buttons\"><a class=\"mashicon-facebook mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.conservativenewsdaily.net%2Fbreaking-news%2Futm_sourcerssutm_mediumrssutm_campaignthe-anti-trump-left-has-descended-into-a-persistent-hallucinatory-state%2F\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Facebook<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-twitter mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?text=&amp;url=https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=2691664&amp;via=ConservNewsDly\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Twitter<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-subscribe mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"#\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Subscribe<\/span><\/a><div class=\"onoffswitch2 mash-medium mashsb-noshadow\" style=\"display:none\"><\/div><\/div>\n            <\/div>\n                <div style=\"clear:both\"><\/div><\/aside>\n            <!-- Share buttons by mashshare.net - Version: 4.0.47--><p class=\"readmore\">\n    <button onclick=\"showReadMore()\" id=\"readmorebtn\">Read more&#8230;<\/button>\n<\/p>\n<hr id=\"line\">\n<span id=\"more\"><\/p>\n<div>\n<p>You\u2019re arguing with psychosis. They\u2019re screaming about things that aren\u2019t there.<\/p>\n<p>The first task of defeating political opponents is to understand who they are. What is it that Democrats think they\u2019re doing? And what they think they\u2019re doing in 2026 amounts to a relentless ritual hallucination in the service of an institutional status quo. They\u2019re making up a fake world in their heads to protect their paychecks: in media, in academia, in government, in the results-not-required world of the nonprofit organization. <\/p>\n<p>If you doubt that, go read the opinion pages of The New York Times, the agenda-setting newsletter of the government and nonprofit class. You couldn\u2019t possibly do better than to start with Nicholas Kristof\u2019s <a href=\"https:\/\/archive.ph\/vIVlr\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Oct. 24 column<\/a> about Mean Orange Man, the journalistic equivalent of a street crazy babbling to himself on a bus bench. The theme of the essay is <em>American norms<\/em>. Trump is a deviation; Kristof is fighting for things that are normal.<\/p>\n<p>To borrow from Mary McCarthy: Every word is a lie, including \u201cand\u201d and \u201cthe.\u201d Pick any paragraph. Here\u2019s one: \u201cNorms of self-restraint historically made the system work. Presidents did not try to crush law firms or universities, nor did their administrations mislead federal courts or send armed officers into cities, where they shot people. Presidents quarreled with allies but didn\u2019t threaten to invade Greenland.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Every word is insane and overwrought, but \u201cnor did their administrations mislead federal courts or send armed officers into cities, where they shot people\u201d is <em>very special<\/em>. There have never been armed federal officers in American cities before? Federal agents never shot anyone until Mean Orange Trump?<\/p>\n<p>Carlos Boles was <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cbsnews.com\/news\/us-marshals-cop-shot-in-st-louis-gunfight\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">shot and killed<\/a> by a deputy U.S, marshal in 2011, when Barack Obama was president. That same year, during the same presidency, an ICE agent <a href=\"https:\/\/www.ocregister.com\/2012\/07\/11\/ice-agent-wont-be-charged-in-shooting-2\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">shot at<\/a> Daniel Noriega in Anaheim, California, but missed. Adrian Ricketts was <a href=\"https:\/\/nypost.com\/2013\/03\/06\/fbi-agent-wont-be-charged-in-queens-car-thief-shooting\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">shot<\/a> by an FBI agent in New York City in 2012, when Barack Obama was president. \u00a0Fernando Llanez was <a href=\"https:\/\/www.10news.com\/news\/chula-vista-police-respond-to-shots-fired-in-eastlake-area-061416\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">shot and killed by<\/a> an HSI\/ICE agent in June of 2016, in a suburb of San Diego, same president. Jamarion Robinson was <a href=\"https:\/\/www.11alive.com\/article\/news\/local\/76-gunshot-wounds-0-police-cameras-countless-questions\/85-353829438\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">shot<\/a> by deputy U.S. marshals, dozens of times, in August of 2016, when Barack Obama was president.<\/p>\n<p>This is only a partial list, but you get the point: Kristof says that things have gotten so bad under this monster Trump that federal agents are in our cities, shooting people, and this is a terrifying deviation from American political norms. What?<\/p>\n<p>Or take, \u201cPresidents quarreled with allies but didn\u2019t threaten to invade Greenland.\u201d If there\u2019s one thing we know about American history <em>for sure<\/em>, it\u2019s that no American president has ever threatened to invade anything before. Even if you just limit the argument to presidents threatening allies, Kristof\u2019s case is still insane. Manuel Noriega was a longtime American ally until George H.W. Bush decided to invade Panama and capture him. Here\u2019s a 2017 <a href=\"https:\/\/apnews.com\/article\/3fe8263a03504924b32f09b7fb0db0e6\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">AP headline<\/a> about his death: \u201cNoriega, US ally turned target, dies after decades in jail.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Henry Kissinger responded to the oil crisis by <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/1975\/01\/06\/archives\/kissingers-talk-of-force-over-oil-worries-germans.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">hinting broadly<\/a> at the American willingness to use military force against the major oil-producing nations, and President Gerald Ford <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/1975\/01\/13\/archives\/ford-says-he-backs-kissinger-on-force-if-essential-in-mideast.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">backed him up<\/a>. No American president ever threatened to invade anything before? Again, what on Earth is this person talking about?<\/p>\n<p>If no American president has ever dared to quarrel with our European allies, by the way, what was <a href=\"https:\/\/www.historytoday.com\/archive\/head-head\/how-did-suez-crisis-change-world\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Eisenhower doing<\/a> during the Suez Crisis?<\/p>\n<p>The relentless handwringing and panic-mongering is literally <em>unreal<\/em>: It invents an American past that never existed, then laments its fake loss.<\/p>\n<p>Kristof: \u201cOther presidents redecorated; Trump tore down the East Wing of the White House, is building a ballroom and aims to construct a so-called Arc de Trump.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Trump is so unspeakably evil that he\u2019s \u2026 building a ballroom. What on Earth? President Harry Truman <a href=\"https:\/\/www.whitehousehistory.org\/collections\/president-trumans-renovation\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">gutted the White House<\/a> so completely that he spent three years of his presidency living at Blair House, which wasn\u2019t a crisis at all. Neither is building a ballroom, an absolutely bizarre thing to depict as a devastating assault on American political norms.<\/p>\n<p>Go through Kristof\u2019s column and pick out something he identifies as <em>shockingly unprecedented and a terrifying assault on American political norms<\/em>, and see how many seconds it takes you to identify examples that disprove his argument. Don\u2019t make it a drinking game, because you\u2019ll be unconscious before you make the halfway mark. <\/p>\n<p>If you dig under Kristof\u2019s fantasy world claims, you begin to see what he\u2019s doing. Sample claim: \u201cTrump has worked to undermine the entire international system the United States created after World War II \u2014 for our benefit and the world\u2019s \u2014 to promote peace, trade, prosperity and health. Ebola, poverty and Vladimir Putin are beneficiaries.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The international system he\u2019s describing is money trading hands. A system to \u201cpromote peace, trade, prosperity, and health,\u201d like USAID and the State Department before Mean Orange Man <a href=\"https:\/\/apnews.com\/article\/layoffs-diplomats-state-department-trump-rubio-bfdb86767b7bd5b6570819d404a7782e\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">laid off<\/a> a bunch of employees, <em>paid more people<\/em>. It\u2019s money: When Kristof wails about the loss of the international system founded on the strength of American political norms, he\u2019s speaking for friends who lost grants and paychecks. <\/p>\n<p>This fake-terror caterwauling is about cash, cash, and cash. Kristof describes \u201cthree pillars that explain the rise, strength and resilience of our nation,\u201d and it\u2019s all <em>funding<\/em>. The United States, he writes, \u201coperates great universities and research institutions that are among the nation\u2019s crown jewels,\u201d but Trump\u00a0\u201chas variously attempted to defund them, cancel their tax-exempt status and make it harder for foreign students to enroll.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Harvard\u2019s endowment has <a href=\"https:\/\/www.thecrimson.com\/article\/2026\/10\/16\/harvard-68-billion-endowment\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">grown to $68 billion<\/a>, but Mean Hitler Trump is threatening their tax-exempt status. You begin to understand what norms Nicholas Kristof is trying to protect, and why he\u2019s so worked up about it.<\/p>\n<p>We head into an election talking about nothing \u2013 actually <em>nothing<\/em>: For the first time in American history, shattering our long-established norms, federal agents have guns and there\u2019s construction at the White House, oh no. The wholesale manufacture of narrative distraction is the thing the legacy media are currently calling politics, and it\u2019s fake from top to bottom. Treat it with the contempt it merits.<\/p>\n<hr>\n<p>   Chris Bray is a senior correspondent at The Federalist and a former infantry sergeant in the U.S. Army. He has a history PhD from the University of California Los Angeles, not that it did him any good. He also posts on Substack, at &#8220;Tell Me How This Ends,&#8221; <a href=\"https:\/\/chrisbray.substack.com\/\">here<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<p><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>You\u2019re arguing with psychosis. They\u2019re screaming about things that aren\u2019t there. The first task of defeating political opponents is to understand who they are. What is it that Democrats think they\u2019re doing? And what they think they\u2019re doing in 2026 amounts to a relentless ritual hallucination in the service of an institutional status quo. They\u2019re<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2086,"featured_media":2691665,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/thefederalist.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/crazy-scaled.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[546],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2691664","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-the-federalist"],"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/thefederalist.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/crazy-scaled.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2691664","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2086"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2691664"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2691664\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2691665"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2691664"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2691664"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2691664"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}