Ann Coulter’s In Trump We Trust

1,508 words

Ann Coulter
In Trump We Trust: E Pluribus Awesome!
New York: Sentinel, 2016

If you’ve been wishing that someone would write a book setting the record straight on Donald Trump, a book guaranteed to be a best-seller that will reach hundreds of thousands (possibly millions) of people, then you have got your wish. Ann Coulter’s last eleven books were New York Times bestsellers, and given the timeliness of In Trump We Trust, this one is guaranteed to surpass them all. It is about as good an argument for Trump as we could have hoped for — and Alt-Right readers will find it surprisingly frank.

As I write this, Coulter’s book has not yet made the Times list, as it was only just released, but a glance at that list is a real eye opener. The top five books (in hardcover non-fiction) include Armageddon: How Trump Can Beat Hillary by Dick Morris and Eileen McGann, Hillary’s America by Dinesh D’Souza, and Crisis of Character: A White House Secret Service Officer Discloses His Firsthand Experience with Hillary, Bill, and How They Operate by Gary J. Byrne. In Trump We Trust will be joining these in short order, at position #1. It looks like a whole lot of people want to read the truth about Donald Trump and Lying Crooked Hillary this summer.

An Amazon reviewer of Coulter’s 2015 bestseller Adios, America remarked that “Certainly, Ann Coulter is not a person I would call after a bad day at work.” I don’t get this. If I knew Ann Coulter I would call her all the time. Indeed, I would like to wake up next to Ann Coulter (and I say this about very few women). We would cuddle and I would listen to her most recent thoughts on NAFTA. Then I would cook her breakfast — for Coulter is a goddess, and I would not allow her hands anywhere near a stove. I’m sure Milo has had similar reveries.

For those of you who have never read La Coulter and think of her only as one of the fast talking heads on Fox News, you are in for a surprise. Her books are extensively researched (Adios, America heaves with around a thousand endnote citations), well-written, and often side-splittingly funny. They are also extremely radical. Most of Adios, America reads like it was written by a hard-bitten, red-pilled Alt-Right blogger. And, indeed, Coulter has been red pilled. It’s all too obvious. Yet she walks a fine line, never explicitly coming out as a White Nationalist. Her books are filled with signals, however — and In Trump We Trust goes further than ever before.

The first ten pages of this book include a defense of white people, and an argument that we are an endangered species. It’s just that Coulter never uses the words “white people.” Instead, she frequently uses “Americans,” as in the following:

Only generalizations that are negative — about anyone other than Americans — constitute hate crimes.

And again:

Why shouldn’t Americans fight to preserve their culture? All of us have a place that we think of as home. . . . Other people are allowed to have a home.

Lest there be any doubt as to whom “Americans” really refers, Coulter tells us that liberals “won’t be happy until the DAR-eligible population is a tiny minority.” My mother was in the DAR, and I can tell you that the only black women around were the ones serving tea. It doesn’t take Leo Strauss to decipher esoteric writing like this. But then comes the real kicker. Having just referred to the left’s antipathy to “Americans,” and desire to replace “Americans,” Coulter writes

Of all the places in the history of the world, this is the culture that gleams and works the best. There’s a reason the Magna Carta and the Glorious Revolution happened where they happened. [Wait! I thought she was talking about “America.”] and that the Declaration of Independence was written in a British colony. It’s not in the Anglo-Saxon character either to take orders or to give them. That’s why the socialist left finally gave up on traditional Americans and pinned their hopes on immigrants, who bring their socialism with them.

Folks, the only way to get more explicit than this is to come right out and say “white people.” But what’s in a name? All of these quotes are from Chapter One. Coulter has correctly perceived that Trumpism is a white people’s movement; a movement of white Americans. And she puts it up front, right in the first ten pages, where she also correctly identifies the one issue that is responsible for Trump’s spectacular rise: immigration. The chapter ends with Coulter sounding like Hitler in the satiric German novel Look Who’s Back (Er ist wieder da):

Conservationists correctly point out that once a species is gone, it’s gone. There’s no getting it back. As Western Europe is discovering, the same is true of countries. If Trump loses, at least we’ll finally know: it was too late.

(Note the careful use of “countries” rather than “nations,” “peoples,” or “races,” which would be more obvious choices given the context.)

This is what makes In Trump We Trust a remarkable book, for an utterly remarkable year. As I have noted elsewhere, I didn’t expect things to happen this quickly. Hell, I didn’t expect them to happen within my lifetime. A bestselling author and TV pundit is two millimeters away from arguing for White Nationalism. Coulter is far less cautious and far more open even than Pat Buchanan.

The rest of In Trump We Trust has Coulter defending Trump against the tide of lies that has been splooged by the mainstream media, Democrats, and (most contemptibly of all) the Republican Establishment. Her treatment of Trump’s rivals for the GOP nomination is especially delicious. Every time Coulter references Jeb Bush it’s always “Jeb!” In the process, she manages to educate the reading public about Trump’s actual positions.

Coulter’s attitude toward Trump is often delightfully irreverent. She refers to him, for example, as “The Great Orange Hope.” Early on she writes

If we were in the laboratory, designing the perfect presidential candidate, it’s unlikely we would have produced a tasteless, publicity-seeking, coarse, billionaire, reality TV star.

Coulter is also often brilliant in her use of images. For example:

It was as if all the Republican candidates got together and agreed to never use steroids. No one would be at a competitive disadvantage, because none of them would have popular positions. Then Trump came along and said, I don’t care, I’m taking steroids. That made him much better than all the other candidates. When he didn’t back down in the face of wall-to-wall hysteria, it showed his courage and toughness.

And:

The commentariat denounced Trump’s immigration policies, then quickly returned to saying he had no policies at all. It was as if JFK had said we were going to the moon and the entire media shouted back, “Okay, but what’s your policy on going to the moon.”

Coulter devotes an entire chapter, in fact, to one of the tactics frequently employed against Trump: the claim that he “has no policies” or has no “policy specifics.” This despite the fact that, as Coulter discusses at length, Trump has issued detailed policy statements. Her occasional penchant for overstatement shows itself when she describes one of these as “the most august political document since the Magna Carta.”

At one point in this otherwise excellent book Ann Coulter writes

If Trump accomplishes nothing else, by the end of this, when the tide recedes he will have validated scoffing at political correctness and enlarged the space of what can be discussed.

An unusually understated claim from Miss Coulter. I think Trump has done much more than this. Whether he wins or loses (and I think he will win) he has set something in motion that is bigger than he is, and potentially a lot more explosive than mere “scoffing.”

One of the effects of the Trump phenomenon has been to expose the noxious malice and mendacity of the Left as never before. And this is particularly true of the media. I suppose I should greet this with satisfaction: never before have I and my friends been proved righter. Yet I find I take no satisfaction in it. Instead, I feel the most intense, gnawing hatred and anger that I have ever felt before in my life, and it grows by the day. It is not pleasant. And I find that I am growing more radical — something I didn’t think was possible. Some years ago I wrote an essay about my difficulty in coming to terms with the reality of evil. I’m over that. The masks have fallen, and there it is as plain as day. Ultimately, I do not think that there is a peaceful solution to the problem of the Left.

Still, if Trump wins there is some good that can be accomplished. I know that my readers are probably already converted, but buy this book anyway. And share it with the unconverted.

And take the Trumpwear challenge!