I’m not going to blow smoke up all your asses and say I’m a lifelong democrat who is voting republican for the first time in my life blah blah blah...(for the record, I haven’t voted democrat since I was 22 in 2000 when I figured if it ain’t broke don’t fix it, and was immediately embarrassed by their post-election shenanigans)

BUT

2016 came and I was not a Trump guy by any stretch of the imagination. I voted Cruz in the primaries. Then, in November of that year, I just...couldn’t do it. In my mind I was left with a choice between Annoying Orange and the devil. For the first time in my adult life, to my eternal shame, I left it blank at the top of the ticket. I figured I live in Texas, it’s a safe republican state and Clinton was going to win overall anyways. I watched the returns, and I’ll be damned. I mean, I was thrilled that Hillary Clinton Is Not And Will Never Be President, but a little apprehensive about a bombastic game show host as president.

At that point, for me, looking forward to the 2020 election, I saw myself as persuadable by the democrats on two conditions. First, Donald Trump had to be half as bad as what I feared. Second, the democrats had to not be batshit insane. Neither of those came to pass.

The Forever Coup started almost immediately and continues to this day with unhinged conspiracy theories and ridiculous news coverage. I started for the first time checking to primary sources the things I read or saw in the “news”. I thought to myself, “There’s enough questionable stuff here - why do they feel the need to make easily fact-checkable shit up about the man?” I mean, he’s not perfect, but damn. It’s not just activist reporters who I was already distrustful of that went off the deep end, high level democrat politicians embraced the stupidity more than I remembered them being. Add to that the post-impeachment performative nonsense since the George Floyd riots started...all they had to do was not be crazy.

As an extra added bonus, Trump has exposed the failure addicts of Conservative, Inc. as the grifters they are. I was an avid reader of National Review, Weekly Standard...frauds - the whole lot of ‘em.

The initial unforced political rookie mistakes and trusting the wrong people errors all were unfortunate, but the results all started piling up in DJT’s favor. Troops coming home. Best economy basically ever. Even the current recovery from our initial attempted economic suicide earlier this year has been great, and he’s done it all with everyone laughing in his face like the braying jackasses they are.

(Seriously, I think this is the first time in the past 30 years democrats haven’t been all, “Yeah, but in Sweden they do it like...”)

Anyhow, I say all that to say this - last time I did not vote for Donald Trump. This time? I’ve donated. I’ve bought swag. I’ve got a sign and a bumper sticker, and I’ll crawl over broken glass to vote for this man this November, and I know there are more like me.

Also, now? I’ll jack off with a glove made of thumb tacks before I vote for a democrat for anything. Ever. It’s the same reason you don’t negotiate with terrorists or buy a toddler the candy they’re throwing a fit over in the grocery store - reward them and it only encourages further misbehavior.

I wish the President and his wife well as they recover from the Covid and I look forward to pulling the lever for Donald J. Trump a second time (assuming voting for him in an uncontested primary counts).