Revisiting The Essay That Killed My Career

"With God As My Witness, I Will Never Vote for Donald Trump"

It seems to have been memory-holed on the site that carried it originally, but this is why we love the Internet Archive. They still had it linked, but I will post the text below.

Reading it today makes me realize that even though I knew it was over, I was still trying to drag my conservative friends away from him. I was trying to break off anyone — the gun people, the abortion people, the Consitutalists, the limited government types…anyone. I know today that it was all for naught.

There were quite a few people posting these essays at the time, including Ben Shapiro, Erick Erickson, et al. Almost all made their peace with the Devil in time.

Almost overnight, I learned what it meant to oppose Trump at that point. My clients got calls from Trump world and Trump allies and either fired me outright, ghosted me, or told me I was insane. “Get on board, Rick!” they said, “He’s going to be the nominee, and you’re a party loyalist.”

I guess I wasn’t.

Lord, that was a hard time for me and my family. A very, very good business was burned to the ground overnight. I nearly lost everything, including my house and my sanity. It wasn’t just the malice of the Trump world; it was the cowardice of other Republicans who so easily sold cheap and slipped on the red hat without a second of guilt. “Love ya, man but…” Almost all the consultants who bent the knee kept right on keeping on.

Contrary to popular belief, there were no big “Never Trump” sugar daddies, and I’ve never been paid a dime to appear on MSNBC or CNN.

This essay marked the turning point where things got very dark, very fast. I had any number of chances to “make it right” with my former colleagues and clients, and some stubborn, slowly crystalizing part of my soul wouldn’t let me bend. I’d helped make this monster, and my penance was tough.

I don’t regret sticking to my guns. I regret how much it hurt my family and the attacks my kids faced in particular. I regret losing friendships that lasted decades…until Trump.

Last week, we saw Steve Schmidt abandon the pro-democracy fight to attack President Joe Biden. I believe only two people benefit from this folly; Steve gets a dopamine hit and a paycheck. Donald Trump gets a divided Democratic Party, and a set of attacks on Joe Biden packed up for Dean Phillips in a neat little bundle by a campaign pro.

I’m ashamed of him and for him.

I’m writing a piece on sticking with Joe Biden in 2024, which will likely post tomorrow, but for the moment, reflecting back on this piece from 2016 is a reminder that when I make a political commitment, I stick with it:

With God As My Witness, I Will Never Vote For Donald Trump
First Published in IJR, 23 February 2016.

https://twitter.com/TheRickWilson/status/702150152136609793

Many on the right have come forward in the past few days to outline why they will never vote for Trump, and their reasons are articulate, principled, eloquent, and moving. If it wasn’t already abundantly clear from the last eight months, let me join the chorus; I will never vote for Donald Trump.

Never.

I will never vote for Donald Trump, not even if he’s the Republican nominee. I will never vote for Donald Trump, not even if Ronald Reagan and William F. Buckley rise from the grave and beg me to support him. I will never vote for Donald Trump, not even if it means he forms a third party and runs as the narcissist sociopath he truly is. I will never vote for Donald Trump, no matter how many times the liberal media declares his inevitability and his immunity to scrutiny and attack or how many times the “conservative” media ignores his record and beliefs to fellate him on-air.

I will never vote for Donald Trump because he's a pro-gun control, pro-single-payer health care, pro-eminent domain, pro-abortion, and pro-statism liberal who will immediately revert to form when he's finished selling his fauxservatism to people he patently views as rubes. I will never vote for Donald Trump, because absolutely nothing he can say or do will cover the fact he is obviously and blatantly lying every time his thin lips move and his freakishly tiny hands pound the podium.

I will never vote for Donald Trump because it's utterly obvious that he lacks the temperament, judgment, and basic sanity to be placed as steward over 7,700 nuclear weapons and the rest of the awesome power of the United States military. I will never vote for Donald Trump because he's a draft-dodging blowhard who was chasing strange in Midtown when John McCain was having his arms broken by the Vietnamese.

I will never vote for Donald Trump to toe the “he’s my nominee” line because if he wins my party’s nomination it means the GOP has sold itself to a soulless, utterly unprincipled liberal narcissist bent on its destruction and that of conservatism. I will never vote for Donald Trump, because it would require the complete abdication of every political value that informs my life; a reverence for the Constitution and the Republic and for limited-government conservative principles that shaped this nation and that continue to represent the only viable opposition to the galloping growth of the state. I will never vote for Donald Trump because the solution to a Washington's crony capitalism problems isn't to elect an even more egregious and lavishly corrupt crony capitalist.

I will never vote for Donald Trump because he's created a political culture that revels in its own willingness to be conned and governed only by its talk-radio-fueled rage. I will never vote for Donald Trump because he's stoked the darkest and most evil corners of his fandom with praise and approval.

I will not vote for Donald Trump, no matter how often his fanboys spam my timeline, voicemail and inbox with their delusional theories ranging from white genocide to chemtrails to the international Jewish conspiracy to Obama's super-secret plan to impose sharia law during his third term. I will not vote for Trump no matter how many insults Trumpkins throw at me. (Really, I noticed I was bald a long time ago, and that one doesn't sting. Up your insult game.)

Now, unlike Donald Trump, I’ve never cast a vote for a Democrat. I’ve never worked for a Democrat. I've never donated to a Democrat. I've never been registered to vote as a Democrat. I’ve never been a cheerleader for a Democratic candidate or officeholder. I’ve fought them in large races and small since I entered politics.

Politics is tough, and I’ve done it a long time. I don’t care about being attacked in the course of campaigns. I never wanted to live in some white-glove political drawing room with a handy fainting couch; I give as good as I get, and I’ve spent years making liberal Democrats clutch their pearls and lose their minds. I will not vote for Hillary Clinton, or Bernie Sanders, or whatever flotsam washes up from their process after she’s indicted or he ascends to the comet.

I have opposed Trump from the first day of his wretched, crapulous campaign. I have opposed Trump when his clownish minions called my clients seeking to have me fired. I have opposed The Donald when his slavish of Trumpbart stooges ran story after story attacking me, and unleashed their fever-swamp yokels on my email, my phone, and my family.

I will continue to oppose Trump, implacably and unceasingly.

I will not bend. I will not cease this fight. I will never embrace this thuggish, venal, gibbering psychotic, and I will not countenance those who do. I don't care if I'm the last Republican in America standing to resist this man, but with almighty God as my witness, I will not vote for Donald Trump.