Happy Inauguration Day to all the haters and losers

The loser/hater community now faces an enemy who has become massively emboldened by that community’s own ruinous tactics. Trump’s foes are the authors of their own destruction, writes Tim Blair.

It’s been the happiest week since the US election. And it may turn out to be the happiest week until the Australian election.

But even during this time of gleeful wonderment, please spare a thought for those less fortunate. Please think of the sad, desperate and broken who are unable to celebrate as we celebrate.

Please consider those who for years have been repeatedly, memorably and accurately described by President Donald Trump as “haters and losers”.

Even the man himself advises that we extend kindness to his enemies, so let’s follow the newly inaugurated US leader’s example.

“Every time I speak of the haters and losers I do so with great love and affection,” Trump announced online in 2014. “They cannot help the fact that they were born f--ked up!”

Exactly true. Medical science has all the evidence.

“Don’t feel so stupid or insecure,” Trump counselled in another message to his adversaries. “It’s not your fault.”

Protesters representing a variety of rights groups attend the "People's March on Washington" on January 18, 2025 in Washington, DC. Picture: Getty Images via AFP

Besides a general empathy for our fellow humans, as hatey and loserish as they may be, there’s another reason for gentleness in the wake of Trump’s White House revival.

This is because the loser/hater community now faces an enemy who has become massively emboldened by that community’s own ruinous tactics. Trump’s foes are the authors of their own destruction.

At this point, it would be needlessly cruel to rub it in. But I will.

By pausing Trump’s presidency, they’ve increased his power. Even the jokers at CNN know it.

“Trump returns to the White House after four years away and has the chance to restock an entire governing team, set a new course and learn lessons from the past,” the Clown News Network reported last week.

“It’s more like another first term than a second one.”

It sure is. Second presidential terms are usually lame-duck affairs.

This, however, may be more of a wild eagle.

Supporters of US President-elect Donald Trump wait outside for a MAGA victory rally at Capital One Arena in Washington, DC,ahead of Trump's inauguration. Picture: Angela Weiss / AFP

“What will he do with his do-over?” CNN’s pre-inauguration Trump analysis asked.

“Will it be more ‘American Carnage?’ Or will he try to broaden his appeal …?”

Sadly for the almost universally anti-Trump US media, the President’s appeal was obviously broadened in last year’s election result and broadens further still.

“A majority of Americans are optimistic about the next four years with Donald Trump, even more so than they were in 2017 before his first term,” a CBS News poll found on Monday. “And most are hopeful about the coming year.”

The most hopeful of them all, impressively, were in the youngest voting cohort. Americans aged between 18 and 29 came in at a hefty 67 per cent when asked if they were optimistic about the next four years under Trump.

The numbers tail off as voters get older, with enthusiasm among the 65-plus crowd still positive at 51 per cent. But don’t dismiss that earlier figure. Trump has got the kids on board, which is a gigantic turnaround.

Meanwhile, some among Trump’s relatively youthful political opposition now sound battle-soured and ancient. “We are on the eve of an authoritarian administration,” far-left Democrat congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez whined online.

“This is what 21st century fascism is starting to look like.”

That’s precisely the sort of crazy commie talk that got Trump
re-elected in the first place.

Ocasio-Cortez and her fellow Democrats spent practically the entire 2024 presidential campaign demonising Trump as a Hitlerian demon creature, got completely smashed, yet are running with the same strategy in 2025.

Well, not all of them.

A few who were front and centre during 2017’s big anti-Trump rage festivals are now backing off.

President-Elect Donald Trump and Vice President-elect JD Vance. Picture: Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images/AFP

“The time to express outrage in that way has passed,” Vanessa Wruble, an anti-Trump protest leader eight years ago who seems to have grown up.

Leftist outlet Politico recently reported: “When asked why she’s forgoing protesting this time around, Wruble said she’s ‘not that type of progressive anymore’ frustrated at what she views as a political left that is ‘completely cannibalising itself’.”

Chomp, chomp, chomp. Told you this was a week to be happy.

“Washington on the eve of Trump’s second inauguration feels very different than on the eve of his first,” wrote a wistful Peter Baker, chief White House correspondent for the New York Times.

“The bristling tension and angry defiance have given way to accommodation and submission. The Resistance of 2017 has faded into the Resignation of 2025.”

And with it may fade the wokeness that thrived in Trump’s absence.

In unrelated news, a convicted Virginia sex criminal who identifies as transgender has been charged with exposing himself in a girls’ high school locker room.

His name is Richard Cox.

Please do not laugh.

We’re not quite liberated from wokeness yet.