Here we are at the first anniversary of the Trump presidency.

Or the fifth, depending on how you count.

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Many things are striking about it.

One of them is the number of his opponents with Trump Derangement Syndrome.

Another is the severity of their Trump Derangement Syndrome.

Is derangement a new malady among opponents of presidents standing athwart the statist agenda?

No, of course not.

Yet Trump Derangement Syndrome is different in both the number of his opponents who have it and in its severity.

So what’s up?

If those with Trump Derangement Syndrome are smart, which many of them are, and if–if–the president were what they assert, then they’d be wise to let him self-destruct.

As the old saying goes, when your opponents are destroying themselves, get out of the way.

Yet whatever one thinks of the president, he’s not what those with Trump Derangement Syndrome assert. He’s just not.

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So what’s really up with them?

We can’t get inside their heads. And there’s little point in asking them publicly, because they’re not likely to be candid.

We do know this though.

Statists, including modern-day American liberals, tend at base to seek to aggrandize power to government with them in charge. Traditional principles of limited government and ordered liberty tend not to be points on their compasses.

Some of them find it hard to engage in debate without falsely calling their opponents bigots or national socialists.

President Trump has pierced their lurid veils.

He speaks not the language of the engineer, the scientist, the health professional, the lawyer, or the government official, but of the business leader, particularly the real-estate developer that he is.

Although he’s often not the most tactful spokesman for the cause, Trump 47 is obviously better than Trump 45. Indeed, he’s often the most effective spokesman for the cause, particularly on the campaign trail.

Not because he concludes rallies with the Trump Dance to a Village People song, but because he has a persuasive message that he delivers effectively.

In a sense, President Trump brings ideas to kitchen tables, diners, and truck stops throughout the country even more effectively than any American statesman since President Reagan, whose 115th birthday is today.

As the results of the 2024 presidential election demonstrate, he’s reaching people to whom many Republican candidates haven’t consistently and effectively reached out.

Did he win a majority of them in 2024? No, that takes many elections to accomplish.

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Many of those with Trump Derangement Syndrome, severe though the derangement can be, are lucid enough to understand that President Trump’s policy and rhetorical success undermines statists and their statism. In the United States, that means liberals and liberalism.

If you, faithful reader of this column, stood in their shoes, wouldn’t you resent his undermining of statism, just as you’d have resented Reagan’s undermining of statism in the 1980s?

What would you do if you were in their shoes?

Well, let’s see.

— You’d have impeached Trump 45.

— Between Trump 45 and Trump 47, you’d have prosecuted him on multiple fronts, including during the 2024 campaign, when you’d have cheered when a state-trial-court judge made him sit through a trial of him.

— Between Trump 45 and Trump 47, you’d have celebrated as the intervening president opened America’s southern border to however many millions of illegal aliens, whom you’d shower with taxpayers’ money, which after you grant citizenship to the illegal aliens, may convince them to vote for your candidates.

— All the while you’d conceive elaborate fraud schemes in states such as Minnesota, where you’d bilk taxpayers out of billions of dollars.

— With Trump 47 having shut the border and started deporting criminal illegal aliens, you’d stir up riots that you’d convert into insurrections, all the while labeling as “peaceful protesters” those who take part, sometimes threatening the very lives of law-enforcement officers. In other words, you’d speak like the Red Queen in Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking Glass.

— You’d file lawsuit after lawsuit in sympathetic federal-district courts–in law, that’s called “forum shopping”–and seek to enjoin, meaning stop, policies with which you disagree.

— You’d do everything you could to prevent sensible Democrats, of which there are many, from retaking their party.

All the while, the establishment press, being reliably on your side, would continually grease the skids.

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Dr. John Viehe’s televised Chautauqua People interview of Dr. Randy Elf is at https://accesschautauquacountytv.org/episode/GVbIPKfKKmw. It addresses the president at 0:15.00 to 0:17.10.

(c) 2026 BY RANDY ELF