by Roger Kimball
From “No Kings” tantrums to ballroom hysteria, Democrats’ endless outrage shows the same pattern—Trump leads, they react, and outrage is all they have left.
The Democrats appear to be a never-ending source of pitiable entertainment these days. Last week, it was the pathetic “No Kings” (what some mischievous wag called “No Brains”) rallies across the country. Those 2,700 anti-Trump therapy sessions for aging, anencephalic boomers were funded to the tune of $294 million by such public-spirited individuals and entities as Arabella Advisors, the Tides Foundation, George Soros, and Warren Buffett. Such streams of cash funneled millions through dozens of left-leaning entities, including the American Civil Liberties Union, the National LGBTQ Task Force, the Sierra Club Foundation, the Democracy Forward Foundation, and other havens for the perpetually aggrieved.
It was a noisy but preposterous temper tantrum, full of sound and fury, signifying stupidity. The union of Kumbayah gestures with rage-filled pantomimes was both inadvertently comic and repellent, the odor of rotting pseudo-idealism wafting over the proceedings everywhere.
The insurmountable problem all of those protestors faced was the incontrovertible fact that Donald Trump is not a king. He is a duly elected president who handily won both the Electoral College and the popular vote. He campaigned precisely on the issues that the unhappy pot-bangers and sign-wavers bewailed: closing the border, expelling illegal migrants, dismantling the woke DEI apparat in academia and the federal government, and resuscitating and Americanizing the U.S. economy.
If Trump were a king, why would he not simply outlaw such puerile displays of maliciousness as the “No Kings” rallies? Why wouldn’t he simply decree the government open again? No, the whole thing was ridiculous. I doubt that even the participants could have taken their make-believe protests seriously. But they probably feel they have to do something to make themselves heard these days. In the face of the perpetual-motion machine that is Donald Trump, what is an underemployed Democrat to do?
Just as nature abhors a vacuum, so the wokerati abhor an absence of outrage. It is an addiction, a sickness, a craving that cannot be denied. “Outrage or burst”: that’s their motto. So no sooner had the hangover of the “No Kings” fiasco begun to dissipate than a new draught was necessary. Trump supplied it with the news that he was going ahead with his plans to add a new ballroom—paid for with private funds—to the White House.
In fact, Trump has been promising to do just this—build a beautiful ballroom so that large gatherings at the White House would not have to be held under a tent—at least since 2016. But somebody in the Democrat Central Committee pretended to canvass the focus groups and decided that the engine of outrage could be primed with the Trump-is-desecrating-this-sacred-public-monument meme.
Again, the outpouring of manufactured outrage was both hilarious and pathetic. The people who suddenly became hypersensitive architectural preservationists had spent the last decade cheering on the people who tore down or desecrated important historical statues, smashed or ripped or sullied artworks, and substituted their noxious woke fantasies for the clear light of historical truth.
Such woke marauders also completely ignored the actual history of the White House and its many reconstructions, additions, renovations, and renewals. The comedy was endless. Hillary Clinton, who should know better than to wax moralistic about anything having to do with the White House, pretended to be outraged and posted, “It’s not his house. It’s your house. And he’s destroying it.” To which the president replied, “I may name it the Monica Lewinsky ballroom.” Connoisseurs of the Clinton libido will savor the double entendre.
The great Scott Adams had fun with the charade. Everyone agrees that a ballroom at the White House is needed, he notes. But the Dems just demonstrated that they can get their base to go insane over anything. “All they have to do is say it over and over.” All of a sudden, “Trump is going to renovate the White House” becomes “Trump is going to destroy the White House.” One poor baby said, “It feels almost the same as when I saw the Pentagon damage on 9/11.” Yes, really. It is insane. But Adams was loving it: “I think you should respect that the Democrats are willing to take on the challenge of living in a country where there is a building being renovated.” Heroes!
The White House itself posted a helpful timeline of significant renovations and events at the residence through the years. By now, many readers will know that in 1902, Teddy Roosevelt added the West Wing to the White House. In 1909, William Howard Taft expanded the West Wing and added the original Oval Office. In the 1930s and ’40s, FDR moved the Oval Office to its current location, built the East Wing, and added an indoor swimming pool. FDR’s successor, Harry S Truman, gutted and totally rebuilt the interior of the White House. Richard Nixon converted the White House swimming pool into the press briefing room and added a bowling alley. Barack Obama, though part of the witches’ chorus now, desecrated a tennis court to build a basketball court.
But that pedestrian inventory does not include some of the more piquant items that the White House included in its records. My favorites were the slides regarding the discovery of cocaine and the transgender day celebration at the White House.
And by the way, most renovations stuck taxpayers with the tab. Trump’s new ballroom will cost the taxpayers nothing—zero, zilch, nada. It is entirely privately funded.
Among other things, this week’s Democrat exercise in feckless melodrama reminds us that all the political initiative now is with Donald Trump. It’s not just that the Democrats are wholly reactive, responding like Pavlov’s dog to any bell that Trump might ring. There is also the fact that Trump has consumed all the political oxygen available in the body politic. His MAGA agenda is shaping everything—from his peace initiatives on the world stage to his efforts at the border and with the economy and cultural fabric of the country. All the Democrats have now is the screech of Elizabeth Warren and her tribe, resounding like a gigantic set of fingernails drawn harshly across the blackboard of the nation’s attention. It is a horrible, disagreeable sound. No one heeds it. Everyone recoils from it. It’s not much, but it’s all the Democrats have now, a sort of endless reenactment of Edvard Munch’s “The Scream” in lieu of any constructive action.
Roger Kimballl is editor and publisher of The New Criterion and the president and publisher of Encounter Books. He is the author and editor of many books, including The Fortunes of Permanence: Culture and Anarchy in an Age of Amnesia (St. Augustine's Press), The Rape of the Masters (Encounter), Lives of the Mind: The Use and Abuse of Intelligence from Hegel to Wodehouse (Ivan R. Dee), and Art's Prospect: The Challenge of Tradition in an Age of Celebrity (Ivan R. Dee). Most recently, he edited and contributed to Where Next? Western Civilization at the Crossroads (Encounter) and contributed to Against the Great Reset: Eighteen Theses Contra the New World Order (Bombardier).
Source: https://amgreatness.com/2025/10/26/the-lefts-never-ending-outrage-machine/
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