A year ago today, on St. Crispin’s Day, things looked bleak for Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump.
He was down in most polls, and reeling from poor debate performances (or so said the media), as well as the scandal resulting from the “Hollywood Access” audio tape.
[lz_ndn video=33159521]
Victory was possible, but only if Republicans came together — and even then, it still seemed against the odds. Republican unity was a tall order, given the fierceness and intransigence of Never-Trump Republicans such as William Kristol and Sen. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.).
Such Republicans as consultant Rick Wilson were openly supporting independent presidential candidate Evan McMullin, hoping the Mormon Republican could win Utah and make the electoral math much harder for Trump.
Such internal party bickering and betrayals were sure to doom Trump, much the same way Republican Barry Goldwater was doomed by fellow Republicans in 1964. This time, Democrat Hillary Clinton would keep her base while Trump would see huge layers of his peeled off.
Yet Laura Ingraham, one of Trump’s original supporters, was not afraid of what was to come. Ingraham, the founder and editor-in-chief of LifeZette, saw victory, but only if troops rallied. So she penned a stirring call to arms, based on the St. Crispin’s Day speech in William Shakespeare’s “Henry V.”
The day is named for two saints, Crispin and Crispinian, Christian cobblers who were executed by the Roman emperor. In 1415, a big battle fell on the day.
The LifeZette column, actually published one week before the 2016 election on All Saints’ Day, compared 1415’s Battle of Agincourt, as recounted by Shakespeare, to what Trump would face on November 8. Ridiculed by the National Review — the heart of Never-Trump on the Right — Ingraham’s column was remarkably prescient, perhaps because history repeats.
In the play’s main speech, King Henry V tells his weary troops, retreating across hostile French land, that they must turn and face the French or die. The odds were 5-1, although historians say the English were not quite that outnumbered. In Shakespeare’s play, Henry V begs his cousin to wish for no more Englishmen — they will make do:
If we are mark’d to die, we are enow [enough]
To do our country loss; and if to live,
The fewer men, the greater share of honour.
Ingraham believed Trump could win, even though the battle seemed hopeless in late October 2016: “[Voters] see that even though the battle appears hopeless, millions of Americans are still trying to beat [Hillary Clinton] — not for Trump, but for themselves, their children, their churches, their hometowns, and their future. With their eyes wide open, these Republicans have joined the effort to defeat Hillary Clinton, and end her disastrous career once and for all.”
Ingraham said pro-Trump voters would remember who was with them, and who was against them.
“But win or lose, everyone who has been a part of this cause — everyone who has spread the truth about the Clintons on social media, defended Trump against the attacks that were hideously unfair, knocked on doors, posted signs, prayed for the country, or even just checked their favorite links day after day for the latest news — will remember who fought with them,” Ingraham wrote. “Just as importantly, they’ll remember who wanted them to lose.”
It was similar to Henry’s prediction that English victors, long after the end of the Hundred Years’ War, would show their scars to neighbors every St. Crispin’s Day:
He that shall see this day, and live old age,
Will yearly on the vigil feast his neighbours,
And say “To-morrow is Saint Crispian.”
Then will he strip his sleeve and show his scars,
And say “These wounds I had on Crispin’s day.”
Old men forget; yet all shall be forgot,
But he’ll remember, with advantages,
What feats he did that day. Then shall our names,
Familiar in his mouth as household words —
Harry the King, Bedford and Exeter,
Warwick and Talbot, Salisbury and Gloucester —
Be in their flowing cups freshly remember’d.
This story shall the good man teach his son;
And Crispin Crispian shall ne’er go by,
From this day to the ending of the world,
But we in it shall be remember’d-
We few, we happy few, we band of brothers.
The Shakespearean play immortalized the phrase “band of brothers.”
The English beat the French that day in 1415, a devastating blow to the French king. It was so stirring a day and a play to the British that Sir Laurence Olivier produced a version in 1944 to help inspire the World War II effort. Kenneth Branagh’s realistic 1989 version won Oscar nominations.
[lz_third_party includes=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bvFHRNGYfuo”]
A year later, on St. Crispin’s Day, Trump is in the White House. He’d shocked Democrats on election night, and also his Republican opponents. Many Never-Trump pundits were visibly stunned on TV that night. Today, many Never-Trumpers still persist on social media.
And the fallout in Congress continues. Sen. Jeff Flake announced his retirement from the Senate on Tuesday, a sure sign the Senate, which has failed to pass a major bill this year, is finally awakening to the new reality of Trump.
The lesson, in 1415 and 2016, appears to be “stick together, or hang separately.” While many Never-Trumpers thought Trump was a historically bad choice who would justify their opposition, he was not. Instead, as Ingraham said, he was a new populist voice who attracted new blue-collar voters to the GOP — voters in Iowa, Florida, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.
Ingraham will begin a new show, “The Ingraham Angle,” on Fox News every weekday at 10 p.m.
Her new book about Trump’s rise, “Billionaire at the Barricades: The Populist Revolution from Reagan to Trump,” is currently on the New York Times Best Sellers list.
(photo credit, homepage image: Mike Pence, CC BY-SA 3.0, by Gage Skidmore / Donald Trump, CC BY-SA 2.0, by Gage Skidmore; photo credit, article image: Donald Trump, CC BY-SA 2.0, by Gage Skidmore / Vice President Mike Pence…, CC BY 2.0, by Michael Vadon)
Join the Discussion
Comments are currently closed.