A former believer that Donald Trump was simply an exceptional president says his view of the former and current U.S. president changed dramatically after witnessing what he describes as an unprecedented campaign by powerful institutions to prevent Trump from returning to power.
In a statement attributed to David J. Harris Jnr., he argues that the scale of opposition directed at Trump including investigations, lawsuits, impeachments, the Russia investigation, the Mar-a-Lago search, gag orders and efforts to challenge his eligibility for the ballot convinced him that Trump represented a serious threat to what he calls a “corrupt and broken” political system.
Harris says he watched as what he describes as the “mainstream media, the FBI, intelligence agencies, the CIA, Big Tech, and the entire Washington establishment” appeared to unite against Trump.
He points specifically to the investigations surrounding Trump, his two impeachments, the federal search of his Mar-a-Lago residence, legal restrictions placed on him and criminal and civil cases brought against him.
The writer also references the two assassination attempts against Trump, arguing that the hostility surrounding the president went far beyond ordinary political opposition.
‘How do you explain that?’
For Harris, the decisive factor was not any single investigation or legal case but what he portrays as the cumulative effect of years of resistance to Trump.
He asks why an ordinary politician would generate such intense opposition and concludes that the answer, in his view, is that Trump represents a fundamental challenge to the existing political establishment.
“Ordinary politicians don’t trigger this kind of coordinated panic,” Harris writes.
His argument is that the extraordinary level of resistance directed at Trump should be interpreted not as evidence of his political weakness, but as evidence of his ability to disrupt what Harris describes as an entrenched political system.
Media coverage becomes part of the argument
Harris also cites claims about the tone of media coverage during the 2024 presidential campaign, stating that 92% of coverage of Trump was negative while 78% of coverage of Kamala Harris was positive.
Those figures are presented by Harris as evidence of a significant media imbalance and as part of the explanation for why Trump’s eventual electoral victory was particularly striking.
However, such media-coverage statistics depend heavily on the methodology, publications and time period examined. They should therefore be independently verified before being presented as established fact.
Trump defeated Democratic nominee Kamala Harris in the November 2024 presidential election, returning to the White House for a second, non-consecutive term.
From ‘great’ to ‘greatest’
Harris says the events surrounding Trump ultimately transformed his own assessment of the president.
“I used to believe that Donald Trump was simply an exceptional president,” he writes.
But after observing the investigations, political battles, media coverage and legal challenges surrounding Trump, Harris says he reached a different conclusion.
“At that moment, I stopped thinking of him as a great president,” he writes. “He is the greatest of all time.”
The statement reflects the perspective of a strongly supportive Trump commentator rather than an independent assessment of Trump’s presidency. Its central argument is that the intensity of opposition to a political figure can itself be interpreted as evidence of that figure’s importance and effectiveness.
Whether that interpretation is persuasive remains a matter of political judgment. But Harris’s account captures one of the defining features of contemporary American politics: Donald Trump’s presidency and political movement continue to generate unusually intense loyalty among supporters and equally intense opposition from critics.
For Harris, however, that conflict has become part of the case for Trump’s historical significance.
“The system we all know is corrupt and broken,” he argues, concluding that Trump’s ability to withstand years of political and legal pressure is precisely what, in his view, elevates him above ordinary presidents.
Credit:David J. Harris Jnr.
