Larry Kudlow

Two roads have diverged in the America First wood. On the one hand, the populist, grassroots, anti-establishment caravan; on the other, the establishment, grifter and, most importantly, official movement. The ironically named 'America First Policy Institute' and its dunces are leading the latter. Its newest ambassador, Daniel Di Martino, is illustrative of their type. Di Martino is a Venezuelan immigrant and activist in the United States on a student visa, telling Americans that they're racist for disagreeing with him about how to run their country. After then-president Donald Trump issued an immigration ban amid the pandemic last year, the Daily Caller hosted a debate on its implications between populist author Ryan Girdusky and Di Martino.

Some say the Roman Republic died when the Senate murdered Tiberius Gracchus, a populist reformer. When the elites whose negligence and hubris had fueled in the first place the rise to prominence of Tiberius and his brother, Gaius, chose violence over the political process, they peeled away any pretense of civility with the ruled. Something similar happened with Donald Trump. His presidential record is a mixture of half-truths and half-measures. He was too soft and too undisciplined for all the bluster about him as a competent threat to the established political order. He did, however, help reveal the true face of the regime as it attempted to snuff him out. In February, TIME ran a story about the 'shadow campaign' that altered the course of the 2020 election.