I don’t much like Donald Trump and didn’t vote for him (or Hillary) in 2016, but I’ve been feeling sorry for him for about 18 months now. It feels strange feeling sorry for someone who’s a boor, a narcissist, an egomaniac, and a serial philanderer, plus the 37 other negative traits usually used to describe him. But it has something to do with the fact that he has been treated in a grossly unfair manner by the mainstream media and the political and cultural left, on a scale we’ve never seen before.

One story of the last two years is how this most alpha of alpha males has become an underdog of sorts in American politics today. Of course, you won’t find this narrative in any of the mainstream media outlets. This narrative merely exists in the minds of millions of voters who are outside the core Democratic base: those of us who are Republicans, moderates, independents, former Democrats like myself. We’ve been silently watching, listening, observing the opposition to Trump in the last eighteen months, and it’s been the most sickening thing to see, more appalling than what the right did to President Obama.

As one voter put it in an article I read a while ago, the hatred shown toward Trump has been “un-American.” I agree with that sentiment, even as I simultaneously hold the thought that Trump is not someone whose character needs defending.

Memo to the left: Know why Trump’s poll numbers have been steady or rising slightly in spite of the invective you’ve been pouring on him every minute of every day? It’s because the economy is booming, and also because most Americans are fair-minded and think that even a flawed sinner like Trump doesn’t deserve to be figuratively kicked every day in a manner that’s often dishonest, exaggerated or out-of-context.

Trump ran as the most anti- of anti-establishment candidates in 2016, and almost everything the political and media establishments have done since then have confirmed what millions of voters have realized: these establishments are out-of-control, they want presidential candidates and presidents they can control, and they won’t abide a true outsider.

In effect, their post-election behavior has confirmed that a President Trump was necessary for this time in American politics. The reality is, there was no peaceful transition of power on Jan. 20, 2017. From the time Trump won the Republican nomination, there has been a concerted effort from different quarters – the press, Hollywood, academia, the Democratic Party – to smear and undermine him.

Some of this was legitimate and what naturally happens in an election. But a lot of the opposition to him was breathtaking and unprecedented, and we’ve been learning more as time passes by. The highest levels of the FBI secretly spied on his campaign, and they did it by misleading the FISA court and using an unverified dossier paid for by the Hillary Clinton campaign.

And the unprecedented opposition continued with a fake Russia collusion narrative and a dubious special counsel investigation to undermine and possibly remove a duly elected president elected by the masses whom the establishment happens not to like. If they are successful, we don’t have a constitutional republic anymore, folks. It’s that simple.

I was a long-time Democrat who “walked away” from the party because I couldn’t stomach the Democrats’ anti-democratic antics. Post-2017, it is like the mask has been ripped off. It has become apparent that the Democratic Party and its media supporters seem to have a problem with representative democracy and how it works. They lost an election they thought they’d handily win, and their reaction to it has been to have a long, screeching public tantrum.

Bill Maher and other liberal commentators have openly talked about the urgent necessity to “remove” Trump. Remove Trump? Are they serious? I thought the way it works if you lose an election is you try to present a better argument before the electorate the next time and win the next election, and not simply try to get rid of the election-winner.

In the last eighteen months, the left, the so-called deep state and their media enablers have tried their damnedest to get rid of Trump even if it meant trampling over the rule of law and the Constitution. That is why those who used to care deeply about civil liberties have been mum when the civil liberties of Trump, Carter Page and others have been violated.

That is why one of the only principled liberal, Prof. Alan Dershowitz, who has been arguing about and defending the civil liberties of the Trump team, has been getting grief and facing ostracism from the left. That is why the mainstream media has not only derelicted its investigative duties, but has been shamelessly spinning one of the biggest stories of our time — how the FBI abused its power to spy on an American political campaign.

The striking thing is, the side that has been accusing Trump of subverting democracy has been guilty of it themselves. In America, even a serial killer has rights and deserves due process. But in the eyes of the left, Trump deserves neither.

But the public isn’t dumb. Those of us who aren’t hardcore Democrats recognize what’s going on and have come to see something that seems counter-intuitive: This loud, brash president is actually a victim and an underdog in American politics today, and he hasn’t been getting a fair shake since he won the election, or been given a proper chance to lead the country.

And so we feel sorry for him, and angry and repulsed by his opposition.