CHARLIE KIRK: The Democrats’ Hearts Are Broken Because America Hasn’t Failed Yet

It was a tough week for the Democrats. They started off April with all kinds of hope. But by the end of the month, those hopes had mostly crumbled into ash.

Why? Because, infuriatingly, the U.S. economy was still intact.

I won’t lie: Even I found the initial response to President Trump’s “Liberation Day” tariffs disorienting. Anybody who says they didn’t is either lying or keeps all their wealth as gold coins stashed in a safe. The S&P 500 had its worst week since the Covid lockdowns and then dropped even more the following Monday. The screaming from Wall Street was apocalyptic. (RELATED: PAUL GOTTFRIED: Trump Is Leading A New Legacy)

WASHINGTON, DC – APRIL 27: Rev. Dr. Leslie Copeland-Tune, Associate General Secretary of the National Council of Churches USA, looks on as U.S. Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ) speaks during livestreamed sit-in against the GOP funding plan on the steps of the House of Representatives on April 27, 2025 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Pete Marovich/Getty Images)

But then … no apocalypse happened. The president adjusted his tariff strategy on the fly, focused his ire on China, and signaled to the rest of America’s trading partners that he was ready to make deals. Foreign partners showed interest in negotiating in hopes of securing access to the greatest market in the world. Companies started to adapt instead of just crying out in terror. Cooler heads prevailed as capital and creativity began following Trump’s incentives.

And so, April ended and May began with the stock market above where it was a month ago and with as job report far better than Wall Street expected. The sky wasn’t falling. (RELATED: CHARLIE KIRK: Shut Up About Egg Prices — Trump Is Saving Consumers Millions)

And the left didn’t take it well.

Just days ago, Politico ran the headline “Democrats look to Trump’s poor economic numbers with anxious optimism.” The Washington Post recently reported on “glimmers of hope” among Iowa Democrats premised on a crashing economy from Trump’s tariffs.

The Democrats right now don’t have a compelling alternative vision for America. What they have is hope that America crashes and burns, and they can smoothly reclaim control over the ashes.

For Democrats, this is all well and good. If you need proof, just look at the party’s hopelessly dysfunctional cities and states. For Democrats, economic disaster is a good thing as long as it is a vehicle to get and keep power. While conservatives cite Florida and Texas as their crown jewels, for being states that build and attract new residents, Democrats see California as theirs: A state so dysfunctional that huge swaths of middle-class residents have fled, letting the state become a perpetual Democrat fiefdom.

For conservatives, economic success is a goal, because it enriches the populace. For the left, economic success or failure is beside the point. The goal is power. And if failure will bring power better than success, then so be it.

There is another factor driving the left’s hope for a crash. The great animating force of left-wing politics, dating back close to two and a half centuries at this point, is resentment. It’s the zero-sum view that if one person has something, it can only be because they stole it or otherwise exploited somebody to get it. This is why, from the French Revolution to the Bolsheviks to the socialists of today, every left-wing regime has cared more about tearing down those at the top than lifting those at the bottom. (CHARLIE KIRK: President Trump’s Shock-And-Awe Strategy Is The Way To Overwhelm The Left)

The left never sees wealth as the product of value creation, but as a choice rooted in who society picks as winners and losers — and they are perpetually angry that the “wrong” winners are being picked. Just as they see American history as tainted by racism and Jim Crow, they see present-day America as tainted by its failure to elect Democrats. Poverty and misery seem to the leftist mind as just deserts for a society deserving of condemnation.

But for most leftists, the real problem with Trump’s success, which is really just America’s success, is that it’s a nagging, incessant proof point that their unending hate for the president and his supporters might ultimately be misplaced. To admit he’s right about the economy or any other issue is to bring their entire worldview into question, which brings into question their entire identity as progressives. And to question one’s identity is simply too consequential, inconvenient, and weighty for most human beings to consider.

America’s success under President Trump is salt in the wounds of every Trump-hating progressive who’s staked their last decade of existence upon defeating him. Hating Trump is far more comforting a drug than loving the country he was elected to lead.

Charlie Kirk is the founder and president of Turning Point USA and host of the top-rated podcast and nationally syndicated Salem radio program, “The Charlie Kirk Show.”