'We will not kneel': Republican launches defiant challenge to Trump

Steve Schmidt, a Republican strategist who advised President George W. Bush and the 2008 presidential campaign of Arizona Sen. John McCain, accused America’s rich and powerful of “kneeling” to President Donald Trump — and urged defiance.

“We recognize that the world's richest people of the most powerful corporations, the big media companies, the big tech companies, the big banks have made a decision for the privilege of resting their head on a Mar-a-Lago pillow,” Schmidt said in a Substack posted on Wednesday. “They are satisfied to live on their knees, but we are not.”

Criticizing the US hockey team that accepted a Presidential Medal of Freedom as having “desecrated its gold medal” for allowing “the equivalent of the Fuhrer Medal” to be hung around their necks, he contrasted their complacence with the attitude of anti-Trumpers like himself.

“We will defy this, we will oppose it, and we will not kneel to Donald Trump,” Schmidt said.

He went on to quote thinkers whose ideas influenced American politics, from Thomas Paine during the American Revolution to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. from the civil rights movement.

“Tyranny like hell is not easily conquered,” Schmidt said. “Yet we have this consolation with us that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly. It is dearness only that gives everything its value.”

He concluded, “Heaven knows how to put a proper price upon its goods. And it would be strange indeed if so celestial an article as freedom was not highly rated.”

Schmidt is an outspoken critic of Trump. Speaking to CNN's Jim Acosta earlier this month, Schmidt slammed the Supreme Court for repeatedly ruling in Trump’s favor.

“The Roberts court has destabilized our American society through partisan rulings,” Schmidt argued. “We have a corrupt Supreme Court with [Judge Samuel] Alito’s misconduct, Clarence Thomas’s misconduct, flying around with all these billionaire extremist doners from here to there and everywhere.”

He continued, “The court has lost its reputation for a reason, and now we have Trump’s visage looming down at the American people from the Department of Justice, which is a corrupt institution that can’t be trusted, filled with corrupt prosecutor who abuse their oath, abuse the Constitution, and abuse the American people in the name of power.”

In November, Schmidt expanded his criticism to the Democratic Party, saying that "this moment requires a philosophical understanding of something deeper than Democrats have been able to articulate, which is this: the maximum abuse of power — which is what Trump is doing — demands, on a constant basis, the maximum use of power by every Democratic leader, wherever they may be.”

When Disney CEO Bob Iger suspended talk show host Jimmy Kimmel after Kimmel criticized Trump supporters, Schmidt attacked Iger’s personal character.

"We will put billboards up in L.A. with Bob Iger's picture, a yellow stripe under it and the word 'COWARD,'" Schmidt said. "It's a billboard town and everyone can reflect on it as they drive by ... the cowardice is appalling."

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