Chile just inaugurated José Antonio Kast, a devout Catholic father of nine who voted against *divorce*, as its new president — and the global left is absolutely losing its mind. The man beat an actual, card-carrying Communist by nearly seventeen points in a landslide so brutal it made Kamala’s defeat look competitive.
You love to see it, folks. You really, really do.
Let’s rewind for a second so you can savor the full flavor of this humiliation. Back in 2021, Chile’s outgoing socialist boy-president Gabriel Boric declared — and this is a real quote — “If Chile was the cradle of neoliberalism, it will also be its tomb.” Four years later, Boric slunk out of office as the worst-rated president since Chile returned to democracy in 1990, with a 70% disapproval rating. Neoliberalism danced on *his* grave instead.
Boric’s government was such a catastrophe that when Chileans finally got to vote, combined right-leaning candidates pulled approximately 70% of the first-round presidential vote. Kast then crushed Communist Party candidate Jeannette Jara 58-42 in the runoff, winning all sixteen regions of the country with 7.2 million votes — the highest vote total in Chilean history.
Every. Single. Region. That’s not an election. That’s a mandate.
And who is this Kast fellow? Well, he’s the kind of guy who makes our Republican establishment look like a bunch of squishes. He voted against legalizing abortion *and* divorce during his time in congress. He toured Nayib Bukele’s 40,000-capacity mega-prison in El Salvador and basically said, “We need more of this.” His immigration plan — called “Border Shield” — includes walls, watchtowers, autonomous drones, and literal trenches along Chile’s northern border. The man wants to dig a moat.
A moat! President Trump should take notes.
Kast’s border plans were so credible that Venezuelans started fleeing Chile *before he even took office*. Peru had to declare a state of emergency on its southern border in November to handle the flood of undocumented migrants trying to get out of Chile ahead of Kast’s inauguration. Illegal aliens self-deporting before the new president is even sworn in? That’s not a policy — that’s a superpower.
The inauguration ceremony in Valparaíso looked like a who’s-who of the global right. Argentina’s Javier Milei showed up, calling his “friend’s” victory proof that Latin America is casting off the “oppressive shackles of 21st-century socialism.” Panama’s president attended. Ecuador’s president attended. Spain sent its king. Even the U.S. Deputy Secretary of State came down.
You know who *didn’t* show up? Brazil’s leftist President Lula da Silva. He canceled at the last minute because he found out that Flávio Bolsonaro — son of his chief political rival — was going to be there. The president of the largest country in South America literally ran away because he might bump into someone’s kid at a cocktail reception. Profiles in courage!
Meanwhile, Colombia’s unhinged leftist president Gustavo Petro had a full-blown psychotic episode, shrieking that “fascism is advancing” and calling Kast a Nazi. This was so embarrassing that even Boric’s outgoing leftist government filed a formal diplomatic protest against Petro. When the guy you just replaced thinks you’ve gone too far, you’ve gone too far.
But the best reaction came from the director of Chile’s Museum of Memory, who fretted that “the rebellion is against that which is established. And the established is democracy.” Read that again. A leftist intellectual is openly worried that people are using *democracy* against the left’s agenda. The horror of citizens voting for things the elites don’t approve of!
We’ve seen this movie before, haven’t we? Every time a conservative wins an election anywhere on planet Earth, “democracy” suddenly becomes “dangerous.” Trump wins? Threat to democracy. Milei wins? Threat to democracy. Kast wins in a historic landslide that would make FDR jealous? Somehow also a threat to democracy.
Kast even trolled them with his official presidential portrait. He posed wearing the presidential sash with the national coat of arms stitched in the middle — something no Chilean president has done since Pinochet. He then announced he’s moving into La Moneda palace, the first president to live there since the 1950s. He named two former Pinochet lawyers to his cabinet. The man is not subtle and he does not care if you’re upset about it.
The pattern here is unmistakable. From Trump to Milei to Bukele to Kast, voters across the Western Hemisphere are delivering the same message to the left: your open borders, your pronouns, your “equity” obsessions, and your socialist economics are finished. Regular people want safe streets, controlled borders, and leaders who aren’t embarrassed by their own countries.
Boric promised Chile would be the tomb of conservatism. Instead, Chile buried him and elected a moat-building, prison-touring, divorce-opposing father of nine by the largest margin in the nation’s history. Somewhere, Karl Marx is spinning in his grave — and Kast would probably dig a trench around that too.
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