Wait for the dust
Trump is clinging to the window sill.
According to anonymous insider reports, Mr Trump still harbours presidential ambitions – and is leaning toward announcing another presidential bid from his Mar-a-Lago home next Tuesday. After this week’s disappointing midterm results for Republicans, where Mr Trump’s hand-picked candidates struggled to win key races, the former president’s advisers are counselling him to wait for the dust to settle.
“Like, you know, sir, a year or two. That would give you plenty of time to campaign for the 2028 election.”
Instead, with his Thursday social media posts and evening press-release diatribe against Mr DeSantis, Mr Murdoch’s Newscorp and all his critics, Mr Trump seems intent on throwing that dust in his enemy’s eyes. He called his Florida rival an “average Republican governor with great public relations” and made explicit the parallels to his first presidential bid.
“This is just like 2015 and 2016, a Media Assault (Collusion!), when Fox News fought me to the end until I won, and then they couldn’t have been nicer or more supportive,” he wrote. “The Wall Street Journal loved Low Energy Jeb Bush, and a succession of other people as they rapidly disappeared from sight, finally falling in line with me after I easily knocked them out, one by one.”
That’s right Donnie. Focus on that. It was so much fun, wasn’t it? Relive the old days. Thaaaaat’s right…curl up, put your thumb in your mouth, and dream. Night night.
In 2016, Mr Trump lashed out at prominent figures within his own party with no restraint – presidential rivals Mr Bush, Ben Carson, Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio, as well as Arizona Senator John McCain. He didn’t need the respect or support of Republican leaders and wore their scorn as a badge.
A badge of honor, that is. The metaphor is a badge of honor, not just a badge. You can’t just stick your Boy Scout badge on there and call it a day.
At the time, those leaders feared Mr Trump would be a disastrous standard-bearer, that he would sink the party and doom them to defeat. Mr Trump won the White House anyway, but after this week – and the Republican midterm rout in 2018 and Mr Trump’s 2020 re-election defeat – his party’s elders are once again getting skittish.
Well, you know the old saying – lie down with pigs, get up covered in pig shit. “His party’s elders” should have walked away from him in 2015, end of story.
In theory, the best attack line on Trump that wouldn’t necessarily alienate Trump fans would be “I supported Donald Trump because I too want to make America great again, and I agree that we need to secure our borders, get critical race theory out of our schools, [list of red-meat MAGA talking points]. But Donald has just alienated too many voters and is keeping us from winning elections, and we can’t afford to lose another race to the Democrats if we want to save our country. That’s why I’m [running/supporting Candidate X].”
The problem with this is that, when you’ve spent the last couple of years publicly committing yourself to agreeing with the Big Lie, that Donald Trump did not, in fact, lose those elections, then that position doesn’t work. The best you can do is say that “Trump keeps us from winning by so much that the Democrats can’t steal it,” and that’s a tough needle to thread.
All these GOP leaders like to think that they’re using Trump, but all along he’s been using them. Every time they echo the Big Lie, they’re shoring up his position in the party.