The polls, which I trust as far as I can throw Michael Moore, are showing something interesting beyond the fact that crusty President Badfinger has fallen and can’t get up. According to Rasmussen, in a head-to-empty-head contest between President Trump and that desiccated old weirdo, Trump has a 10-point edge. He’s 12-points over Kamala, who will probably run in 2024 since * is likely to be sent off to a farm upstate with Major the Dog.
So, does this mean Trump will run in 2024?
Well, it sure as heck makes it more likely.
The stars are aligning for a potential comeback story for the ages. We have a barely conscious pseudo-president botching everything he touches, an inept, razor-thin Dem Congress engaged in public autophagy over how many trillions we don’t have we will squander, and a population getting sicker and sicker of being lied to, manipulated, bossed around, ripped off, and lorded over. The sight of the same jerks who insist that you have to gag your screaming toddler while partying down mask-free is galling. The vaxx mandates that the Kreepy Karen Korps is so proud of imposing are turning out to be aimed right at minority Americans who, understandably, are reluctant to trust government scientists bearing jabs. ID to vote – racist; ID and a passport to work or eat – great! And then there’s Afghanistan, the border, inflation, and CRT – it’s a veritable smorgasbord of disasters.
And where’s Trump? Off in the ether. He does some rallies once in a while, like the recent one in Georgia. Only aligned media covers them. He launches press releases, some of them silly, but no one cares. The geniuses of social media think they neutered Trump by banning him from their platforms. Nope, dopes. Trump is always his own worst enemy – you can both like the guy’s accomplishments and recognize his weaknesses – and these Silicon Valley goofs took that off the table.
There’s no a la carte Trump. He’s a prix fixe meal, not a buffet. You can’t pick and choose what you like about him – “Trump would be fine if he would only stop [insert something the speaker thinks Trump shouldn’t do here].” By deplatforming Trump, they managed to ensure that the guy hated for his mean tweets could not mean tweet anymore. Genius!
Absence makes the heart grow fonder; Trump’s exile lets people forget the things that irritated them. Of course, the minute he announces he pastes a big red bullseye on his back. And we’ll see how long the new-found goodwill lasts – whether social media insults again trump the devastation inflicted by his Democratic rivals.
Now, the word in the conservative circles around Trump’s potential 2024 gambit is mixed. You have guys who swear he’s running, and guys who doubt it. He’s holding his cards close, and why shouldn’t he? There’s no reason to make a decision now, or to announce one he has already made. If he is going to run, why become a big orange target? And if he’s not running, why give up the attention that comes from floating the tantalizing possibility that he’ll go full Grover Cleveland.
Trump did some amazing things in spite of the pinko headwinds, deep state conspiracies, and his own unforced errors. But 2024 is nine long years from his original escalator descent. Beyond whether he will run, should he run?
That’s not unanimous. The fact is that there are many prominent conservatives who deeply respect and appreciate what Trump managed to pull off against the odds yet who have grave doubts about whether he should be our candidate in 2024. This is not disloyalty – we owe no politician loyalty, including Trump. Gratitude for the abuse he took, certainly, but the loyalty must flow from politician to us, not vice versa. If Trump is not the very best candidate to both win and govern in 2024, then we must thank him and hand him a gold watch. And if he is the best, we must back him to the hilt.
We need to be ruthless and unsentimental in politics, like Trump was in business.
Here are the main concerns about Trump II: Revenge of the Orange Bad Man, and none are surprises.
The first is whether the Trump vibe will work in 2024. It worked in 2016, but a lot has changed. If Trump has not changed – and it’s unusual for people to change – then we need to assess whether America is ready for another all-consuming era of Trump.
Second, will this be about his justifiable anger over the last election or about future conservative victory? A lot of his press releases and statements relitigate 2020. I get that there were issues with the election – I worked in Nevada as a lawyer after the election and saw the corruption myself. The Arizona audit revealed shocking flaws - and that’s the most charitable characterization. Yes, Brian Kemp is an establishment hack, but on a 1 to 10 scale of importance to the big picture, Kemp is a -3. Right or wrong, fair or unfair, Trump lost, and I know that because he’s not president right now. We need to fix the election system, but 2024 is not about 2020. Making it so is to invite defeat.
Third, can he keep the establishment from taking him out? Now, he managed to defeat the deep state’s Russiagate gambit and the various impeachments and the non-stop media attacks (if Trump got only 10% of the toe-shrimping that President Asterisk receives, he’d be +75% in the polls), but they won’t stop. The media will back the Dem’s MUH INSURREKSHUN toobining to the hilt. He’ll likely be indicted by some lib state attorney general for something. It’ll be a lie and a scam, but do you think they would hesitate to frame him? They have already tried to. Remember, to them Trump’s literally Hitler, but then any Republican will be literally Hitler so maybe this doesn’t matter.
Fourth, has he figured out personnel? That was his greatest failure. He got a few right in the last year in office, but he hired a lot of hacks, failed to fire a lot of hacks, and generally got rolled by a lot of hacks. Remember, he hired Chris Wray and Mark Milley. It was well-known that loyal America First people regularly got sidelined in favor of cruise ship cons and establishment weenies. Will that happen again? Who is in his Rolodex this time around? We need to know.
Fifth, he needs to show he’s gotten woke to the fact that the establishment media is his enemy. He’s apparently given interviews to the NYT and Woodward and other people who hate him – and us. Where’s the love for the media people who actually support him? We need to see that he’s given up any idea of being accepted by the ruling caste. His regard for them was a constant obstacle to doing what needed to be done.
Sixth, what’s his plan? This is no time for playing it by ear. He needs a comprehensive strategy to undo the pinko paradigm. It’s starts with Inauguration Day also being Big Day O’ Firing. And Trump also needs to mend fences with Mitch McConnell and that wing of the party. Yeah, the Murder Turtle is a swamp creature who whined like a girl about January 6th, but he’s also the very best parliamentary strategist in Senate history. Can Trump forgo his vengeance in order to advance our interests?
These are tough questions, but Trump is a tough guy and he can take it. Furthermore, he owes us answers. He would be applying for a job and he needs to earn our votes. That’s not being anti-Trump – it’s always amusing when a guy who literally wrote a pro-Trump book gets called a “Never Trumper” because I expect high standards from him. It’s being realistic. If Trump is not the best, he needs to bow out. Here’s your watch, thanks for the memories.
And while Trump appears to be the 900-pound orange gorilla in the room, he will not just get handed the nomination. He will get primaried. It’s not clear by who, but it will be a real challenge, not merely a Beltway Cowgirl vanity run by Liz Cheney or some other loathsome member of the Ahoy crew. There are too many potential candidates who realize that it’s 2024 or never, and they may as well roll the dice. Conservatives, while they like Trump, are willing to consider alternatives if those alternatives look more likely to prevail.
Will Trump run? I don’t know. I kind of doubt it; that’s just a gut feeling and may well be totally wrong. But if he does run, it will be because he thinks he can win. And if he does run, and he does win, it will be glorious to surf the ocean of liberal tears when Trump goes Full Grover.
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