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Donald, Don’t Do it
This is precisely the kind of petty behavior that confirms my belief that Trump should not be elected again. He’s decided that certain key people should state that they will step down if Trump decides to run for President in 2024. And he has Ron DeSantis in his sights.
Recently I heard a reporter ask Mike Pompeo, who I believe would be a very fine presidential candidate, if he would step down from a candidacy if Trump decided to run. Pompeo indirectly stated that Trump’s candidacy wouldn’t stop him from running. Chris Christie said something similar on Fox. But both of these men don’t have a high probability of being elected.
Why is Trump attacking? Ron DeSantis is a real threat.
I know we’re a long way from 2024, but Trump wants to get in his digs early.
Trump’s first attack was indirect. DeSantis was asked about his vaccine status, and he said he’d received the vaccine, but did not reveal whether he’d had the booster, and Trump wanted everyone to know that he did have the booster. Trump’s thinly veiled response: last week he seemed to swipe at DeSantis as ‘gutless’ politicians who dodge the question out of fear of blowback from vaccine skeptics.
How does Trump know that, and why does he care?
It turns out that Trump was booed recently at two speaking events in Alabama and Dallas when he encouraged people to get the vaccine. In contrast, DeSantis has kept current on the outcomes of getting the vaccines and the booster, and is highly critical of Anthony Fauci, the man whom Trump relied on.
In addition, Trump takes credit for getting DeSantis elected. (I don’t know if he’s mentioned how, until recently when DeSantis criticized lockdowns, DeSantis frequently stated his support for Trump.) But Trump demands loyalty, and he expects DeSantis’ loyalty to extend to declining a nomination for the Presidency.
Trump is entitled to wish for whatever he likes, including a lifetime support for his running a third time for the Presidency. He’s entitled to be disappointed, even angry, at DeSantis for not agreeing to step down if Trump runs again. But he’s wrong on several other counts. First, he’s going to garner criticism should he decide to run if he demands that DeSantis not run. Second, if he criticizes DeSantis because the governor won’t step down, his input could actually increase DeSantis’ chances for the nomination. Third, he could be threatening the chances of the Republican party winning the Presidency, due to the self-serving demands he’s making, which will suggest that the Republicans can be as inept as the Democrats. Finally, he could jeopardize the future of the country if he has a role in the Republicans losing the Presidency.
If Trump could be the adult in the room (as Biden tries to claim he is) and say he’d be “disappointed” if DeSantis would win, I’d be fine with that. And we don’t know what he’ll say over the next couple of years: he could back off or dial it up.
But I’m not holding my breath. Stay tuned.
Published in Politics
And I said rumored as an informal shorthand for “It may not be true”.
Actually, only two appointments due to the deaths of Justices Scalia and RBG. Justice Kennedy retired on his own terms, and likely would have stayed on the Court if Hillary had been elected.
On the other hand, if Hillary had beaten Trump, I doubt that on January 6, 2021, Hillary would have sparked a riot and an attempted theft of the count of electoral college votes, and Trump’s populism would have been long ago forgotten.
Reagan completely won over the entire GOP. I was there. I saw it with my own two eyes. Please go to the Reagan Presidential Library if you are ever in LA. It is in Simi Valley off of U.S. 101.
The Code of Conduct prescribes
Democrats fomented violent, deadly, flaming insurrections throughout 2020, with rhetoric stretching back to before Trump even took office. For some reason, this does not bother you, nor even occur to you as the very thing you say would not have happened — it did happen.
Proscribes.
Proscribes.
How could you possibly have seen the behind-the-scenes undermining of Reagan with your own eyes? And what would the Reagan library have to do with it? Why would we have to visit it to know of the fragile coalition that backed Reagan?
Why did we need the slogan, “Let Reagan Be Reagan” if all his allies had been completely won over?
Oh! That was my loophole.
This is for you Garry, with all my richest Ricofection.
Maybe if Trump is reelected it really is the Death of Democracy.
You don’t know anything about this.
What happened after 1989?
delete
This is an epic interview of Steven Miller on Kudlow. This is what you get for voting Democrat. He is by far my favorite pundit now.
https://video.foxbusiness.com/v/6292974083001
Gary, for 4 years you bought into the entire Trump Russia collusion fantasy and now you keep pressing the (D) manufactured January 6 “insurrection” perpetrated by “domestic terrorist” narrative worthy of investigation by Federal law enforcement counter terrorism units with full blown DOJ prosecutions of alleged “domestic terror” suspects including lengthy, in some cases indefinite, incarceration as the accused await trial.
I don’t believe you do yourself any favors by reminding the Ricochet community you are easily the most chronic violator of the Ricochet CoC.
I kept trying to see the other side. It took me like two months to see it was BS. Trump has too many lawyers surrounding him. The idea that he’s going to run for president while he is an International criminal is ridiculous. The IRS has carte blanche to give him a colonoscopy whenever they feel like it. It’s nuts.
My brother-in-law still thinks that after non-justice oriented Andrew Weissman spending $40 million and dozens of hours of congressional testimony, Jared Kushner and Don Junior worked with the Russians to do something.
Heck, one only has to look at the photos of the rioting and burning when Hillary lost.
f
Gary, your memory of Reagan is as flawed as your perceptions of Trump.
Fruitcakes? What an insensitive, transphobic, heteronormative, hurtful epithet!
In ’83 or so, well after PATCO, the Libyan oil embargo, telling the world that communism was headed for “the ash heap of history,” only the diehard anti-Reagan Republicans were left. Reagan breathed new life into the party of Rockefeller, Lowell Weicker, and the House of Bush. They didn’t much like it, but they could bloody well lump it.
Fruitcakes? Dry but delightful.
Did you just assume my socio-fruitcake status?
Yeah, . . . um . . . Reagan was regularly opposed by the NeverReagans of his own party — the Bushies. (And I suspect Gary would have been supporting the Bushies back then.)
Remind yourself to be “civil”. Also, you should vote. lol
I’m tempted to write a check to her campaign. It’s one thing to say “thank you for your courageous vote” but it is another thing to write a check that says the same thing.
People like Gary have this fantasy of Scoop Jackson coming back. From what I can tell, she’s going to go totally socialist when she’s forced to. I have no idea what to do.
She serves as a reminder that even among Democrats there are still a few honorable enemies.
But apparently not the Steele Dossier – Pee Pee Tape hoaxes are totally ok with Gary.
But very high calorie. I remember eating almost an entire fruitcake by myself every Christmas until one Christmas I stopped to look at the nutrition list (or better put, lack of nutrition) and was shocked. Fruitcakes have to be the highest concentration of calories of any food item.
Just eat a slice a day.
Two slices.