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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
Good grief. There is no logic at all in your conclusion. I am NOT happy Biden won. Perhaps you missed the part where I said I voted for Trump, even though I thought he was not trustworthy. I have held my nose in the voting booth before and I’m sure I’ll do it again.
Let’s just look at the politics. Biden and Harris are unpopular. People do not want to vote for someone unlikeable. (That’s why Hillary lost in 2016.) Why not nominate someone slightly less repellent? He/she would have the edge right there. Why insist that the only man for the job is the one who lost last time? The man a majority of Americans dislikes. THAT makes no sense.
I’ll vote for pretty much any other GOP candidate. Let’s. Move. On.
How would you measure this?
Do you not remember how the Democrat-Media Complex treated Romney? There is no one less repellent and more innocuous than Romney – at least on the surface. BUT the DMC said:
Understand a simple proposition – Anyone (ANYONE) the GOP nominates will be run through the same ringer.
The only reason President Trump is considered “repellant” is because he ran as a Republican and the DMC rallied against him.
Please don’t tell me you forget how the DMC foisted President Trump on the GOP – the only problem after they assisted in getting him nominated is that he won (Good thing for us he did, because he governed as the most Conservative President of my lifetime and I am including Reagan in that. Trump was a better conservative President than Ronald Reagan.)
@Instugator For Dictator Of Everything
I didn’t include that (according to a single book that was published, and not retracted) Bush Sr. cheated on his wife (openly to her and to associates) for 12 years, and for some of this time she was suicidal as a result. He finally ended it when he got in the White House. But decent old Papa Bush was a low-life as well — or as we may describe him: human.
Yes, great company Trump shows up against.
Thanks brother.
Well he certainly isn’t Jeb!
Please start talking about the potential candidates you like and what makes them presidential in your opinion.
If you don’t have an original opinion about public policy, please just vote GOP and don’t do anything else.
Good question.
I like Ted Cruz because he is hated by all the right people for the right reasons.
Exactly. Anyone that did not vote for Trump in 2016 effectively would have given Hilary three Supreme Court picks. Not voting for Trump if you have a conservative bone in your body was demonstrably wrong.
I’m not big on Ted Cruz (now), but this is sound logic. none of us will ever have all of the information we would want, or could objectively say enables an “informed” decision. Go with what you got and don’t be talked out of it by the “cite your sources” crowd when sources aren’t the point.
Well, he has to have a sharp crease in his trou … sorry, I was channeling David Brooks there for a moment.
I remember someone describing R. Reagan as a person who wanted to take care of the threats from foreign powers, remove stupid regulations, and make the federal government the least intrusive in the daily lives of Americans as possible, consistent with holding the Union together. He had faith in the ability of the citizens to run their own lives. Forty years ago I had that faith as well. Today, I am not so sure. Today, I’d still vote for a person who followed Reagan’s principles. That’s why I voted for Trump in 2020. BTW, he was the first major party candidate to get my vote since 2000, and if I had that to do over, Shrub wouldn’t have gotten my vote in 2000. I despised that fool by 2002.
Yet Reagan was disliked by a lot of the GOP establishment.
True. Part of the reason I refused to vote for G. H. W. Bush in 1992 was that he started undoing everything Reagan had accomplished on day one of his first term.
The Fed and the government have massively intruded into our lives. You aren’t going to undo this in any simplistic and idealistic way. That’s why I can’t stand any type of GOP or GOPe boilerplate. We are decades past that point.
It was his people that got rid of Paul Volcker. Greenspan is public enemy number one. Far too many people don’t get any of this.
That may be why The Turtle refuses to announce GOPe goals for the mid-term campaigns. All he has is GOPe boilerplate and the voters ain’t buying it anymore. Plus, you can’t be accused of breaking promises you didn’t make.
That’s not fair. Reagan was only disliked by about 96% of the Republican establishment.
In a sense we are not fair to the GOPe either. After all, it’s only 96% of them that give the other 4% a bad name.
Dot. Org.
That is illogical, Captain. But it is nonetheless true.
Yes, generally you can tell a man by his enemies. And Reagan came seconds from dying by assassination. Rumor has it that Bush family was close friends with the Hinckley family.
I could actually clap for that.
Ouch.
Better: it would be best if Trump focuses on building a MAGA majority in the House and Senate this year. His best revenge is to unseat the good old boy gang in both houses of Congress, really reshaping the elected institutional landscape to better reflect the actual, true, American voter landscape.
I’ve seen some criticism of Trump’s talk about 2020, claiming he’s whining and making it all about him. He has to flip that narrative somehow, maybe by saying that while the 2020 election is over, he wants to make certain the fraud can’t hurt other GOP candidates in the mid-terms and 2024. The only way to stop it is to make sure everyone knows it happened in 2020 whether or not he runs again.
This, after 9 pages devoted largely to “don’t believe anonymous sources!”
They’re not anonymous sources. I suppose I could find the articles but it would take a very long time.
And I don’t think I ever said don’t believe anonymous sources. I’ve said don’t believe certain sources. And don’t believe one-word, out of context quotes with the context replaced by the writer’s explanation.