Who’s responsible for the weak Republican results in this year’s midterm elections? Many — including prominent GOPers — say it’s Donald Trump. One MAGA candidate after another either underperformed or flamed out, signaling that conservative voters (and maybe even Fox News) may have finally tired of the big guy. Has that spooked Trump from re-running for president, even if he has to do it from jail? Of course not.
Sources tell The Daily Beast that Trump is holding fast with his plan to announce his third campaign on Tuesday night, nearly two full years before the 2024 election. One source even wrote back, “Rock and Roll!” A Trump adviser told The Daily Beast that they’re not afraid of any Republican challengers, advising that they “show up ready for war, because nothing is off the table.”
Should Trump proceed with the announcement — and given that he’s spent his entire life avoiding true comeuppance (aside, of course, from losing an election), that’s likely — it will arrive despite dramatic pushback from much of the GOP. Since their promised/threatened “red wave” failed to materialize, Republicans have called on the party to move on, to focus instead on a younger impersonator, Ron DeSantis. Trump even lost the Dilbert guy, in part because he keeps making racist taunts.
Others simply want him to hold off. Trump adviser and Getter guy Jason Miller said on Newsmax that Trump doing a premature Kool Aid man burst into the 2024 presidential election could affect the Georgia runoffs, which find incumbent senator Raphael Warnock battling Trump pick Herschel Walker in a neck-and-neck race. Heck, even Trump’s most sycophantic press secretary, Kayleigh McEnany, wants him to hold off.
But Trump may do so regardless, putting his party — which may not gain control of either/both the House or the Senate after all — in further jeopardy. One reason? To get ahead of DeSantis, whom he’s already christened with an uncharacteristically weak nickname. Or he may think that being a declared presidential candidate may discourage the Justice Department, which may come for him over all those government documents he dragged down to his resort home. Or maybe he’ll do it simply because he’s Donald John Trump.
(Via The Daily Beast)