If you personally continue to support Donald Trump, there are a few things I’d like you to think about. Please bear with me, this is important.
There is an ancient saying that goes, “the enemy of my enemy is my friend.” But, like many of the things we are told, it simply is not true. Sometimes, the enemy of your enemy is also your enemy. This is important in our conversation about Trump because I want to convince you that he’s not merely an enemy of liberals (or democrats, if you prefer) – he’s an enemy if republicans, too. He has probably destroyed the republican party’s electoral chances for the next decade, and that may concern you unless you’re looking forward to a string of horrific republican defeats as much as I am. A lot of people have figured out the things I want to explain to you, so if I’m merely repeating stuff you already know, I’m sorry and I’ll try to be brief.
Midjourney AI and mjr: “Trump beating the dead horse that he is riding into battle.”
The thing I want to make you understand is that Donald Trump is also the enemy of the republican party. He’s been doing a good job (sort of) of presenting himself as an enemy of liberals, progressives, immigrants, etc., but mostly, have you noticed that Trump’s main focus is that he’s a bitter enemy of anyone who does not like Donald Trump? He’s a very simple mechanism, emotionally – he jumps from obsessively hating on one person or another, but mostly it’s who’s in his way at any given moment. Perhaps in 2016 you mistook his focused hostility toward Hillary Clinton as some kind of generalized hatred of a symbol but that would be wrong – he genuinely despised (and still does) Hillary Clinton for, well, being his opponent. But he veers all over the place, hating whoever is his target of the moment, never thinking strategically about it, it’s simply a knee-jerk reflex on his part. You may have thought, now and again, that his protracted hatred of Clinton was perhaps a bit odd, given that he won in 2016 and she was thrown out of the political arena as a consequence. A strategic thinker would have realized that Clinton is no longer relevant to him, and switched his attention to someone else. Basically, he’s beating a dead horse. You should wonder about that, because there is only one reason to beat a dead horse: they’re easy.
Trump started out also hating the republican party. He came in as an outsider, and immediately began attacking other republican candidates, using playground insults and rhetorical tricks that they simply were not prepared to handle. That was effective enough that it upset the party establishment and they started trying to figure out how to sideline him before the primaries – they, rightly, worried that Trump’s approach might actually lead to success in the primary. Trump’s ally Roger Stone started the “Stop The Steal” meme during the republican primary because they were claiming that the republicans were stealing the primary from Trump. [splc] When the republican party was utterly defeated by Trump, the “Stop The Steal” meme was put away, until the 2020 election defeat. This is important; it shows that Trump never was interested in working within the system, and never intended to accept a loss in any contest. Do you remember when journalists were trying to ask Trump to commit to conceding graciously if Hillary Clinton won? He refused; “We’ll see” was all that they could get out of him. If Clinton had beaten Trump in the electoral college in 2016, 2016 would likely have been a pre-play of 2020, with lots of exorbitant claims of fraud, etc. Ridiculous, right? But Trump actually claimed to CNN that the reason he lost the popular vote to Clinton was “millions of people who voted illegally.” [cnn] I hope you realize that “millions of people who voted illegally” was unsubstantiated bullshit, which was never followed up by Trump’s Department of Justice once he was in office. You’d think that, if millions of illegal votes had been cast, the Trump administration would have been diligently weeding them out, prosecuting them, and closing down gigantic gaping hole in the electoral system that allowed such a thing to happen – 2020 was right around the corner, after all.
In the lead-up to his 2020 defeat, Trump began dusting off the “Stop The Steal” meme, attempting to argue that the election systems had been hardened against fraud, but then changing tack and publicly complaining about weaknesses in the system. Congress, in fact, held hearings on DHS’ efforts to harden and improve the security of voting systems [congress] Chris Krebs, a lifelong republican, was in charge of CISA, which was responsible for the work – Krebs program focused (among other things) on making paper ballots more ubiquitous – 95% in 2020 compared to 85% in 2016. Trump was in the unusual position of having directed substantial improvement in the reliability of the electoral system, but then having to turn around and scapegoat the system built under his administration, which repeatedly survived audit after audit following Trump’s defeat in 2020. Anyone who thinks about this stuff should be wondering “if there was so much backdooring and fraud in the 2020 election, why wasn’t CISA saying anything about it until after a republican lost?” (under a republican administration) – any rational person should have felt that Giuliani and Powell’s claims of exotic fraud rang hollow, given that CISA had been supposedly working on exactly that sort of stuff during 2+ years leading up to the election. The republican administration did not do nothing in the run-up to 2020, they were busily improving the electoral systems. If Hugo Chavez’ software was installed on voting machines, CISA had 2+ years to analyze it; instead they just kept improving the systems across the board. What was immediately obvious then (as now) was that the “Stop The Steal” meme was dusted off as soon as Trump’s advisors realized that he was heading for a significant defeat or, at best, a marginal victory, and conditioning the media and voters for endless re-counts in the future.
That’s enough history. Now, we need to talk about the serious stuff. Some of this is going to have to be conjecture because we need to talk about things that didn’t happen, and I suppose we have no sure way of knowing how things might have gone differently. But: perhaps you remember when Trump kept “joking” about serving more than two terms: [cnn]
The good news is that at the end of 6 years, after America has been made GREAT again and I leave the beautiful White House (do you think the people would demand that I stay longer? KEEP AMERICA GREAT), both of these horrible papers will quickly go out of business & be forever gone!”
Trump’s an autocrat, or a would-be autocrat. He orchestrated the “Stop The Steal” and Jan 6 coup attempt because the idea of being taken out of power is absolutely unthinkable, to him. [Personally, I think it’s a sign of dementia more than sociopathy, but what matters is his overt behaviors] In the run-up to 2020, when media asked him if there would be a peaceful transfer of power if he lost, [cnn] offered the same non-response as he did regarding defeat in 2016:
“Well, we’re going to have to see what happens,” Trump said when asked whether he’d commit to a peaceful transition, one of the cornerstones of American democracy.
That was September, 2020. Trump’s team would have already been warning him that polling showed several races were too close to call. So:
“You know that I’ve been complaining very strongly about the ballots and the ballots are a disaster,” Trump said at a press briefing at the White House, presumably referring to mail-in ballots, which he has baselessly claimed will lead to voter fraud.
“(G)et rid of the ballots and you’ll have a very … there won’t be a transfer, frankly. There’ll be a continuation,” he added, saying “the ballots are out of control.”
Trump was preparing to attempt to cling to power permanently. Fortunately, he was too incompetent, and the goofballs surrounding him like Giuliani and Powell managed to make fools of themselves instead of preparing an effective coup. [And we know from the Fox News discovery in the Dominion defamation case, that Fox News insiders also recognized the Trumpist election skeptics as a bunch of looneys – looneys who have since admitted that they have none of the evidence they said that they had, and that their information was based on psychic sources, etc.] Trump is simply psychologically incapable of admitting he’s lost. What you need to understand is that he’s as much of an enemy of republicans as he is of democrats. He’s the enemy of anyone who wants to disempower him, or compete with him in any way, and he cheats reflexively and relentlessly. Eventually the republican party is also going to take wind out of Trump’s sails and then he’ll do what he always does: he’ll attack with everything that he’s got.
As usual, Trump has signaled his willingness to play dirty well in advance. Remember when he threatened to dish dirt on Ron DeSantis? [nyt]
If he did run, I will tell you things about him that won’t be very flattering. I know more about him than anybody other than perhaps his wife, who is really running his campaign.
He hasn’t turned his basilisk magic on the republican party, yet, because – so far – they’re too busy kissing his ass while trying to keep his MAGA fringe voters happy. But it won’t take much.
Think of some scenarios that could play out: one is simply that Trump’s not polling very well at all, right now. Thanks to Trump’s promotion of lunatic fringe non-entities, republicans are generally not polling very well at all, anywhere, right now. But, the polls of republican party members show that Trump is the likely front-runner by a pretty huge margin and the republican party could find itself in a situation where they have a candidate who can’t win in a general election, but can’t lose the primary. What are republicans going to do about that? Losing in 2024 comes to mind – Trump has already shown that he can lose pretty badly to Biden; are the republicans seriously going to give him another shot at doing that? You’ll notice how, when Hillary Clinton lost to Trump the democrats did not run her against Trump again, because they realized that she was a candidate who’d lose to Trump. Trump is a candidate who loses to Biden – the republicans would have to be delusional looneys to run Trump against Biden, again. That’s one scenario. The other scenario is worse: somehow the republican party manages to edge Trump out of the primary, and Trump immediately starts pulling his voter fraud “Stop The Steal” routine internally, and splits the party. Or, he runs on a third party ticket and splits the MAGA base off from the republican party, ensuring that republicans lose every election that they run in, for the next decade. Even if Trump somehow manages to pull off a win in 2024, the republicans will not gain thereby – he’s going to be trying to cling to power as president-for-life, and anoint his nepo-baby as Empress Ivanka the First. I’d like to encourage you to think long and hard before you vote for Trump in 2024. You don’t want that on your conscience.
A year or two ago I’d have been optimistic (and courteous) enough to suppose that the evangelical base might realize that they have backed a truly disgusting example of a human being, who is probably more nihilistic and less moral than this atheist right here – I thought they might have backed away, or run, but instead the lure of power and the love of being able to hate publicly is too strong. I guess evangelicals will support any piece of shit, as long as they hate drag queens, or people who get vaccines, or whatever. I’ve given up trying to understand evangelicals and have decided that they’re also a bunch of looneys who’ve climbed aboard the S.S. Donald Trump and set out to sea right into the teeth of a hurricane. Enjoy the ride.
The democrats gave you two chances to get rid of Trump, cleanly, while still making the democrats look like the bad guys. But the republicans loved having a republican in power too much to do anything about it, and now they’ve got a raving lunatic to deal with. Your last chance is to hope he winds up in prison, and you can quietly close the door on his oubliette and, as – as the term implies – forget about him. Because, otherwise, someday republicans will come between Trump and power, and then you’ll reap the whirlwind. The democrats will be watching, of course, and following Winston Churchill’s dictum: “let’s hope that they both lose.”
Or, he runs on a third party ticket and splits the MAGA base off from the republican party, ensuring that republicans lose every election that they run in, for the next decade.
The hypothetical loyal Republicans reading this need not worry quite that long. Theodore Roosevelt did exactly the same thing in 1912, but his “Bull Moose” party died with him, and after that one lucky Democrat’s success, the R’s won three presidential elections in a row (until they screwed up so totally and obviously the D’s took the next five, and mostly held Congress even longer).
And things – particularly oubliettes – move a lot faster now.
I’m a little worried about the various third-party candidates that are spinning up. I’m normally not one to blame third party voters, and have often voted third party myself, when I felt the election was either “safe”, or “lost”, (I think the 2020 election may have been the only time I ever voted for a presidential candidate who actually won…), but feel there is a lot of danger with splitting the vote, combined with voter suppression, gerrymandering, and legislative assorted bullshit.
I know a coworker of mine who I politically agree with on a lot of points, seems to be excited about Cornell West running for the Green Party, and I’m kinda concerned about that.
I initially liked the Green Party, but after the past couple of election cycles, can’t really take them seriously. I’m in the supposed leftist bastion of the San Francisco Bay Area, and they almost never run down-ticket candidates, all the progressive school board, animal control, and city council candidates are Democratic, or in rare instances, unaffiliated. And, a decade or so ago, the Green Party voter guides would give run-downs on the pros/cons of various propositions and candidates, whereas more recently, they are point-blank, this person/proposition isn’t Green Party, don’t vote for them/it, with no other explanation or nuance. They’ve totally embraced the third-party spoiler archetype and are running off into the sunset with it. Plus, all the sketchy shit with Jill Stein…(I’m now ashamed to admit I had previously voted for her…)
Jeezus, we need to start fucking building (and using…) guillotines…
Sounds like you understand them just fine.
I think you wildly overestimate the intelligence of the electorate.
No, there’s another reason: the peasants cheer when you do it. And if you’re addicted to the sound of cheering, well…
Between 2016 and 2020, Trump GAINED about eight million votes. Yes, he lost to Biden, but he did so on an absolutely MASSIVE turnout. His numbers in 2020 would have been a legitimate landslide for him in any other election in US history. And among Republicans, he’s polling something like 37% ahead of what is basically his only rival, someone already written off by most of the media. You ask if the republicans are going to “give” him something that, realistically, it’s not in their power to withhold. We all know that “the republicans”, i.e. the people in that party who deluded themselves that they were in charge, didn’t want to give him a shot at losing to Clinton. And we know how that turned out.
Makes the assumption they have a choice. Technically, is there ANY way they can stop him? As I understand it, he can conduct a campaign from a cell if he wants. I’m not kidding when I say the only way I can see for the Republican “leadership” (ha!) to stop Trump is to literally have him whacked.
Sixty three million voted for him 2016. SEVENTY ONE million voted for him 2020. You used the “c” word there… I don’t think your target audience know what that means.
If it was a literal oubliette, then yeah, fair enough. But you think the kind of prison Trump would end up in would slow him down? I can see him garnering millions of extra votes simply by getting locked up. What a time to be alive.
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Related question – someone observed somewhere else on FtB (Mano Singham?) that jailing Trump would free up some Secret Service. But would it? In all seriousness: once you’ve been President, you get Secret Service protection for life. There’s not, as far as I’m aware, a clause anywhere that says “unless you go to jail”. Indeed, it’s reasonable to assume that Trump would need MORE comprehensive security if sent to jail – he’s hardly going in gen pop is he? Leave aside juvenile fantasies of him getting shivved in the shower by a man named Bubba – isn’t the reality that any prison guard who tries to lay a hand on him for any reason will get shot? I’m genuinely interested to know how that conflict of jurisdiction would play out.
This is all perfectly fine and reasonable, but it falls foul of a very important and useful principle which Jon Schartz termed the Iron Law of Institutions, which states that
[Original emphasis]
He was originally talking about this in the context of the Democratic Party (and the whole article is still worth reading), but as he said at the time:
I’ve subsequently found this principle incredibly helpful for understanding why people do many of the seemingly nonsensical things they do.
In this case, the Iron Law means that Republicans will continue to support Trump, no matter what the consequences for the Republican Party as a whole, as long as that maintains or increases their power and prestige within the party – and it certainly seems like supporting Donald Trump is a hard and fast requirement for maintaining any position within the GOP right now. The only people who might turn on him are those with presidential ambitions themselves, but they’re very unlikely to succeed because everybody below them is better served by supporting Trump.
No, there is another… He’s not going to live forever. I’d say he’s far more likely to drop dead on the shitter than end up in prison. (Face it, Donald Trump is not going to prison. The United States of America does not imprison its aristocrats.)
Yeah, he’s not getting any younger.
What’s interesting (to me) is that as an autocrat, he is significantly inferior to Kim Il Sung. I say this not because Kim held onto power for a long time, but rather that on his death, his son stepped up… and on HIS death, HIS son stepped up. That’s some planning, right there.
In contrast, it’s very clear that the Cult of Trump dies with him. His interest in his kids seems limited to wanting to bang his daughter, and if any of them showed any actual ambition to be his replacement they’d get the same treatment Jeb Bush and Ron Desantis got. In Trump’s “mind”, There Can Be Only One, and that one is him. I’m sure that, however he dies, there will on that very day spawn a plethora of conspiracy theories about how he was whacked by the Democrats or the Republicans or the Jews or all three or whatever… but that will be a large minority of bona fide nutters who, once he’s safely in the ground, can be ignored, and politics will return to business as usual.
Until then, though, I think for practical purposes he IS the Republican party, and all the others just have to live with it.
I repeat my invitation elsewhere for people to stick their neck and predict whether
(1) Trump will get the Republican nomination and
(2) Trump will poll more than 50 million votes in the election.
I still think it’s a yes to both…. but there’s a long way to go. I’m interested to see whether he can kick Jack Smith’s case down the road far enough to get to the election before it happens. Smith doesn’t seem in the mood to hang about.
“You don’t want that on your conscience.” HAHAHAHAHA!
Assumes an entity which does not exist.
@4 sonofrojblake:
The Republican party can stop him from winning the Republican primary or being a Republican candidate at all. They can’t stop him from running in the general election as an independent. There are essentially no laws on how the Republicans run their primary, parties are free to do whatever they want to pick a candidate. There is really nothing stopping the Republican party executive committee from saying “Trump has been ejected from the party for violating the law and we are making Mitt Romney the Republican candidate.”
sonofrojblake @ # 6: … a large minority of bona fide nutters who, once he’s safely in the ground, can be ignored, and politics will return to business as usual.
Hah!
“Business as usual” for the rest of our lives, and probably the rest of anybody alive now’s life, will have to factor in a large, and in some places regionally dominant, cadre of parafascists (at best) craving a “strong leader”, and a gaggle of ruthless opportunists trying to figure out which way they’re going so they can run to the front of the mob and claim to be that leader.
Only a long period of social peace and prosperity could divert that trend – do you expect anything of the sort?
PS: I fear our esteemed host and Midjourney AI may have inspired the next Jon McNaughton painting.
#4, sonofrojblake wrote,
I believe that is true, but I also believe from previous discussions that Secret Service protection can be removed by an Act of Congress. This question has come up a few times in the last couple decades.
Whether Congress would remove such protection is doubtful. I also doubt that Trump will ever see jail time. Home confinement would probably be the maximum sentence he gets, with some limitations on his media presence. Which he will appeal to the USSC, and get any/all media restrictions removed.
“The Republican party can stop him from winning the Republican primary”
Like they did in 2015?
They very obviously can’t do anything of the sort.
@12,
They CAN, but the issue seems to be that they WON’T because they fear the backlash. If the RNC says “Trump is no longer a Republican”, that’s that and Trump can’t run as a Republican. They won’t do that, though, because they know that they’d be cutting their own throats and getting the lowest vote counts come election time since the party was created.
In some respects, I feel bad for moderate middle-class Republicans who’ve seen their party degenerate into madness over the past few decades. They probably thought Reagan was great (while he was sowing the seeds of destruction), but they never did anything about Gingrich’s slash and burn politics or W’s complete ineptitude regarding pretty much everything, and now this. So yes, they watched the fires on the deck of the ship grow and did nothing. But that may have been because they were too busy trying to make ends meet, what with downsizing, disappearing pensions and health care, education costs, and all the rest.
If they were coping with all of that, and remained Republicans – fuck them.
So you are not a proponent of meat tenderization? That would seem to be a reason.
I’m with sonofrojblake on this. They saw all those things happen – remember when Barack Obama was awarded a Nobel peace prize simply for not being George W. Bush? – and they still call themselves Republican. Fuck ’em.