As Pleasant As It'll Be To See Trump Humiliated, Keep In Mind... DeSantis Can Win A General Election

McConnell did a long interview with NBC News on Wednesday blaming the GOP’s underperformance in the midterms on Señor Trumpzanzee, causing the party to lose winnable races in Pennsylvania, Arizona, Georgia, Nevada and New Hampshire. He said he doesn’t intend to bow to Trump’s will again and will instead “actively look for quality candidates” to promote against the MAGAts in the 2024 primaries. “Here’s what I think has changed: I think the former president’s political clout has diminished,” he said. “We lost support that we needed among independents and moderate Republicans, primarily related to the view they had of us as a party— largely made by the former president— that we were sort of nasty and tended toward chaos. And oddly enough, even though that subset of voters did not approve of President Biden, they didn’t have enough confidence in us in several instances to give us the majority we needed… We can do a better job with less potential interference. The former president may have other things to do.”

McConnell isn’t the only one talking publicly about the diminished nature of Trump’s clout. New York Magazine’s cover story this week is Olivia Nuzzi’s Inside Donald Trump’s sad, lonely, thirsty, broken, basically pretend run for reelection, which she says, he can still win. Since announcing his 3rd presidential campaign, the twice-impeached illegitimate former occupant of the Oval Office has barely left Mar-a-Lago… and when he has, it’s just been to play golf at the Trump National in Doral, two hours away. “He just goes, plays golf, comes back, and fucks off. He has retreated to the golf course and to Mar-a-Lago,” one adviser said. “His world has gotten much smaller. His world is so, so small.”

The plan in 2016 was to prove the haters wrong by running, to poll well enough to be able to say he could have won, and to return to the fifth floor of his building where he filmed The Apprentice, his NBC reality show. But NBC killed his contract over his comments about Mexico sending rapists across the border. He no longer had a vehicle for the attention he required. He had to keep going. The fifth floor became campaign headquarters. Trump was always his most Trump when he was in a bind. “That’s the Trump you want: You want him defensive, you want him belligerent,” a member of the current campaign staff told me. But that’s not how Trump sounded now. He sounded old all of a sudden. Tired. There was a heaviness to him. A hollowness, too. He will turn 77 in June.

As president-elect on the 26th floor of Trump Tower, he entertained everyone from Leonardo DiCaprio to Bill Gates. Post-presidency, on the second floor of Mar-a-Lago, he has welcomed QAnon believers and Holocaust deniers. Once, the question was, How could this be? He was the boy who cried campaign, a bullshit artist, a camp act. And when he landed in Iowa, when he circled cornfields in his TRUMP chopper, when he told Evangelicals his favorite Bible verse was “2 Corinthians,” the question became, Will this work? We couldn’t look away then. Now we can’t bear— or can’t be bothered— to look. The people who remain at his side, well, let’s just say Trump 2024 is not sending its best. And that’s by the standards of 2020. And 2016.

Why is he doing this now? And Why is he doing this at all? And What is his fucking problem? Few people are certain of the answers. “It seems like a joke,” said one ex–Trump loyalist, a former White House official. “It feels like he’s going through the motions because he said he would.” One month in, the campaign exists more as a half-formed idea than a nomination-securing operation. The $99 NFTs it’s selling as contributions are the most honest advertising Trump has ever engaged in.

On the phone, I told him what people who know him well had told me about the popular theories of why he would begin running in place for the presidency now, two years after he lost the election in disgrace, a few days after he lost the midterms for the Republican Party, more than a year before the nominating contests, and two years before the general election.

First, there is his need for attention, which is tied up with his fear of boredom. “He doesn’t have anything else to do,” one adviser told me. “What else can he do? Why did he see Kanye? He wants to be relevant and wants the limelight. He’s thirsty.”

Trump did not like this. “I think I’ve always been relevant. Like, I’ve been relevant from a very young age. I’ve been in the mix, to be honest,” he said.

The second is his fear of arrest. The prior time we talked, in July, this was already out there, the idea that his lawyers had advised him it was worth a shot to run as soon as he could as fast as he could in the direction of the White House, with or against the political winds, on the thinking that prosecutors, worried already about accusations of political persecution, might be spooked by an active presidential campaign. And that was before the FBI raid on Mar-a-Lago. Before we knew about the stolen classified material stashed in the basement. The appearance of legal pressure has only mounted in the past month. In the span of 24 hours, the January 6 committee announced referrals for criminal charges (obstruction of an official proceeding; conspiracy to defraud the United States; conspiracy to make a false statement and to “incite,” “assist,” or “aid or comfort” an insurrection), and the House Ways and Means Committee announced it would release six years of his tax returns, information he had fought bitterly to keep private throughout his earlier campaigns and presidency.

“That didn’t play into it,” Trump said. He did not like this, either. “I did nothing wrong,” he said. Had his lawyers given him that advice, as some of his advisers told me they had? “No,” he said. “I don’t know how you get indicted if you’ve done nothing wrong. I’ve done nothing wrong.”

He repeated that phrase, “I’ve done nothing wrong,” nine times in 30 minutes. I’ve done nothing wrong. I’ve done nothing wrong. I’ve done nothing wrong. I’ve done nothing wrong. I’ve done nothing wrong. I’ve done nothing wrong. I’ve done nothing wrong. I’ve done nothing wrong. I’ve done nothing wrong.

Then there was the matter of Ron DeSantis. “I’ve always gotten along with him,” Trump said. He went on about how DeSantis had been “losing by a tremendous margin” when he “came and asked for my endorsement” during his 2018 bid for governor. This is essential to understand. DeSantis came to him. He applies the Meisner technique. He recites the story over and over. DeSantis recognized the power of Trump just as everyone else did. But the story was getting less believable. In his most recent campaign, DeSantis did not pay him any such visit and won in a landslide. National polls had changed. Two days after we spoke, the Wall Street Journal had DeSantis beating Trump 52 to 38 percent.

I started to ask his opinion, as a Florida resident, of DeSantis as a governor. I used the phrase “governed by.” He flinched. He did not like the sound of that. “Well, I live in Florida,” he said, “but you know, when you say ‘governed by’ him …” He paused. He was annoyed. He did not like the idea that he was in any way under the rule of another person. Nor that the person was another clueless sonofabitch standing on Trump’s shoulders thinking he was really 20 feet tall. “You know, these people forget,” he said. “Politicians tend to forget.”

The very Establishment that had run the Republican Party into the wilderness before his improbable primary and general-election victories in 2016 was trying to cleave him from the herd once again. Now, when they were winning, they thought it was because people liked them, when really they won because they were with Trump, and people liked Trump, and those people liked people Trump liked. The Republican Party didn’t know what it had with Trump, as Trump saw it. They were losers when he came along and did them the favor of making people care, of giving them something to believe in. He was the winner.

“Guys like Mitch”— as in McConnell— “who is, I think, not good,” Trump said, “he was getting creamed. If I didn’t endorse him, he wouldn’t be a senator right now.” And Mitt Romney, who said Trump’s endorsement was the kiss of death for Republicans in the midterms? “The kiss of death was when Mitt Romney ran for president and got obliterated by Obama in a race that he should have won. That was the kiss of death,” Trump said. So no, he isn’t afraid of DeSantis, he said. He isn’t afraid of anyone. “I don’t think anybody can beat me in a primary.”

He said the whole truth about why he was running was this: “I wanted to put my cards on the table, and I did that. I think we did that very strongly.” He was talking now about the announcement itself in the Donald J. Trump Grand Ballroom. “It was considered to be a very successful announcement,” he said.

…“In order to make America great and glorious again, I am tonight announcing my candidacy for president of the United States.” It felt like nothing when he said that. It felt like he didn’t mean it, didn’t care. People in the audience checked their watches. Secret Service agents yawned. Trump looked out and paused. Everyone could sit down, he said. He didn’t want to make them stand for so long.

…“It’s not there. In this business, you can have it and have it so hot and it can go overnight and it’s gone and you can’t get it back. I think we’re just seeing it’s gone. The magic is gone,” an adviser said. “When Seb Gorka and Raheem Kassam and Kash Patel and Devin Nunes are your stars, that’s the D-list. It was D-list MAGA.

…This is the new Trump campaign, same as the old Trump campaigns, so who knows whom to trust? For now, campaign business is conducted by phone, over Zoom, in the lobbies of the Marriotts and Holiday Inns in West Palm Beach, and, only as it relates to meetings with the candidate himself, at Mar-a-Lago. The candidate does not provide work space to his staff at his private club. Unless they have $200,000 to spare.

“A bunch of campaign staffers have moved down to Palm Beach already,” Cheung said. Whoever they are. The first FEC reports for campaign expenditures will not be filed until the end of the year, and the candidate is reluctant to get into specifics before he is legally required to do so. “We’re doing structure, and we’re doing people. We’ve hired some great people, who will be announced,” Trump told me. “A lot of money is coming in … How much did I raise? How much did I raise?” A muffled voice, high in pitch, answered the question. Who was that? “Just, uh, a person,” Trump said, “uh, who’s giving me the information.”

The person was Susie Wiles, a veteran Republican operative who has worked for everyone from Ronald Reagan to Jack Kemp to George H.W. Bush to, in this century, Ron DeSantis. Her résumé lists 15 “SPECIALTIES” in the following order and capitalization: “Critical Thinking; Creative Solutions; Creating Order from Chaos; Building Relationships; Managing Perceptions; Campaigns; Political Strategy; Lobbying; Legislative Strategy; Public Policy; Crisis Communications; Strategic Communications; Media Relations; Public Relations; Community Outreach.” An odd fit for Trump, she is a grandmother and, according to CNN, an avid bird-watcher. She follows Ina Garten and Martha Stewart on Instagram.

Wiles has been around Trump since 2016, when she managed the campaign to victory in Florida. She did it again in 2020 and by a wider margin, even as other swing states that had once broken Trump’s way flipped for Biden. But she did not become Trump’s top adviser until the past two years, after everything fully went to shit. It’s a similar story with the handful of others who make up the campaign.

For many people inside, the first half of the administration was about staying there. The second half was about getting out, about how and when and whether they could or would, about what that would be like. On his way to defeat and isolated by the pandemic, the president started to scare even those who had been willing for years to forgive anything.

“I think that really fucked up his head,” the first former White House official said. “He was already on that path, he was so desensitized and emboldened, and then during COVID, his interactions with real people were so cut off. During this tragic time where horrible things were happening, he wasn’t experiencing any of it. It was an ugly cocktail of the pandemic and race— after George Floyd— these things that activated his worst features. He lost touch with what was real, whatever limited ability he had before to connect was just gone.” He was more inclined to crack than others. “Here’s a person who is so untethered as it is, who largely escapes accountability, and there were always weird people around him, but the more the normal people disappeared, and all he’s surrounded by are the cuckoo birds,” the official trailed off. “His brain was vulnerable too because I think he was probably whatever his version of depressed is.”

“I don’t want to excuse it,” the official continued. It wasn’t like working for Trump had ever been defensible. But it was easy to live in the fantasy world he had created. It encouraged fantasies of your own. “I always wanted to give him the benefit of the doubt,” the official said, “to see the good things, and I think a lot of that was just giving myself a reason to be there.”

…The second former White House official said, “I think if he’s even our nominee, we may lose our country. Even if I don’t believe he can win a general again, I think he could burn down the country. I think it’s that dangerous. I’m terrified.” The current staff, this person said, reflects this. “No decent people want anything to do with him,” the former official said. “I think he knows he’s got a fucking F-team and he’s embarrassed by it.” Still, this person admitted, the F-team may have a point: “There are so many gross opportunists, the minute it looks like he’ll win, they’ll all be back.”

Cheung sent over a list of events and endorsements, all campaign activity to date. In written communications, the campaign refers to the candidate as POTUS, the acronym that pertains to sitting presidents. Bill Clinton’s staff refers to him now as WJC; Barack Obama’s, BHO. But Trump clings to his dream that he could never be a loser. And so, to his staff, he’s POTUS.

Trump’s campaign schedule, described to me as “busy,” involved 11 events over the course of the month. One event was the announcement itself. Five events took place at Mar-a-Lago. Four events were not events at all but taped videos that were aired at events where Trump was not physically present. The endorsements were just as impressive: Kari Lake, Matt Gaetz, Elise Stefanik, Paul Gosar, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Max Miller, the New York Young Republicans, the Texas agriculture commissioner. The most high-profile Trump-endorsed candidate to win in the midterms, J. D. Vance, was not on this list. Neither was Trump’s former press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders, now governor-elect of Arkansas. I asked her why she hadn’t endorsed him. She didn’t respond.

Not on the official record of campaign activity was the event on November 22, exactly one week after the announcement, which spoke to just how much Trump is operating without meaningful staff or advice. That evening, Kanye West arrived for dinner with white supremacist and Holocaust denier Nick Fuentes in tow.

As for Congress... this has been the neo-fascists' plan all along. I'm surprise Gaetz spilled the beans yesterday. I was told it was totally hush-hush until they had defeated McCarthy on the January 3 first ballot.