Is Trump Channelling GOP Voters? Or Is He Inciting Them?
Trump was smart yesterday to skip the Family Leader forum, a gathering of Iowa anti-Choice evangelical fanatics— the kind who see the new 6 week abortion ban as a step in the right direction but who won’t be happy until all abortions are 100% banned… like many far right evangelicals across the country. That’s a sensible case to make in a GOP primary but a political dead end in a general election. Trump gets that. Meatball Ron, Pence and the rest don’t.
Besides, Trump have have been worried about being accosted by his old pal Chris Christie who came very close to challenging him to a duel on Piers Morgan’s Fox show on Thursday. Morgan goaded him into it: “Talking of fighting, if you and Trump got in the ring— he loves his UFC and stuff like that, right— if you got in the octagon, you and him, who would win?”
“Come on,” protested Christie. “Guy is 78-years-old. I’d kick his ass,” he declared to Morgan’s amusement.
The host went on to ask if Christie would be “prepared to be the undercard, you against Trump?”
Christie replied that he would “fight Donald Trump anywhere he wants in any arena he wants. Whether it’s on a debate stage, or in the octagon.”
The claim of physical superiority comes amidst an escalating, and highly personal war of words between the two candidates. Christie has been the most vocal critic of Trump in the GOP field, arguing that the former president’s legal perils are tormenting him and accusing him of cowardice for reportedly planning on skipping the planned Republican primary debates.
Meanwhile, Trump has ripped Christie for his weight. “How many times did Chris Christie use the word SMALL? Does he have a psychological problem with SIZE? Actually, his speech was SMALL, and not very good,” wrote Trump on Truth Social after Christie’s campaign launch.
All that adolescent “small” stuff actually refers to DeSantis crudely-- desperately-- challenging Trump to a dick-measuring contest. This is what Republican Party politics has come down to. Imagine what Abraham Lincoln would think-- or even Dwight Eisenhower! And perhaps you thought it was only Elon Musk who is that cluelessly infantile?
[Conservative] boys will be [conservative] boys but Christie had more to say about Trump than that he could take him in a fight. He also boasted that if he’s elected president and Señor T winds up in prison, he wouldn’t pardon him. On NewsNation with Chris Cuomo, Christie said, “I can’t imagine a circumstance, as we see it right now, let’s say with the documents case, which is the only one that the president would have jurisdiction over, given what’s alleged in the indictment, if that were proven, and … the former president were found guilty, as long as I thought he got a fair trial … I would have a hard time considering any pardon. And by the way, as you know, to get a pardon, you have to also accept responsibility for what you did. I doubt very highly that Donald Trump would ever do that. And so I can’t imagine a pardon being issued.”
We may find out sooner than later Politico reported yesterday that “Jack Smith’s team sharply rebuked Donald Trump’s bid to postpone until after the 2024 election his criminal trial for allegedly hoarding classified documents, characterizing the former president’s call for delay as unfounded and one of his key legal arguments as ‘borderline frivolous.’… [P]rosecutors said federal law and the Constitution require the trial to be put on as soon as practical— not with an ‘open-ended’ date built around Trump’s political calendar. ‘There is no basis in law or fact for proceeding in such an indeterminate and open-ended fashion, and the Defendants provide none.’” Now we’ll see if Aileen Cannon, the hack MAGA judge who grabbed the case, is following the Constitution or Trump’s defense strategy.
None of this is a laughing matter— except the idea of Trump and Christie brawling. Yesterday— Bastille Day— Tal Axelrod reminded his readers about on of the reasons laughing at Trump’s candidacy should be left for future observers, not us. He may have more than one motivation, but a huge one— that he’s encouraging in his fans— is primal revenge. “Trump,” wrote Axelrod, “has told supporters not to just see him as a candidate but as ‘your retribution.’” In his comeback bid, he’s “vowed that if reelected, he will wield his power to personally remake parts of the federal government to a degree that historian Mark Updegrove said was unprecedented. Trump has promised to hamstring perceived enemies, including in the Department of Justice, which is currently investigating him, and target Republican bogeymen like President Joe Biden. He swore in June to appoint a special prosecutor to ‘go after’ the Bidens and that he would ‘totally obliterate the deep state,’ referring to a conspiratorial view of how the government operates. ‘This is the final battle... Either they win or we win,’ he said in March.”
"Time and time again, we have seen Donald Trump attempt to remake our government in his image, not based on our country’s ideals and traditions, but based on a personal agenda," said Updegrove, a presidential historian and ABC News contributor.
But conversations with GOP insiders and attendees at recent Trump campaign events confirm the base's appetite hasn't waned for the revenge he promises. According to FiveThirtyEight, early polls show Trump is the clear front-runner for his party's nomination, with his support not stifled by either of his two historic indictments…
The support from Trump loyalists for a complete overhaul of parts of the government has set off a chicken-or-the-egg debate over whether he has convinced his voters to turn against bodies like the FBI— or if he's exacerbating a sentiment they already feel, given the myriad legal troubles and investigations Trump has faced.
"He has persuaded people that the FBI and the DOJ are at least enemies of Donald Trump" asserted veteran GOP pollster Whit Ayres.
"He gets the people who care about him to care about people who are standing in his way. And the agencies of law enforcement ... he's declared war on them, and his followers will believe what he says," Ayres continued.
A Fox News poll released last month showed that 40% of registered voters have a lack of confidence in the FBI. And even intraparty critics of the former president concede how much his suspicions of law enforcement and his anti-government messaging have seeped into the broader GOP.
"The deep distrust and dislike that these people have and feel about these institutions just comes through so strong when you talk to these voters. Trump's message is in line with how the voters are thinking about these institutions. They don't trust them at all," said Gunner Ramer, the political director of the Republican Accountability PAC, which conducts focus groups with GOP voters.
"I think that this is very much about what Donald Trump has been able to really activate within the Republican Party base," Ramer said. "When you ask these Republican primary voters, 'How do you feel about Trump's campaign promise of investigating the Bidens?' It's near unanimous support for that."
…"I would not be surprised that if any Republican takes over— not just Trump, any Republican— that you would see a further politicization-slash-weaponization of the Justice Department and less of the courtesy that they used to give former elected officials," one former Trump adviser who's still in contact with his campaign said.
"Everything's on the table," this person said, adding, "I think everybody needs to be put on notice ... I don't think that courtesy that Trump gave Hillary would exist the second time around."
…Samara Klar, a professor at the University of Arizona who studies political attitudes and behavior, said that she "optimistically" thinks "our institutions will remain strong" in the face of Trump's attacks on the government. However, she conceded her belief is not universally held among her colleagues, some of whom she said think Trump could pose a more existential risk.
Democracy experts have previously spoken to ABC News about how they worried Trump was corroding crucial institutional trust.
"For the election system to work, our entire democracy to work, depends on trust in the election system. That is the reason why there is and has always been a peaceful transition of power after elections in the United States," Wendy Weiser, who directs the Democracy Program at the Brennan Center for Justice, said last year.
According to the GOP operatives and outside experts who spoke to ABC News for this story, Trump's continued assault on the federal government's legitimacy will likely be a mainstay of his 2024 campaign and return him to comfortable and controversial territory— urging supporters to embrace him even if it means rejecting everyone else.
"There are very few Americans— and frankly, probably very few people worldwide at this point— who don't have a pretty crystallized attitude about Donald Trump. I don't think he can appeal to uncertain voters," Klar said. "At this point, his best strategy is to garner as much enthusiasm among the people that already like him."
Sadly, Trump is very much in tune with the Republican Party base, as is DeSantis. The NeverTrumpers? Not even a little. And Chris Christie? He's polling under 3 points nationally. Worse yet, most Republicans tell pollsters they dislike him and would never consider voting for him. He wants to be the anti-Trump candidate. He's succeeding. Unfortunately for Christie, there is no place in the GOP for an anti-Trump candidate. Trump has literally remade the party over in his own image.
"Imagine what Abraham Lincoln would think".
actually, it would take no real imagination. Based on Lincoln's own words and deeds, he would have been horrified by his own party's descent into fascist service to the money as far back as... the day after he died. reconstruction was conducted of, by and for the money instead for the benefit of rebuilding the south. It's likely that Lincoln's own view of reconstruction may have been a guiding principle for the Marshall Plan. reconstruction of iraq after cheney/bush's baseless destruction followed the reconstruction theme. hopefully you get the idea.
Lincoln would have been amused in a strictly academic way by LBJ's admission that passage of VRA and CRA would lose the south for…
if only someone would have called drumpf out on his BS from day one, instead of allowing him to build his kingdom of BS and his wall of BS. we wouldnt be dealing with all these braindead/brainwashed bigots that believe trump is the chosen one (because he told them so) or that only he could fix it (it being everything and everyone that isnt enriching/empowering trump at the moment) when trump says that "many people" say. he should have been called out and asked who? name some ! hell name anyone ! or when he was asked about his favorite book, the charlatan said "the bible". and when asked a simple question like (what was your favorite verse …