We take a look at ‘The Donald’ after the 2022 Midterms…
Anti-Trump stuff OUT LOUD.….
Rupert Murdoch Weighs In
John Podhoretz: “After 3 straight national tallies in which either he or his party or both were hammered by the national electorate, it’s time for even his stans to accept the truth: Toxic Trump is the political equivalent of a can of Raid.”
Loser-in-Chief
Susan Glasser: “From his exile at Mar-a-Lago, the sore loser of an ex-President had envisioned the election as both a revenge play and a prelude to his triumphal return to the campaign trail next week as an official 2024 candidate…”
“That bloodbath was not to be, and the surprise remains that the Trumps—and the Party in their thrall—ever thought it could have been otherwise. Americans, historically speaking, do not like losers, and Trump has amassed what, in a different political era, could only be considered a big loser of a record: twice defeated in the national popular vote, Trump became the first incumbent President since Herbert Hoover to see his party lose the White House, Senate, and House in just four years.”
“He remains the subject of multiple criminal investigations by the Justice Department. A House select committee will soon make public a scathing report, likely putting the blame on him personally for the January 6, 2021, insurrection at the Capitol. Many of the pre-election pundits who leaned hard into predictions of Republican victory focussed too much on President Biden’s poor approval ratings—and not enough on Trump’s even higher unfavorable ratings.”…
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Former President Trump on Wednesday conceded the results of the midterm elections were “somewhat disappointing” but still sought to project a positive note, saying they were a “very big victory.”
“While in certain ways yesterday’s election was somewhat disappointing, from my personal standpoint it was a very big victory – 219 WINS and 16 Losses in the General – Who has ever done better than that?” Trump said in a post on his Truth Social platform…..
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If Tuesday laid bare Trump’s weakness and gave fodder to his detractors, it was not clear the Republican primary electorate was ready to notice it. On his social media platform, Truth Social, Trump’s supporters overnight were elevating the former president’s claim that he had a “GREAT EVENING”— a claim that relied on counting all his endorsements in non-competitive races as if they were major strokes of political ingenuity. In and around Mar-a-Lago, there was no sign that Trump had been chastened.
On Wednesday, a person close to Trump said, “I think a lot of people are feeling a little bit better this morning than they did last night,” stressing that numbers in the Arizona senate and gubernatorial races were “looking pretty decent” and Nevada, similarly, “looking good.”
There were no plans to reconsider a scheduled announcement for president that Trump has coming on Nov. 15, though several informal Trump advisers were encouraging it, as the Washington Post reported. “Nothing changes. Those who are trying to say Trump’s power is diminished, it’s all politics,” the person said. “If there was another election a month from now, they would all be wanting Trump’s endorsement.”
Privately, instead, much of Trump’s assessment about Tuesday’s election was that he himself had been let down. The former president was particularly “upset” about Mehmet Oz’s failure in the Pennsylvania Senate race, people familiar with the matter said, with some blame going towards donors, like Steve Wynn, and Fox News host Sean Hannity, who encouraged him to back Oz. In other races, Trump faulted Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell for the party’s shortcomings….
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The sentiment that Trump lost and DeSantis won is reflected across the spectrum of conservative media, encompassing those who disdain Trump as a liability but support him anyway and those who embrace him enthusiastically. The anti-anti-Trump National Review has headlines like“Tonight’s Emerging Narrative: DeSantis vs. the Rest of the Nation” and“Casey DeSantis Is the Greatest Political Mind in Modern History.” But even a Trumpist organ like American Greatness is running headlines such as “DeSantis Is the Night’s Big Winner.”
DeSantis has consolidated the support of the conservative movement by courting its most right-wing elements. He wooed insurrectionists, QAnon enthusiasts, and anti-vaxxers, the last of which is a constituency that has allowed him to run to the right of Trump, who is saddled with the liability of having created Operation Warp Speed. At the National Conservatism Conference, the party’s semi-fascist wing believed the American version of Viktor Orbán was not Trump but DeSantis.
The conventional wisdom all this time has held that Trump would simply bully DeSantis or anybody who stood in his path, just as he humiliated the likes of Jeb Bush and Ted Cruz. But this belief relies on the lazy assumption that whatever dynamic pertained in the last contested Republican primary would automatically continue. DeSantis has the advantage of a unified conservative-movement apparatus behind him, which Trump’s rotating cast of 2016 opponents never enjoyed.
You could see the new dynamic playing out already when Trump, returning to his familiar tools of innuendo and emasculation, told Fox News, “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.” This attack was met with a chorus of boos from the right….
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Former President Donald Trump ignored Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ crushing victory in the 45th president’s election night remarks — as other results spelled potential trouble for Trump’s path to the 2024 GOP presidential nomination….
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Trump said earlier in the day that he voted for DeSantis, but the previous night he warned the popular conservative governor that he could “hurt himself very badly” by launching a presidential bid….
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Trump Under Fire From Within GOP After Midterms
“Donald Trump faced unusual public attacks from across the Republican Party on Wednesday after a string of midterm losses by candidates he had handpicked and supported, a display of weakness as he prepared to announce a third presidential campaign as soon as next week,” the New York Times reports.
“As the sheer number of missed Republican opportunities sank in, the rush to openly blame Mr. Trump was as immediate as it was surprising.”
“Conservative allies criticized Mr. Trump on social media and cable news, questioning whether he should continue as the party’s leader and pointing to his toxic political brand as the common thread woven through three consecutive lackluster election cycles.”
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That’s right: It is time for Donald Trump to go.
I’m not being cute: Trump is the Republican establishment now. He’s the default, the Man, the swamp. It is Trump who is widely considered the front-runner for the party’s nomination in 2024. It is Trump whose endorsements are treated as if they were official edicts. It is Trump to whom the press and the public tend to link all GOP nominees. And, judging by the squeals that emanated from his allies yesterday, Trump’s machine intends to do everything it can to keep it that way, and to thus ensure that he wins the next primary election and loses the next presidential election. With the country in its present state, Republicans simply cannot afford that sort of frivolous, low-energy, old-boys-club complacency. GOPe, you’re on notice….
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Trump rose to prominence by criticizing what he perceived to be the “managed decline” of the Republican Party. The GOP’s candidates, Trump and his acolytes insisted back in 2015, were guilty of “failure theater” and of “running to lose.” These charges now attach perfectly to Trump and his loyalists.
Don Bolduc? Failure theater. Dr. Oz? Failure theater. Doug Mastriano? Failure theater. Worse yet, Trump enjoys actively sabotaging the party’s viable prospects if they refuse to bend the knee….