Donald Trump is in freefall
All you have to do is listen to Donald Trump’s speeches at his recent rallies, and you can tell he’s 75% senile at this point. As incoherent as his speeches sounded toward the end of his time in office, he’s much more incoherent these days. This guy is in freefall.
It’s why Trump’s handlers are walking a tightrope of pretending he’ll run in 2024 so rubes will send him money now, while also trying to keep him out of the spotlight more often than not. If they only put him out there occasionally, either in interviews with right wing extremist outlets that won’t get mainstream coverage, or at occasional rally speeches that won’t get media coverage at all, the general public won’t see how far gone he is – and the media will be able to keep chasing ratings by continuing to pretend that this incoherently senile man is somehow gearing up for a presidential run.
If Trump were to actually enter the 2024 race, the mainstream media would begin putting major pressure on him to begin doing mainstream interviews – which would quickly give away how far gone he is. Moreover, if Trump were to formally enter the race at any point, the donations he’s receiving, which are currently under no scrutiny or regulation of any kind, would suddenly be subject to campaign finance oversight. In other words, if Trump actually entered the race, he wouldn’t be able to keep taking the quasi-campaign donations he’s been receiving from fans and just sticking the money in his pocket.
It’s why Trump’s babysitters will likely keep us all in limbo about a supposed 2024 run for as long as they can. This charade will continue throughout the next year, and perhaps all the way up to the first preliminary 2024 election filing deadlines. Trump wants us to think he’s going to run, and certainly wants the media to keep hyping the narrative that he’s going to run, but he can’t actually enter the race.
If Trump keeps up this charade long enough, there will come a breaking point. He looks like he’s near death. The odds of the DOJ indicting him keep going up. And given how far gone his mind is, he may not be all that far off from a caretaker type situation which would make it almost impossible for him to even pretend he’s going to run. And at some point GOP mega donors or other influential people in the party will begin pressuring him to either formally enter the race or announce he’s not running.
At that point Trump (or whoever is handling his affairs in his name these days) will need to make a tough decision. Any formal 2024 campaign would quickly implode from the resulting scrutiny. Trump could simply announce that he “knows” he’d win if he ran, but he’s not going to bother because he also “knows” that it’s already been rigged against him. This would allow him to save face with his idiot base, and more importantly, save face with his own fragile ego.
So it’s extraordinarily difficult to imagine Trump actually entering the 2024 race. It’s more likely that he’ll drag this out for as long as he possibly can, pocket as much money as he can, and then duck out with a lame excuse at the last minute. This isn’t necessarily good news, however.
Trump has terrible favorability numbers, his base seems tired, moderate voters gave up on him a long time ago, and anti-Trump voters would be extraordinarily motivated to spend every day making sure he lost the general election. Putin has too many problems of his own to be in a position to help Trump in 2024. Louis DeJoy will be gone from the Post Office by then. And Trump won’t be able to use the power of the presidency to try to rig things for himself. President Biden would defeat Trump comparatively easily.
So it may not be good news that Trump is highly unlikely to be an actual 2024 candidate. There’s a reason why unpopular figures like Mike Pence and Ron DeSantis are already lining up their own 2024 campaigns. They know Trump well enough to know that he’s just going to drag this out and then not actually run – and they want to be in line to benefit from the fallout.
Perhaps the biggest danger we face in 2024 is the scenario where Trump pretends he’s going to run, and takes up all the media’s attention, until ducking out at the last minute. Then the Republicans would suddenly end up with a nominee no one was expecting, who won’t have been properly vetted by the media, and who would have an opportunity to falsely paint himself as being reasonably mainstream while quietly being derangedly extremist.
Vigilance doesn’t mean sitting around fretting over the scariest-sounding scenario that the media throws at you on any given day. Vigilance requires logically and factually examining what’s really going on, figuring out what the most realistic threats are, and focusing on fighting back against them – not just sitting around fretting over a broken senile bogey man who has been assigned evil magic powers by a ratings-hungry media.
