Donald Trump is toast
I don’t recall who it was, but some Washington insider once theorized back in the late 90s that Newt Gingrich planned to impeach Bill Clinton, then impeach Al Gore for pardoning Bill Clinton. As Speaker of the House that would advance Newt to the presidency. Or, at least, it would render whoever Gore appointed as Vice President, if he had time to find one, so weak and sullied by association as to be easily defeated by candidate Gingrich in the year 2000. Think Gerald Ford.
Frankly, when I first heard it, it all sounded a bit too much to me like a discarded plot for a Robert Ludlum novel. I thought at the time that Republicans weren’t that evil. Now I doubt it because I don’t think Republicans are that clever. They’re certainly that evil.
Whatever he is, to this day Newt Gingrich remains above all a fool. And he seems intent on proving just how much of a fool he is by his incessant support of MAGA in general and Donald Trump in particular. Unlike other retired old-school Republicans who have nothing to lose by opposing Trump, Gingrich is one of those rare ones dumb enough to actually support Trump. Maybe he didn’t get the memo that he doesn’t have to.
In any case, he’s now written a piece for the British conservative broadsheet “The Daily Telegraph” asserting in its headline that “Trump will be the next president. Get over it.” He begins by taking up the common but baffling claim that Trump’s victory in New Hampshire is somehow huge and therefore historic. I would remind the former Speaker that in 1992 George HW Bush won New Hampshire by 16% to Donald Trump’s 11%, and we all remember what happened to Bush.
The rest of the article is also rubbish, I won’t bore you with it. But it’s the conclusion of the article that’s most laughable. There, Gingrich avers that “every indictment and trial simply enrages and expands the Trump base.” Enrages, yes. Expands? Expands into where?
In any case, Donald Trump’s base remains that oddball 20-ish percentile from the “shoot somebody on Fifth Avenue” and “grab them by the pussy” days. Somewhat diminished by death from failure to get vaccinated but largely unchanged.
The truth of the matter is a Trump criminal conviction will fatally harm many of his current supporters. They will refuse to vote for a convicted criminal. When that happens Trump is toast. He’s probably toast anyway. A conviction will just make him, ah, toastier.
This is 80 year old Newt bucking for relevancy. To be sure he’s got nothing to lose, anyway. If he’s wrong no one will remember. If he’s right he can spend his golden years crowing into the encroaching sunset. Newt is no Nostradamus, I guess he just needs one more chance to prove it.
There are eight million stories in the Naked City of fading irrelevant Trumpsters. This has been one of them. And, as ever, ladies and gentlemen, brothers and sisters, comrades and friends, stay safe.
Robert Harrington is an American expat living in Britain. He is a portrait painter.