The rats flee the sinking ship

| 9:09 am EDT June 7, 2021
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Just how embarrassingly damaging was Donald Trump’s public performance over the weekend? The only real debate was why his pants looked so weird; there was no debating the fact that he came across as a half dead and three quarter senile shadow of himself on his last legs.

It was immediately clear why his remaining handlers put off letting him hold a rally until now; it was better for the media and the public to merely ask questions about why he was in hiding, rather than to see his depleted condition and figure out precisely why he’d been in hiding. That broken sad sack loser is somehow going to magically make a political comeback in 2024? Heh.

In a sign of how poorly Saturday’s public appearance went for Donald Trump, his longtime loyalist Corey Lewandowski promptly went on a Sunday morning show and admitted that Trump lost the 2020 election fair and square. Lewandowski told some other lies on Sunday; he deserves no credit for anything. But it was a sign that Trump is such a sunken (not sinking, but sunken) ship, there’s really nothing left for even an opportunist clinger like Lewandowski to stick around for. It’s time for him to opportunistically move on from Trump’s ghost and try to find some other thing to latch onto, and he knows it.

We’ll see more of this. Not all at once, of course. Trump’s clingers are each going to make their own calculations about when it’s finally time to move on from his ghost and try to find a new and dishonest career path. The fact that Jason Miller is still hanging in there with Trump is a sign of just how few career opportunities are open to him these days beyond screwing up Trump’s pants.

But the rats will keep gradually leaving Trump’s side, because there’s just nothing left to hang around for. Even those “Trump loyalists” who still want to bathe themselves in Trumpism, and inherit Trump’s deranged base, are well aware that they have to move beyond Trump himself. Standing next to that sad senile blob won’t get them anywhere – particularly now that he’s facing criminal indictment.

Why does this matter? Because it’s not Donald Trump we have to worry about in 2024. It’s the opportunistic con artists in the political realm who latched onto him in 2016 to try to juice their own corrupt careers, and who will now move on to either try take Trump’s place, or try to prop up the next Trump-like figure. We have to be more vigilant than ever about the next right wing fascist candidate who emerges and doesn’t have Trump’s accumulated baggage. As always, we’ll do our best to fight and win.