The “Trump 2024” campaign is in tatters

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Months after Donald Trump launched his “2024 campaign” it’s now obvious to everyone that no such campaign exists. There have been no campaign events. There is no semblance of a campaign staff. Trump almost never appears in public, and doesn’t even bother to use his reinstated Twitter account. There is essentially no media coverage of the “Trump 2024” campaign at this point because there is no campaign.

It’s becoming painfully obvious to everyone out there that Trump isn’t really running for anything, and that this is all just an attempt at raising and pocketing money, while telling himself that being a candidate will somehow magically protect him from the criminal justice system fate he’s facing.

When even the ratings-hungry media isn’t bothering to play along with the “Trump 2024” narrative anymore, it means Trump is in real trouble. So now he’s holding the bare minimum number of “campaign rallies” just so the media will spend a few news cycles portraying him as if he were an actual candidate, so he can keep up the illusion that his “2024 campaign” exists. It’s all just a joke at this point.

What’s particularly interesting is that Donald Trump always loved holding campaign rallies. Rambling to his adoring base, while they cheered on his every inane word, seemed to be the only aspect of politics that he enjoyed. Yet in spite of the obviously profitable nature of such rallies, Trump has held very few of them in the two years since he was booted from office. Since announcing his 2024 “campaign” he’s been even more hesitant to hold rallies. The media should be asking why.

When Trump announced his imaginary 2024 campaign, at a time when everyone in the media knew it was phony, it was bad enough that the entire media played along and pretended it was real. But now that Trump has spent the past few months doing absolutely nothing and proving by default that there’s no 2024 campaign, the media should be loudly calling out the fact that no such campaign ever did emerge. The media should be pointing to the fact that Trump sounds increasingly confused and senile in the rare appearances he has made, and it should be asking if his handlers are trying to hide him for fear everyone will see how far gone he is. The media should also be asking if Trump’s lawyers are hiding him for fear he’ll keep saying incriminating things ahead of his indictment.

Instead the media has failed to do its job entirely, and instead seems relieved that Trump is finally doing the bare minimum to keep the “Trump 2024” narrative viable. This means the media gets to keep milking that narrative for ratings for awhile longer.

What’s curious is why the media is even still bothering. At this point the Trump 2024 narrative is barely still intact, fewer people are interested in it than ever, and it’s not a ratings-friendly storyline. One would think that the media could get far better ratings by focusing on the fact that Trump’s criminal indictment in Georgia is “imminent” (per the District Attorney), and that Trump’s federal indictment appears to be nearing as well. Old media habits die hard. But you’d think the media would figure out that at this late stage of the game it can get more ratings out of Trump simply by honestly covering his downfall.