Trump's Triumphal Return to the Scene of the Crime – The Bulwark
Donald Trump is worried about something. What if he does too well in his debate later this month against President Joe Biden? What if he beats him so badly that Democrats finally decide to take the president off the ticket?
Not to worry: Trump has a plan. “Maybe I’m better off losing the debate,” he told Real America’s Voice in an interview yesterday. “I’ll make sure he stays. I’ll lose the debate on purpose. Maybe I’ll do something like that.” Happy Friday.
Yesterday, Donald Trump visited Capitol Hill for the first time since being president. The criminal returned to the scene of the culminating crime of his presidency.
And he returned in triumph, enjoying the spectacle as House and Senate Republicans “bowed and prayed to the neon god they made.”
The scene was appalling. The capitulation to Trump by Mitch McConnell, and the adoration of Trump by all those other Republican members of Congress, was contemptible. What has happened to any sense of Republican self-respect?
The scene was also ridiculous. Trump reportedly made his usual quota of bizarre statements. His narcissism was on full display. But the Republican elected officials bent the knee. What has happened to any sense of Republican seriousness?
Moral indignation and intellectual despondency are both justified reactions to this moment of Trumpian triumph. But there’s of course another justified reaction: Alarm.
Because what happened yesterday could have some real effect.
Say you’re a Republican business type. You never liked Trump, but you went along in 2016. You hung in there in 2020. But you were shaken by January 6th.
You spent the next three years hoping the party would move beyond Trump—though you continued to support congressional Republicans as a check on the excesses of the Biden administration and the Democrats. You hoped one of the other Republican candidates would take off in 2023. You voted for Nikki Haley in the primary in 2024. You watched Mike Pence, his former vice president, say he wouldn’t vote for Trump.
So you told yourself—and of course you told your wife@—that you just might not be able to vote for Trump in November.
But now Nikki says he’s okay. Now Mitch has welcomed his back.
So now you tell yourself: Hey, if they’re okay with him, I’m okay with him. If they can live with this, I can live with this. Trump’s not gonna be too crazy. He’s going to govern as a normal Republican. Yes, he’’ll say some ridiculous things—but it won’t really be too bad. In fact, he’ll do some good. I’m comfortable voting for him again. And I think I can get my better half to go along too.
So yesterday marked the culmination of the “normie” Republican’s progress, from “Never Again Trump” in 2021, to “I’d Prefer Not Trump” in 2022 and 2023, to “I’m OK with Trump and I’m Writing a Check” in 2024.
I don’t want to overstate how many votes we’re talking about here. But making it harder to persuade some Republicans to join the “can’t support Trump” camp of Mike Pence and Paul Ryan—let alone to sign up in the “need to vote against Trump” brigade of Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger–is not nothing. The permission structure grows ever stronger for the return home of more normie Republicans.
And if they all return home, Donald Trump won’t just be visiting Capitol Hill every now and then. He’ll be moving back into the White House on January 20, 2025.
—William Kristol
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2016 was only eight years ago. 2016 was a lifetime ago. You’ve got to read this retrospective Politico piece on the young, energetic, diverse group of new leaders who seemed primed to break into Republican stardom in the spring of that year:
In the small town of Chapin, South Carolina, on the evening of Feb. 17, 2016, Nikki Haley, the nation’s youngest governor, and Sen. Marco Rubio, the youngest presidential candidate, had arrived in a bus emblazoned on its sides with “A NEW AMERICAN CENTURY.” “I wanted somebody that had conviction to do the right thing, but I wanted somebody humble enough that remembers that you work for all the people, and I wanted somebody that was going to go and show my parents that the best decision they ever made for their children was coming to America,” the 44-year-old Indian American Haley told the crowd, formally endorsing the 44-year-old Cuban American Rubio. “She embodies for me,” Rubio said when he took the mic, “everything that I want the Republican Party and the conservative movement to be.”
The next morning in Greenville, they were joined by Tim Scott, the 50-year-old Black senator, and Trey Gowdy, the 51-year-old, white, hipster-haircut-having congressman. Haley in 2010 on the cover of Newsweek had been hailed as a regional trailblazer, and Rubio in 2013 on the front of Time had been dubbed a Republican “savior.” And here they formed the foremost half of a visually arresting quartet that was embarking on some 72 hours of a barnstorm to promote Rubio’s bid in the first-in-the-South primary. A “photo op” that was “the stuff GOP dreams are made of,” as NPR put it at the time. “The cavalry!” Scott called it. This, said Rubio, “is the most important election in a generation because 2016 is not just a choice between political parties — 2016 is a choice about our identity. It is a referendum on what kind of country America will be in the 21st century.”
Read the whole thing. Might as well be from another universe.
U.S. humanitarian aid pier off Gaza to become inoperable for third time in a month: ABC News
Hamas says it does not know how many hostages are still alive: New York Times
In the search for hostages, U.S. is Israel’s key intelligence partner: Washington Post
‘We’ll hunt you’: Texas man arrested for allegedly threatening FBI agent on Hunter Biden case: Politico
Virginia hasn’t backed a Republican for president in two decades. Is it about to flip? Wall Street Journal
Someone needs to balance the unremitting gloom, doom and defeatism that Bill and Andrew churn out five days a week with a bit of good news. Accordingly, I offer the following from Simon Rosenberg’s Hopium Chronicles of yesterday:
“We’ve started seeing meaningful movement to Biden in new polling. 4 polls – CBS, NYT, Morning Consult, Yahoo/YouGov – have shown movement to Biden of 2 points or more. Today we got a fifth. Echelon, a Republican pollster, found Biden gaining 4 points since their last poll, going from 46-49 to 48-47. A highly credible Democratic polling consortium, Navigator, found Biden ahead nationally this week, 48-44 (4 pts).”
Just like North Korea. Republicans couldn’t stop clapping the Dear Leader.
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