Trump Teasing A Possible Non-Run In 2024 As His PAC Cranks Up Fundraising, MAGA Hysteria

This could be an interesting turn of events. Donald Trump’s fundraising machinery is going full bore. The last few days of the quarter the emails tripled, all in the traditional “my hair’s on fire and the sky is falling” tone that is supposed to get donors to really sit up and pay attention, this time it’s serious. Usually that tone is reserved for the very last few days of a presidential campaign when all is hysteria and Get Out The Vote is the cry across the land. Whether his coffers swelled commensurately last week is unknown, but he’s still going strong with the begging into the fourth quarter.

Trump also gave an interview to Real Clear Politics at Mar-a-Lago, and in contrast to his forceful online all-or-nothing begging, he’s playing coy.

“Given your dominance in Republican primary polls, and given that President Biden’s approval ratings have fallen to 45% nationally and 31% in Iowa and 39% in Michigan,” I asked, “why wouldn’t you run?”

Trump parried with a noncommittal answer. “I love the country, and I hate what happened,” he said, adding that since he left office things have “gone to hell. It’s been a terrible time.”

With that, the former president was off and running, lamenting what had taken place in Afghanistan, which led to a lengthy detour. A bit later, however, I gave it another try. “So,” I said, “I know you might do it, but give me one reason you might not do it.”

This time, Trump was somewhat more direct, and a tad fatalistic. “Well, one reason could be your health. You get a call from your doctor and that’s the end of that,” he said. “That stuff happens; you hope it doesn’t. I just had a medical, just had great result. You never know, there are many things can happen; politics is a crazy world. It is a big commitment of you, your children, your wife and your family.”

Trump couldn’t resist delivering his standard line that “people will be very happy with my decision,” adding that his new slogan is “Make America Great Again, Again.”

May we be spared from that, but maybe we won’t be. In all events, it’s a long time until 2024 and of course Trump won’t get off of his 2020 election fraud dirge, that’s no surprise.

Trump’s continuing claim that the 2020 election was rigged now presents him, and his party, with a quandary. According to a recent NPR/Marist survey, only one-fourth of Trump’s 2020 voters express a “great deal” or a “good amount” of trust that elections are fair. On the other hand, 72% of Trump voters have “not much” trust or “none at all” in the fairness of elections.

Republicans have embarked on a series of legislative measures in state capitals that they insist will restore Americans’ faith in the electoral system and which Democrats and sympathetic journalists have attacked as everything from “Jim Crow 2.0” to “the greatest constitutional crisis since the Civil War.” No one needs to guess where Trump comes down: He takes credit for leading the GOP push on voting procedures. “Georgia has a bill, Texas has a bill. Some are stronger than others,” he said. “That’s one of the good things that I have done by being vocal about this.”

Some in his party disagree and wish Trump would stop trying to relitigate the outcome of the 2020 election. Instead, they want him to look ahead and help Republicans win back majorities in the House and Senate in 2022. Trump thinks this is backwards.

“The 2020 election fraud is the biggest and its most energizing issue within the Republican Party,” Trump said, “and a large percentage of elected Republican leaders, including Congress, don’t understand that.”

It’s an energizing issue because it’s a lie. If the main plank of the GOP platform is total fantasy, they’re gone. It’s the 1850s all over again and the Whigs are out and something called the Republicans are rising in their place. I have no idea what the new conservative party will be named, but it’s a cinch no viable long term political party can be based upon a lie. That’s the stomping ground of the right-wing fringe crazies, the Cawthorn, Boebert, Greene axis of loonies. Mitch McConnell and any Republican who’s thinking straight sees those people for who and what they are, a circus side show.

Sit back and watch. The next few years are not only about the characters and issues currently in politics but about the fate of the Grand Old Party and nobody knows it better than them. They just don’t talk about it. At least not to us.