It can be said with all candor that Donald Trump was badly done to. He must, no doubt, harbor a very long list of grievances and injustices that cry out for vindication and vengeance.
His 2016 campaign for President was undermined by Deep State collusion between the FBI and the prior administration, abetted by a willing media, to implicate the Trump campaign in a conjured scheme with Russia to influence the election outcome. Justice Department officials secretly worked to fraudulently obtain FISA warrants to spy on individuals associated with Trump’s campaign staff and transition team. The Operation known as Crossfire Hurricane sought to first derail his campaign, then failing that, provided the underpinnings of the Mueller Investigation that lasted twenty-two months and mired his first term in baseless public speculation and partisan congressional committee inquiry that Trump rightly labeled “a witch hunt.” The clown car that pursued him carried the likes of Michael Avanatti, Stormy Daniels, Alexander Vindman, Christine Ford, and Michael Cohen, et al, who were launched by the media in the frenzy to discredit Trump, only to crash land without apology. Full disclosure, Trump populated his inner circle with the deeply flawed likes of Rudy Giuliani, Anthony Scaramucci, and Roger Stone to name a few, as well as detrimental appointees within the Cabinet who served him poorly, such as Jeff Sessions, Rex Tillerson, and James Mattis. Trump was the architect of his own demise on many fronts.
He endured the shame of two impeachments, the first of which was a ceremonial farce, fraught with conflicted testimony from state department hacks and embittered informants. The second, being a hastily-convened sideshow in the waning days of his term designed to live on well past his acquittal and provide the backdrop for the infamous January 6th show trial, carefully choreographed to stretch into the midterm elections two years hence.
The Deep State visited again throughout his 2020 campaign for a second term, this time stretching its tentacles beyond the complicit mainstream media to incorporate the good offices of the CDC, NIH, and the Machiavellian Doctor Fauci to stymie Trump’s attempts at salvaging his booming economy in an election year. Trump finally surrendered to the crushing lockdown pressures emanating from government proxies in Big Tech and Big Pharma, and embarked on his signature pandemic rescue plan, Operation Warp Speed, an effort roundly dismissed by media skeptics and political adversaries. Medical science yielded to political science as red states and blue states bickered over the management of extended business and school closures, drawing ideological battle lines against a backdrop of a nation already roiled by summer riots stoked by racial animus. Concurrently, the 2020 election cycle saw the long simmering wokeness agenda emerge with gusto to dampen pride in America, exacerbate the cultural divide, amplify identity politics, and infuse the runaway remote learning curricula with Critical Race Theory.
The Covid epidemic gave cover for candidate Joe Biden to skirt the scrutiny of the campaign trail, evade debate, and sideline Trump accomplishments with an ever-evolving line of science that at times touched on hysteria. It permitted key toss up states to reconfigure election laws and engineer new voting processes that were untested in practice, yet upheld in state courts, some of which usurped jurisdiction from the state legislature. And finally, the Deep State re-emerged with its old cronies in the military intelligence gallery to spin away the Hunter Biden Laptop Scandal and provide legitimacy for mainstream media and Big Tech to bury the story on the eve of the election.
Post-election, Trump’s efforts to litigate election irregularities were spurned by the courts, and undermined by a parade of charlatans and quacks he recruited that ultimately derailed the impetus for legitimate inquiry. Those setbacks set the stage for the ill-conceived January 6th rally and the travesty that followed.
So here we are, November 14, 2022, with Congressional majorities undecided, the midterm pollsters once again off the mark, amid bogged down voting tallies in toss-up states. Trump now sees the emergence of a new standard bearer being coronated in Florida, the ignominious defeat of key candidates he championed, and growing dissatisfaction from the GOP with his continued garnering of a spotlight best shined elsewhere. Between the encroaching fallout expected from the New York State investigation into his business practices and the exploitable harm resulting from the raid on Mar-a-Lago, Trump sits largely as damaged goods on the eve of what portends to be his bigly announcement concerning the 2024 presidential race that may very well be met with bipartisan derision and open media disdain.
True to form, the only one on whom these realities will be lost is Trump himself. Yet he can still derive a measure of vindication even from this diminished position. If he were more calculating than impulsive, he could position himself as a shadow candidate in 2024, willing to cede the party mantle to a rising star on a conditional basis. The caveat being, if Biden or Harris were to run in ’24, the GOP nomination would be his for the asking. This would accomplish two things for Trump: he can actually defeat either incumbent if they were to run, provided he ran on a platform of restoring his policies and not on his obsession with reclaiming the election they stole. And second, if the democrats succeeded in dissuading Biden from a second term run, Trump could boast his mere presence was enough to force Biden-Harris to the sidelines, done so by him as a service to America. He could then declare “my work here is done” and become the magnanimous cheerleader for the chosen one.
Alternatively, he could encounter some stiff opposition in a primary battle with party electors who have Trump fatigue. True, his war chest would dwarf other hopefuls, but over the course of his tenure with the GOP, he has forged many enemies. Candidates with no clear path to the nomination may nonetheless savor the opportunity to belittle Trump on a debate stage. Chris Christie comes to mind. Nikki Haley could drag some Trump administration skeletons out of the closet. Mike Pompeo, someone who has actually paid attention these past four years, would present as far more astute on policy matters concerning China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea. Senator Tom Cotton is concise and facile in articulating the failures of the Biden administration on matters ranging from Afghanistan to border security to the Fentanyl epidemic. Ted Cruz’s prosecutorial bluster could easily conflate Trump’s legal woes with the cloud of corruption hanging over the Biden family. Mike Pence could effortlessly usurp any support Trump still held among Evangelicals while projecting a sense of integrity Trump surely cannot. It remains highly doubtful that these players would criticize the former President on his record or his policy instincts; no, they would instead seize upon Trump’s electability given his petulant egotism, and castigate him on his sorest of wounds: the stolen election. Trump would be besieged and humiliated in such a setting.
Such a tact would be, however, at their Party’s own peril. For Trump holds the nuclear option: a third-party run. Trump could counter any movement to deny him the GOP nomination with the spectacle of a self-funded run as an independent, maybe grabbing an unaffiliated spitfire like Tulsi Gabbard as a running mate on a Unity Party (how ironic) ticket. Splitting the Republican Party between RINOs and Trumpsters would all but insure a democrat victory, no matter who they ran.
This is all a very sad outcome for someone who, as stated at the outset, was badly done to. His hubris in believing that he could single-handedly “drain the swamp” stands largely as his ultimate undoing. It is to the country’s detriment that he was so widely unsuccessful in this endeavor; for it will dissuade others who might try. Perhaps someone less flawed, more adept, and better equipped may one day leverage an election mandate to do just that; but that exceptional person has yet to appear on the horizon. And that could very well be by design. For as long as the country cannot be unified behind a visionary with the knowhow to get the money out of politics, the lobbyists out of government, the ideologues out of the press rooms and universities, then the swamp will persevere.
Donald Trump should not be vilified. He did have his first term stolen from him by a bogus investigation that paralyzed his administration. He did have a robust economy and quantifiable policy successes pulled away by a pandemic of foreign origin managed by medical despots and political opportunists that fully undermined his re-election effort. His character was assailed, his family was vilified, and his achievements obscured like no other who came before him. The world’s largest social media platform banned its biggest newsmaker. It was open season with no holds barred, and it continues today, witness the unprecedented raid Mar-a-Lago.
But this should all serve as a reckoning for Trump and the GOP. The Trump era should be recognized as done and dusted, a true casualty of uncivilized times. The GOP has a wide field of quality hopefuls who could easily defeat an array of democrat candidates in 2024. The best of them would have the coattails to deliver strong majorities in both chambers. Trump’s vision for a strong America could yet be realized with a winning mandate for sound policy, but that would only come about with someone else at the helm.