Full Blunt: Trump Can Be A Candidate If He Wants To Be In 2024
Republican strategists see a potential candidate who is keeping himself in the political arena in ways that will benefit him whether he chooses to run or not.
“I would describe what Trump is doing right now as not not running for president,” said Chris Wilson, a longtime Republican strategist and pollster who worked on Texas Sen. Ted Cruz’s 2016 presidential campaign. “Everything he’s doing could morph into a 2024 campaign quite easily, but it also keeps him in the public eye and with a strong base of political power if he decides to play kingmaker in the primary and do something else instead.”
Indeed, he is making all of the moves of a presidential candidate and with far more capacity to command national attention than any other potential GOP 2024 hopeful. Next to Trump, the rest of the field looks downright tiny: former Vice President Mike Pence, former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, Sens. Cruz, Josh Hawley, R-Mo., Tom Cotton, R-Ark., and others.
His universal name-recognition, deep support within the GOP and ability to raise cash all mean that Trump can afford to wait on a formal decision, according to John J. Pitney, a political science professor at Claremont McKenna College outside Los Angeles.
“If he wants the GOP nomination, it’s his for the asking,” Pitney said. “Trump is in a unique position,” which allows him to “content himself with making money, waging legal battles and getting the occasional fix of audience applause” for now.
Teacher Removed After Telling 8th Graders Trump Still President Vaccines Dangerous
An alleged politically-charged and conspiracy-laden tirade led to the removal of a history teacher from a middle school after the incident gained national attention.
The Ventura Unified School District in Ventura, California, confirmed that the teacher, whose name has not been released, no longer works at Anacapa Middle School, according to the Ventura County Star. Other officials, however, declined to say whether or not the teacher is still employed by the district as a whole.
The controversy surrounding the teacher began when a seven-minute video recording of her allegedly espousing various conservative political conspiracies to an eighth-grade class, CBS Los Angeles reported.
In the clip, which was recorded in October, the teacher claimed Hunter Biden possessed child pornography on his laptop and engaged in sexual acts with a niece. She also allegedly disparaged the safety of vaccines and told her students that Donald Trump is still president.
“Hunter Biden, for example, is doing deals with China and Ukraine where he was funneling money illegally,” the teacher was reportedly heard saying in the video. “He also had child pornography on his laptop. He was having sexual intercourse with his own niece.”
At another point in the recording, she allegedly told her students: “If you have a baby in the hospital, they don’t want to give it back if you’re not vaccinated. This is a complete power control threat.”
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Then she added that there’s just an overall unease that’s troubling. “It’s just kind of, like, not really trusting what to expect,” she said.
As for Biden, she said, “I just put him at, like, the average. He hasn’t done anything great. And outside of Afghanistan, nothing awful.” But she was clearly hoping for better.
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No Constitutional Way For Trump To Be Reinstated
Experts say there is no constitutional provision that would allow for Trump’s reinstatement. There is also no legal way to overturn election results after Congress has certified Electoral College votes. The election audits promoted by Trump and his allies provide no mechanism for Biden to be removed from office.
The United States Constitution provides that the candidate with the most votes from the Electoral College shall be president. A candidate must receive 270 electoral votes to win.
Biden won 81 million votes to Trumps 74 million, giving him 306 electoral votes. Those results were certified by Congress on Jan. 6, after a pro-Trump mob stormed the U.S. Capitol. Biden took the oath of office at noon on Jan. 20.
The 20th Amendment says the terms of the President and the Vice President shall end at noon on the 20th day of January … and the terms of their successors shall then begin. That means Biden’s term will last until January 2025.
Persistent, baseless allegations of voter fraud will not change that fact.
The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency said in November that the 2020 election was the most secure in American history. Additionally, then-Attorney General William Barr said the Department of Justice found no evidence of widespread voter fraud that could change the outcome of the 2020 presidential election results.
Fact check:Trump lost the 2020 presidential election
Were Tracking Trumps And Harriss Popularity Ahead Of The 2024 Presidential Election
Welcome to Pollapalooza, our weekly polling roundup.
Former President Donald Trump ended his presidency more unpopular than any of the last 12 presidents at the end of their first terms and he is still unpopular post-presidency according to FiveThirtyEights new average of Trumps favorability numbers. Currently, 41.4 percent of Americans have a favorable opinion of the former president, while 53 percent have an unfavorable opinion of him.
Overall, Trumps unfavorability now that hes out of office were tracking his favorability numbers rather than his approval rating, both of which capture popularity has remained steady just as his low approval numbers mostly did during his presidency. His popularity took a dip following the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, which meant that his overall favorability was quite low when we began tracking those numbers in February. But as you can see in the chart above, Trumps favorability numbers have more or less returned to where his approval rating was before the insurrection.
To be sure, Trump is still more unpopular than popular with the American public as a whole. Yet, despite Trumps overall unfavorability, as my colleague Nathaniel Rakich wrote about last week, the majority of Republicans want Trump to run for president again, with polls suggesting that Republicans overall thought Trump had a positive impact on politics.
Related:Democrats Worry A Lot About Policies That Win Elections. Thats Short-Sighted. Read more. »
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Donald Trump May Still Destroy The Gop After All
Republicans think the former president is their electoral savior, but his toxic influence over the party might just bring about its demise.
When Donald Trump descended the escalator on that fateful day in June 2015, he began the improbable process of taking over the Republican Party from presidency to precinct. Most of the press and political intelligentsia at the time treated his campaign as little more than a joke. Now, most Republicans consider him the savior of their party.
Its hard to deny it: The GOP is now a reinvigorated cult of personality around Trump. He dispatched his opponents in the 2016 primary with ease despite the open hostility of most of the party establishment, marginalized or co-opted his opposition, and remade the party in his image. More importantly, he hastened a realignment that will be structurally advantageous for the GOP in Congress and the Electoral College for decades, even though Republicans are numerically inferior and shrinking across the country. Trump drove turnout among his ardent fans higher than expected and cut into Democratic advantages among people of color.
The Big Lie that Bidens win is somehow illegitimate due to voter fraud is giving fuel to Republican attempts to steal Democratic victories in future elections through suppression and simply refusing to certify their wins. But it also appears to hinder Republican turnout when their voters dont believe their votes will count.
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Presidential Campaign And 2011 Hints At Presidential Run
In 2000, Trump ran in the California and Michigan primaries for nomination as the Reform Party candidate for the 2000 United States presidential election but withdrew from the race in February 2000. A July 1999 poll matching him against likely Republican nominee George W. Bush and likely Democratic nominee Al Gore showed Trump with seven percent support.
In 2011, Trump speculated about running against President Barack Obama in the 2012 election, making his first speaking appearance at the Conservative Political Action Conference in February 2011 and giving speeches in early primary states. In May 2011, he announced he would not run, and he endorsed Mitt Romney in February 2012. Trump’s presidential ambitions were generally not taken seriously at the time.
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Use Of The Office Of President
Trump often sought to use the office of the presidency for his own interest. Under his leadership, the Justice Department, which is traditionally independent from the President, became highly partisan and acted in Trump’s interest.Bloomberg News reported in October 2019 that during a 2017 Oval Office meeting, Trump had asked Secretary of State Rex Tillerson to pressure the Justice Department to drop a criminal investigation of Reza Zarrab, an Iranian-Turkish gold trader who was a client of Trump associate Rudy Giuliani. Tillerson reportedly refused.
Trump attempted to host the 2020 G7 Summit at his Doral Golf Resort, from which he could have made significant profits. Trump has visited his properties 274 times during his presidency. Government officials were charged as much as $650 per night to stay at Trump’s properties.
In the lead up to the 2020 election, Trump and Postmaster GeneralLouis DeJoy, a close ally of Trump, sought to hamper the US postal service by cutting funding and services, a move which would prevent postal votes from being counted during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Trump has fired, demoted or withdrawn numerous government officials in retaliation for actions that projected negatively on his public image, or harmed his personal or political interests, including Federal Bureau of Investigation Director James Comey, Deputy FBI Director Andrew McCabe, U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions, and Director of National Intelligence Joseph Maguire.
Cost of trips
Election Audits Will Not Change The Outcome
Trump supporters are holding on to the results of ongoing election audits to support the reinstatement theory. However, those recounts have found no evidence of widespread fraud in the 2020 election.
Three separate audits of election results in Georgia, where Biden beat Trump by more than 10,000 votes, found no evidence of wrongdoing affecting the state’s results. An ongoing audit in Maricopa County, Arizona, also hasn’t surfaced any evidence of widespread voter fraud. A number of manual hand recounts across the country have affirmed Biden’s victory.
At least 61 lawsuits from the Trump campaign alleging election fraud have failed. Courts in battleground states have denied hearing Trump’s appeals to overturn election results.
Business Insider reported that even if Lindell uncovered widespread election fraud, Congress could only remove Biden through impeachment. If Biden were removed from office, Vice President Kamala Harris would become president, not Trump.
The only path for Trump to return to the presidency would be to win the 2024 presidential election race.
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Portraying Himself As Hero Of The Forgotten American Besieged By Enemies
Besides his ability to exploit Americas structural problems, Trump remains influential because of his populist style, his mendacity and the amplification of those traits by social media.
Since his 2016 election, Trump has portrayed himself as the hero of the forgotten American besieged by enemies.
Those enemies include Congressional Democrats, traitorous Republicans In Name Only , social and economic elites, the deep state, the liberal media, immigrants, foreign powers , and even the pandemic itself.
That portrayal appeals to some because of its simplistic good and evil narrative. It is also a lie.
Systematic lying was a defining feature of the Trump Presidency. It began with the lie that his inauguration crowd was the largest audience to ever witness an inauguration.
According to The Washington Post, Trump made a total of 30,573 false or misleading claims during his presidency.
Trumps lying was a clever propaganda campaign. Saturating the public sphere with lies led some to become cynical about the truth. Some Americans perceptions of reality changed. They doubted whatever did not fit their preconceived beliefs. Rather than think critically about inconvenient facts, they rejected anything at odds with their worldview.
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Social media amplifies traditional forms of lying and propagandising. Social medias business model is built around user engagement. Outrage generates engagement.
Qanon Followers Believe Trump Is Still The President In Scary Daily Show Video From Iowa Rally
Believe it or not, despite it being very obvious that Donald Trump did not win the 2020 US election, some of his supporters still think he is the president of the United States.
The former US president recently held a rally in the state of Iowa and The Daily Show sent along their reporter Jordan Klepper, a veteran of Trump rallies, to get a feeling of the consensus amongst the divisive Republicans most ardent fans.
Odd moments included a flag depicting Trump riding a velociraptor and two of his supporters, clad head-to-toe in Trump merchandise, claiming that this is not a cult.
However, the most alarming thing that Klepper noticed was that the QAnon conspiracy theory has not died down among Trump supporters and appears to be just as popular as ever.
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Not Thrilled With Biden But Absolutely Not Missing Trump
These two focus groups consisted of all Biden voters, but overwhelmingly they still consider themselves Republicans. They haven’t yet left the party, even though they’re disillusioned by Trump’s ongoing presence and the control he still holds.
In contrast to the majority of Republicans responding to polls, none of these voters falsely believes the 2020 election was stolen.
None said they regret their 2020 vote. And while they may be disappointed in Biden, they absolutely rule out voting for Trump if he runs for president again.
Former President Donald Trump waves to the crowd at the end of a rally on Saturday in Perry, Ga.hide caption
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Former President Donald Trump waves to the crowd at the end of a rally on Saturday in Perry, Ga.
Take Christine from the Philadelphia suburbs. Like others in her focus group, she said she first voted for Trump because he was a businessman and not a politician.
But she got far more than she bargained for. She used blunt language to describe the former president: “I felt like we had this monster in office that was bipolar, up and down, irrational, crazy thinking.” She called Trump “childish,” said that “crazy things came out of his mouth,” and that he was “not good for the United States.”
And after all of that, Christine confessed: “I didn’t want to vote for Biden. And I’m going to be honest with you, I would have voted for anybody but Trump.”
