In 2015, when Donald Trump announced his candidacy for the presidency, the media and the political pundits of this country dismissed it as a stunt. No way in hell, they said, would Trump win even a single state, much less the Republican nomination.
Then when Trump won New Hampshire, they conceded that, yes, maybe he might win a couple of states, but the path to the nomination was still out of his reach. Ted Cruz or Marco Rubio would certainly prevail.
Then when Trump won the GOP nomination, they insisted he still had no chance in the general election against Hillary Clinton. America would never elect someone with his temperament to the presidency. All the polls showed Clinton with a comfortable lead. The Republican Party was in for the worst drubbing since Barry Goldwater in 1964.
Then when the unthinkable happened and Trump narrowly won the general election, they predicted that the political guardrails that were in place for more than two centuries would certainly curtail his natural proclivities. Even Richard Nixon, they argued, managed to do some good things before the scandal of Watergate took him down.
We all know what happened. Far from being curtailed by the guardrails, Trump ran through them like a tractor trailer through a road block. He not only took over the executive branch, but the entire GOP. And Republicans who only a few months earlier were calling him out for his outlandish views, lined up to kiss his ring and declare their fealty to him. The man that virtually every "expert" dismissed as a clown was now the leader of the free world.
Ever since that humiliating moment, the media and political pundits have done a one-eighty. They've gone from underestimating Trump's power to overestimating it, thus compounding the problem. The simple truth is that for all his appeal to the base of the Republican Party, Trump is the least popular president the country has had going all the way back to Harry Truman.
According to Gallup, Trump is the only president in the post World War II era never to hit 50 percent in approval rating. Even Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter managed to do that. Trump is also the first president in the modern era to not get the normal bounce that virtually every new administration gets. Eleven days into his presidency, he was polling at 44 percent. Trump is the only presidential candidate in the history of the country to lose the popular vote in consecutive elections; his popular vote loss margin of 7.06 million in 2020 ranks as 11th worst, right behind the 7.08 million popular vote margin that Michael Dukakis lost to George H.W. Bush by in 1988.
Trump's unpopularity throughout his presidency cost his party the House of Representatives in the 2018 midterms, the White House in 2020 and the Senate in 2021. The man is about as toxic as a New Jersey Superfund Site. And that toxicity has followed him throughout his post-presidency. Over the last eighteen months his approval rating has ranged from a low of 38 percent to a high of 45 percent. He's currently polling at 42 percent, according to RCP.
If this is power, I'm not seeing it. What I am seeing is a populist ex-president who is attempting to do by force what he couldn't accomplish at the ballot box. Trump and his acolytes are using threats of violence against the FBI in an attempt to intimidate the Department of Justice and other various law enforcement agencies that are investigating the events of January 6, 2021 and Trump's conduct before, during and after. The warrant, which was executed last Monday at his Mar-a-Lago resort, was the direct result of his refusal to cooperate with the DOJ and turn over classified material that he had no legal right to possess once he left office. Attorney General Merrick Garland made the right call signing off on the warrant.
Yet, according to bedwetters like David Brooks of The New York Times and Larry Hogan, Republican governor of Maryland, it was a win for Trump. Brooks even went so far as to ponder whether the FBI might've gotten Trump "re-elected." Re-elected? Really? Tell that to the RNC, who, privately, must be shitting their pants over the prospect of Trump interjecting himself into the November elections. They were hoping to make the midterms a referendum on inflation, Joe Biden and the Democrats. Now, thanks to Fredo Corleone, Democrats will be able to go into swing states like Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin and Arizona and directly link Republican candidates to Trump. And those candidates will have no choice but to bend over, assume the position and say, "Thank you, sir, may I have another?" It might be too late to save the House, but it could salvage the Senate and perhaps even flip a gubernatorial race or two. Conspiracy theories may play well on Fox News and Newsmax, but among the non-crazy portion of the electorate, they don't go nearly as far as their proponents think they do.
But putting aside the politics for a moment, here's the question I'd like Brooks, Hogan, et al to answer. Just what exactly is Garland supposed to do? Sit idly by and let Trump and his supporters get away with these crimes? Is Fani Willis, the Fulton County DA, supposed to forget about that phone call Trump made to Brad Raffensperger asking for 11,788 votes? The reason Rudy Giuliani is now a target of a criminal investigation by Willis is because he attempted to overturn the results of the 2020 election. There is, and should be, real-world consequences for anyone who engages in such criminal behavior. If you or I did what Giuliani did at the behest of Trump, we'd be in a federal prison by now.
Here's a sobering thought to consider. For all his character flaws - and they have been well catalogued - Trump was the laziest, most incompetent president we've ever had in the White House. Not only didn't he have a working knowledge of government, he displayed no interest in even learning about it. The only two things he cared about - indeed, excelled at - were his rallies and his late-night tweets. His lack of a moral compass was matched only his lack of intellectual curiosity. In the end, it may well have been those very character flaws that prevented what surely would've been a successful coup.
Down in Florida, Ron DeSantis has been carefully taking notes; not on what Trump did or didn't do, but on what the DOJ is going to do. It's no secret that DeSantis has set his sights on a presidential run of his own. Prior to last week's search, there were pundits who were quietly speculating that DeSantis might be the heir apparent to Trump. Now those plans have been put on hold.
For those who naively believe that DeSantis would make a better president than Trump, let me remind you that DeSantis shares much, if not all, of Trump's foibles: a huge ego, a nativist view of how society should function and a willingness to target his enemies. But unlike Trump, DeSantis isn't lazy or incompetent. He actually knows how government works and has no qualms about unleashing its awesome power to punish those who challenge him. Just ask Disney, the Tampa Bay Rays, the cruise ship industry, school districts across the state and a certain ex-prosecutor who now has a lot of free time on his hands.
While Trump tweets and holds rallies, DeSantis uses his pen to make his point. Trump may fancy himself an autocrat, but in reality he's nothing but a snake oil salesman with a lot of sick, gullible people willing to buy his potion. DeSantis, by comparison, is the real deal; a man who if he wins the presidency will have the guile and the intellectual wherewithal to hold onto it indefinitely. To put it another way, Trump is Moe Howard, DeSantis is Willie Stark. If you haven't seen the movie All the King's Men, you need to.
And that is why it is incumbent upon Garland, Willis and every other prosecutor at the federal, state and local level to send an unambiguous message loud and clear, not just to Trump but to anyone else who might want to follow in his footsteps and finish what he started. If you attempt to interfere with the peaceful transfer of power in this country, or if you obstruct law enforcement officials, you will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.
Period! No exceptions. Bedwetters be damned.
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