Donald Trump is quickly losing support. He is losing his base. He has not lost it all yet, but he will soon find himself alone if he doesn’t change quickly.
This has little to do with the midterm election results, or at least not directly. The establishment media declared Trump the big loser from the election, as some of Trump’s candidates lost, and the Republicans overall came up short of expectations.
To be sure, Trump only shares a little blame for what happened in the election. Perhaps his endorsement of Dr. Oz was not the best choice, but Trump did have some decent candidates who won. J.D. Vance in Ohio is somewhat libertarian leaning, and he won the Senate seat there. Kari Lake was an impressive candidate, even if she comes up short in Arizona where proper vote counting seems not to be a priority.
The establishment Republicans like Mitch McConnell are more responsible for some of these Republican candidates coming up short on Election Day. These people did as much as possible to sabotage the so-called MAGA candidates without doing so directly. They certainly did what they could to not direct money to close races with Trump-endorsed candidates.
So I think there is a little blame that Trump deserves for the underwhelming election performance by Republicans, but I think it is minimal.
The problem with Trump is that his ego is finally getting in his own way to an extent that he is imploding before our very eyes. He is attacking anyone who hurts his feelings or may potentially challenge him in the future. He is attacking anyone of significance who is offering some mild criticism or constructive criticism.
Trump Unnecessarily Attacks Ron DeSantis
Before the election, Trump was already going after DeSantis. He called him Ron “DeSanctimonious”. This was completely wrong, especially right before the election.
After DeSantis won by a landslide in Florida, Trump upped the ante. He sees DeSantis as a threat for the Republican nomination for president in 2024. Trump called DeSantis an average Republican governor. Trump says that he is the reason that DeSantis ever became governor. Even if this is true, it is completely unnecessary and almost irrelevant at this point.
The howler came when Trump criticized DeSantis for locking down Florida. It’s true that DeSantis did institute lockdowns in April 2020. DeSantis quickly realized his mistake and reversed course. By September 2020, Florida was completely open, while most other states still had lockdowns or significant mandates.
The biggest joke is that Trump recommended these lockdowns, and Trump had Fauci and Birx at his side throughout most of 2020. Trump even criticized Brian Kemp, the governor of Georgia, when he relaxed restrictions in the late spring of 2020.
Trump was a total disaster when it came to COVID. The best you can say about him is that he isn’t Biden. But Trump, like most of his presidency, had the wrong people at his side. In fact, he had the people who most opposed him. If Trump had realized his mistake (like DeSantis) early on and corrected course, I would have more praise than criticism for him on this issue. But instead, Trump was completely duped by the COVID hysteria, and he played into his enemies’ hands.
And now Trump wants to criticize DeSantis for COVID lockdowns? What next? Will Trump blame DeSantis for allowing Florida to provide COVID vaccines?
If there is one thing to criticize DeSantis for regarding COVID, it’s that he listened to Trump in the first place.
Trump Goes After Candace Owens
In this video, Candace Owens explains why Trump went after her.
Candace Owens has becomes quite popular amongst conservatives, and I see a bigger libertarian streak in her every time I see her.
As she explains, she questioned Trump on the vaccines, but she thought their disagreement was from a place of good faith. When some people went to Owens wondering if Trump was just being a shill for big pharma, she said that Trump comes from a different generation where they grew up without the internet and they were told that all vaccines were great.
While she has a strong disagreement with Trump on the vaccines, she was actually defending Trump on this issue to a certain extent. She was saying that he is coming from a position of good will, and the vaccine companies aren’t just bribing him.
So Trump reads an article (or maybe just the headline) and gets the message that Candace Owens says that Trump is too old to understand the internet. Again, she was actually trying to defend him, but Trump has too big of an ego to understand this or to accept any mild criticism or disagreement. So the next time they see each other in person, Trump is rude to her.
Unless Trump apologizes to Candace Owens (which we know won’t happen), I don’t think he will win back her support. And she isn’t the only conservative who Trump has gone after lately.
These Aren’t Republican Primary Debates
If Trump thinks his path to the Republican nomination and the White House is by fighting with his base, he is misjudging. Or to use a Trumpism, he is misjudging “bigly”.
In 2015, Trump could get away with attacking “Low Energy Jeb”, “Lyin’ Ted Cruz”, and “Lil’ Marco Rubio”. It was effective partially because many of these people were seen as establishment candidates. More importantly, he was running against them for the Republican nomination, and many of these words came from debates.
DeSantis has not announced that he is running for president in 2023/ 2024. I don’t even know if he wants to be president. He has a young family, and he was just re-elected governor in Florida.
If Trump is running – and I am pretty sure he is – DeSantis might just choose not to get involved. He will stay on standby just in case Trump is indicted, or he has health issues, or something else crazy happens.
I have read some diehard Trump supporters criticizing DeSantis for not speaking up right now. They say he could put a stop to all of the fighting by announcing that he won’t be running for president. But why is this DeSantis’s responsibility? Trump could stop it all by just not attacking.
If anything, this makes it more likely that DeSantis will run for president this time around because more Republicans are going to start to favor DeSantis over Trump. Trump is doing this to himself.
DeSantis was campaigning hard and just won re-election. As far as I’m concerned, he doesn’t need to say anything. If Trump wants to hang himself, then go ahead. Why interrupt someone when they are making a fool of themselves?
The Republican primaries have already started in Trump’s head, but he is overplaying his hand. He should have kept quiet on DeSantis until DeSantis actually announced a run for the presidency (if that were to happen). Even then, Trump’s criticism of DeSantis shouldn’t have been from a harsh place. Trump could sell his message just by saying that the establishment (i.e., the ruling elite) fear him far more than they fear DeSantis, which is probably true.
If you had asked me two weeks ago, I would have said that Trump was the big favorite to be the Republican nominee in 2024. After Trump’s two-week implosion, I give him 50% odds at best, and that is only if he wises up.
The establishment has been trying to take down Trump for the last 7 years. They have tried almost everything. Yet Trump has done to himself in the matter of 2 weeks what the establishment couldn’t do to Trump in 7 years.
This may be the tragic downfall of Trump. I have my many criticisms of the man, but I didn’t want to see him go down like this.
I want to see the ruling elite be further exposed and for the country to have a big shift towards peace and greater liberty. I don’t care if this happens through Trump, DeSantis, or someone else, or no particular person at all.
I do think Trump has been good for liberty with respect to exposing the establishment and also awakening many Republicans on foreign policy and civil liberties. I don’t think this will be rolled back, even if Trump falls hard.
It’s too bad Trump has gone down this road of self destruction, but the exposure of the evils of the establishment will not fade away.