Can Trump Run for President Again After He Gets Impeached
Revenge of the Donald
Nostalgia and resentment could be plenty to catapult Trump back into the presidency.
Well-nigh the author: David Frum is a staff writer at The Atlantic and the writer of Trumpocalypse: Restoring American Commonwealth (2020). In 2001 and 2002, he was a speechwriter for President George West. Bush-league.
Losers don't usually get a second chance in modern U.Southward. presidential politics. Dorsum in the days of nominating conventions and party bosses, an Adlai Stevenson or a Thomas Dewey could proceeds ii consecutive nominations. Richard Nixon actually won the presidency in 1968 after losing in 1960. But since the coming of primary contests, information technology's win—or retire. Fifty-fifty Al Gore, who won the popular vote in 2000, was debarred in 2004.
Donald Trump, who upended and then many previous presidential precedents, now seems likely to upend 1 more. Trump has to be considered the massive front-runner for the 2024 Republican nomination. He'south already running hard, and he's already dominating the field. Flim-flam News's intense promotion of Florida Governor Ron DeSantis as an alternative to Trump is not working out any improve in 2024 than its similar effort on behalf of then–New Jersey Governor Chris Christie in 2016. Trump dominates in the polls. He has the pb in fundraising. Downwardly-ballot races turn on loyalty to Trump. Potential rivals vow they will not run for president if Trump does.
It's an amazing spectacle, because Donald Trump was no ordinary political loser. He was a huge political loser. He lost the pop vote in two consecutive presidential elections, the 2nd time by a margin of eight meg votes. He led his political party to a roughshod midterm defeat in 2018 amongst the strongest economy since the late 1990s. He was the first president to accept been impeached twice, the 2d fourth dimension for inciting a mob to invade and attack Congress to overturn a national ballot result. He now faces more criminal and ceremonious jeopardy than Richard Nixon did ahead of his presidential pardon in 1974.
Trump is campaigning on two themes: nostalgia for the strong pre-pandemic economy, plus resentment over the outcome of the vote in 2020. Information technology'due south non much, but it's enough—enough to force DeSantis, the would-be Trump replacement, into desperate stunts to prove himself Trumpier than Trump: handing out $5,000 rewards to cops who turn down vaccination; identifying himself with a country surgeon general who advises anti-vaxxers to trust their "intuitions."
But nobody is Trumpier than Trump. In that location'southward no Trumpism that's bigger than Trump. "Information technology'southward about a movement, not a human" is a venerable cliché practical to populist politics. In this instance, though, it's about a human, not a movement. In 2016, Trump endorsed allowing transgender people to "use the bathroom they experience is advisable." In 2017, he crammed through a huge revenue enhancement cutting for the rich. On the eve of the coronavirus pandemic, Trump was negotiating a giveaway trade deal with China. Those are all supposed populist no-no'south. Trump followers paid no heed. If Trump does information technology, information technology's okay. They don't much care about the content of his politics. They intendance about its mood.
Anybody who follows politics even casually tin run into the Trump comeback emerging. Well-sourced reporters carefully detail the comeback's mechanics. Simply nigh nobody is prepared for the malicious destructiveness of what is to come.
In a 2011 oral communication, Donald Trump explained his single elevation rule in life: "Get fifty-fifty with people. If they screw you lot, spiral them back 10 times as hard. I really believe it." He's repeated the same idea over and over once again in speeches, tweets, and books published under his byline. In 2024, the targets of Trump's revenge are American law and American democracy. At a September 25 rally in Perry, Georgia, Trump excoriated land Republican officials who failed to subvert the state election for him. In Iowa two weeks subsequently, Trump delivered more than attacks on the 2020 election process, focusing this fourth dimension on state Republicans who failed to steal Arizona for him.
In 2016 and through the early part of Trump'southward presidency, there was often an edge of Friars Social club comedy to Trump's rally performances: not very nice comedy, a little out of style in tone and sensibility, but comedy all the same. Not in 2021. Now information technology's all dark and bitter.
Here'due south video from a Georgia television station of the entirety of Trump'southward Perry rally. Trump's own speech communication starts at 1:37:38. Watch as much every bit you tin can stand and tell me if you discover even a moment of humour, Friars Order or otherwise. The most quoted bit—Trump'due south quasi-endorsement of the Democrat Stacey Abrams as a better governor for Georgia than the Republican Brian Kemp—is not whatsoever kind of joke. It's a deliberately delivered claiming, lower jaw bulging beyond the upper teeth, optics slitted with anger.
That'southward the guy who wants to return equally the 47th president.
In Trump's starting time term, the country was protected to some degree by his ignorance and ineptitude. He kept trying to do bad things, only it took him a while to figure out how the controls operated, where the kill-switches were located. By the time of his attempt to extort the Ukrainian president, in 2019, Trump had achieved a higher degree of mastery. But by then it was also tardily. So the pandemic struck, and Trump bumped into a new wall of failure. In a second Trump presidency, however, the burglars will arrive already knowing how to bypass the alarms and disable the locks. He'll understand that it's non enough to install an ally equally attorney general—he must control the secondary and tertiary ranks of the Justice Department likewise. He won't permit himself to be talked into another chief of staff with an independent sense of duty, such as John Kelly, who averted much harm from the heart of 2017 to the outset of 2019. It'll exist Mark Meadows types from day ane to 24-hour interval last. And he'll bring with them a new generation of Republican officeholders whose elevation priority will exist rearranging their states' election laws so that Republicans do non lose power even if they lose the vote.
That's the future Trump is preparing.
Be fix.
Source: https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/10/trump-running-president-2024-election/620502/
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