It’s three years until the presidential election, and therefore time for your favorite political game show: Will he or won’t he? No, I’m not talking about President Biden. He has enough troubles without worrying about a re-election campaign.
Former President Trump will neither confirm nor deny that he is running. He does run a good tease, and that’s probably about all we’ll get from him until at least this year’s midterm elections.
Meanwhile there is no shortage of folks eager to weigh in. Michael Cohen, Trump’s former lawyer and convicted felon, knows Trump about as well as anyone. He believes Trump will not run again. He says he is using 2020 stolen election accusations as a fundraiser. He says he will appear to be running “right to the very, very last second” and then step side. More from Cohen shortly.
Columnist Jonah Goldberg says he’ll “fade away.” He claims his clout with GOP voters “seems less formidable all the time.” He cites problematic endorsements and polling.
There are several problems with these theories. First is an important part of Cohen’s theory: If he runs and loses in 2024:
- What happens to the big lie? It disappears. He can’t be like the boy who cried wolf, oh, they stole it from me in 2020, they now stole it from me in 2024.
Really? Trump is, as we speak, setting 2024 up as an election that he will either win or lose fraudulently. He and his minions are doing everything they can, and some things they can’t, to cast doubt on the outcome of the 2024 election – however it turns out.
We already know what will happen if he runs and loses. If he runs and wins, there will still be claims of massive vote fraud, except the claims will be about senate and house and local races. By the way, in case you missed it, the Associated Press did a national study of vote fraud in 2020 and found 475 cases. That’s 300 fewer people than live in Sturgeon. But I digress.
A second problem with the theory is the assertion that Trump cares about the Republican Party and his base. To the extent he does care, it is incidental to any strategy that maximizes his personal media exposure, promotes his businesses, increases his personal wealth, and keeps him out of jail – not necessarily in that order.
The third problem is that it may no longer matter whether Trump runs again. The Big Lie has metastasized incurably into the body politic. More than half of all Republicans do not believe Biden won the election. Some Republican Senators have advanced degrees and show no sign of mental or physical defect other than an inability to say the words: “Joe Biden was elected president in 2020.” An article in the current Atlantic magazine is entitled “January 6 Was Practice.” In the same magazine a freshman Republican congressman is quoted as saying that many of his Republican colleagues won’t speak the truth not because they fear a Trump-endorsed opponent in the primary but because they are physically afraid for themselves and their families.
I find this all a bit alarmist, but there is no question that American politics is changed forever. Whether or not Trump runs and wins in 2024, we will face sobering and unprecedented challenges beginning January 20, 2025.
Dr. Terry Smith is a Political Science Professor at Columbia College and a regular commentator on KBIA's Talking Politics.