At this rate, Trump will be the GOP nominee
Becket Adams
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If this is the way former President Donald Trump’s primary opponents plan to play it, he will be the party’s 2024 presidential nominee.
Trump is currently the only person in the race with both the numbers and the will to do what’s necessary to win. The same two things can’t be said of his rivals; not really, at least. Trump is fighting mean and dirty, just as he did in 2016. He’s fighting for keeps, niceties and ceremony be damned. His chief competitors? Well, they’re not quite sure whether they want to kiss him or slap him, figuratively speaking.
DONALD TRUMP INDICTED: THREE TAKEAWAYS FROM FORMER PRESIDENT’S THIRD INDICTMENT
Consider, for example, how they responded last week after a Washington grand jury voted to prosecute Trump on four counts related to the 2020 election and the Jan. 6 Capitol riot.
“As president,” Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) said, “I will end the weaponization of government, replace the FBI director, and ensure a single standard of justice for all Americans.”
He added, “While I’ve seen reports, I have not read the indictment. I do, though, believe we need to enact reforms so that Americans have the right to remove cases from Washington, D.C. to their home districts. Washington, D.C. is a ‘swamp’ and it is unfair to have to stand trial before a jury that is reflective of the swamp mentality. One of the reasons our country is in decline is the politicization of the rule of law. No more excuses — I will end the weaponization of the federal government.”
Special counsel Jack Smith’s announcement this week marks the third time in six months that Trump has been criminally indicted in response to actions related to his presidency.
Sen. Tim Scott (R-SC), meanwhile, took the indictment as an opportunity to underscore the Hunter Biden corruption allegations, saying, “What we see today are two different tracks of justice. One for political opponents and another for the son of the current president.”
“Donald Trump isn’t the cause of what happened on Jan 6. The real cause was systematic [and] pervasive censorship of citizens in the year leading up to it,” added tech bro Vivek Ramaswamy. “If you tell people they can’t speak, that’s when they scream.”
They know they’re running against Trump, right?
“Like most Americans,” former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley said, “I’m tired of commenting on every Trump drama. I’ve lost track of whether this indictment is the third or fourth or the fifth.”
Though her response is a bit stronger than the others, it still reeks of Sen. Bernie Sanders’s (I-VT) famous, “[I’m] sick and tired of hearing about [Hillary’s] damn emails” moment from the 2016 Democratic presidential primary. It’s just a bit more backhanded.
Of course, the reactions from the current crop of GOP primary candidates haven’t all been middling. Former Vice President Mike Pence, for example, was notably harsher in his assessment, saying this week, “Today’s indictment serves as an important reminder: anyone who puts himself over the Constitution should never be President of the United States. Our country is more important than one man. Our Constitution is more important than any one man’s career.”
Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie likewise said, “The events around the White House from election night forward are a stain on our country’s history and a disgrace to the people who participated. This disgrace falls the most on Donald Trump.”
However, these more to-the-point assessments don’t really matter, as neither Pence nor Christie have much of a chance of securing the nomination. The race is currently one between Trump and DeSantis (after the Florida governor, Vivek Ramaswamy places third in national polling at 6.7%). But, thus far, DeSantis seems reluctant to engage Trump as an actual adversary. A couple of jabs here and there, sure, but mostly dancing around the issue. It’s like watching Sen. Ted Cruz’s (R-TX) bumbling and feeble attempts in 2016 to defeat the Trump campaign.
Back then, Cruz, like every other candidate, failed to crack the riddle of how to make the case against Trump (i.e. the front-runner!) without also alienating his supporters. The current field appears to be struggling with the same puzzle. Some apparently think the way to overtake Trump is to make nice with him or to stand alongside him. But the 2016 primary taught us the exact opposite! Indeed, if there’s one thing that primary proved, it’s that you can’t best Trump and endear yourself to his supporters by playing nice with him. Playing nice makes you look weak, and to win Trump’s supporters, one must first win their respect. You’re not going to do that by pulling your punches or, God forbid, by sucking up to him.
And make no mistake, were the tables turned, Trump wouldn’t hesitate for a second to take advantage of the moment. If, say, the state of California actually attempted to prosecute DeSantis on human trafficking charges, Trump would release a statement praising the “highly respected” Gov. Gavin Newsom (D-CA) for “putting America first,” or some such nonsense. If Trump were on the opposite side of the issue, watching a leading primary opponent get dragged into multiple legal battles, he would undoubtedly take advantage of the moment. Trump wouldn’t waste a second making the obvious argument that his opponent’s legal purgatory is proof that he has neither the resources nor the time to lead the nation. But Trump’s best-positioned opponents largely haven’t taken this tack. Rather, they’ve mostly rallied behind the front-runner they’re ostensibly battling for the nomination.
Meanwhile, Trump plays to win. He plays mean. He plays dirty. Call it the killer instinct, which, as it turns out, his base appears to respect. His campaign and its supporters have already co-opted anti-DeSantis disinformation from Vice President Kamala Harris. Trump and his people likewise wouldn’t hesitate to promote legal action taken against Florida’s governor. That DeSantis and so many others in the GOP primary feel it necessary to approach Trump with kid gloves, all while Trump lumbers around wearing brass knuckles, suggests the 2024 GOP primary may very well produce the same results as the 2016 GOP primary.
The fact that Trump pleaded not guilty last Thursday, marking the third time this year that he has uttered that exact phrase, only underscores his martyrdom pitch. The indictments serve the preexisting message that Trump brought to the primary, which is that the so-called swamp is out to get him because he fights for you! To have his chief primary rivals then fail to hit him on the obvious, which is that his all-encompassing legal woes will be his full-time job for the foreseeable future (to say nothing of whether the indictments are well-deserved), well … again, these people know they’re running against Trump, correct? Trump wouldn’t pass on this opportunity. Why should they?
Unless people such as DeSantis and those with an actual chance of securing the nomination start to campaign as if they want to defeat Trump, and defeat him soundly, the former president will be the party’s 2024 presidential nominee. You don’t get the nomination by tiptoeing around the front-runner, and you certainly don’t get there by being unwilling to fight as hard as the front-runner for the top spot.
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Becket Adams is a columnist for the Washington Examiner, National Review, and the Hill. He is also the program director of the National Journalism Center.