Trump’s Fizzled Relaunch

Captain Chaos doesn’t seem to realize that the party is over. That’s clear after last night’s revelation by Donald Trump that he is running for president in 2024.

Though some described the announcement as an “all out extravaganza,” the event itself was as exciting as an appearance in traffic court. Trump’s speech came from the teleprompter, not his heart. Whenever he sticks to the script he ends up looking like someone who has recently taken a sedative and would rather be someplace else.

Trump’s relaunch remarks were, per usual, filled with jibes, inaccuracies, distortions and downright lies. He bloviated about everything from America’s strategic oil reserve (it dwindled under his watch, and has not been drained under Biden’s), to his bogus claim that he had completed the border wall with Mexico. Seems he has forgotten that there are 450 kilometres left to go.

At one point he claimed that the U.S. had left behind $85 billion of military equipment in the wake of its embarrassing retreat from Afghanistan, a purported bonus for the Taliban. CNN fact-checkers produced a different number supplied by the Department of Defense itself: $7.1 billion. Much of the abandoned equipment was rendered inoperable by U.S. forces before they withdrew, a fact Trump left out of his rantings.

As for his presidential kleptomania in removing classified government documents to Mar-a-Lago after his defeat in 2020, Trump even blurted out that former president Obama took stuff too. Not so, according to the National Archives.

At one point in the speech, Trump tried to talk away the half dozen or so legal investigations into his conduct, two of them criminal probes, by portraying himself as a victim. When he learned about Trump’s speech, Joe Biden offered a different interpretation in a tersely worded tweet: “Donald Trump failed America.”

Normally, when serious presidential candidates announce their intentions, the event attracts a horde of elected hangers on looking for coattails to ride. No lawmakers, including his supporters in Congress, attended the announcement at Mar-a-Lago. In the GOP, all noses are up, sniffing the shifting political winds.

The media showed tepid interest in the latest antics of a man it usually obsesses over. MSNBC didn’t live broadcast Trump’s event, CNN bailed out early, and even Fox News cut away briefly from part of his remarks. Daughter Ivanka Trump, arguably his most influential advisor during his one-term presidency, says she will not be involved in the 2024 campaign. Rupert Murdoch’s New York Post, once so loyal to The Donald, inserted the blade with this bottom of the front-page headline: “Florida Man Makes Announcement.”

NY Post: Florida man makes announcement, story on page 26. pic.twitter.com/FQcNC1ewPP

— Jonathan Karl (@jonkarl) November 16, 2022

Trump has not only been abandoned by Murdoch, he’s lost almost all of his big money donors, including the CEO of Blackstone, multi-billionaire Stephen Schwarzman. No one on Wall Street was a bigger supporter of Trump than Schwarzman, who now follows other mega-donors like Ken Langone, the co-founder of Home Depot, in treating Trump like Agent Orange. In an interview with Axios, Schwarzman said, “It is time for the Republican party to turn to a new generation of leaders and I intend to support one of them in the presidential primaries.”

Trump’s announcement was a flop. It has not had the desired effect of freezing others, who are mulling over entering the GOP’s presidential primary. If Trump still had the pull he once had, people would be too busy kissing his butt to mount a challenge to his leadership. Not anymore.

Former vice-president Mike Pence is clearly planning to run. He has just published a memoir, So Help Me God, in which he is critical of how Trump handled the Jan. 6 riot. Although he wouldn’t flatly say Trump shouldn’t be president, Pence did tell a TV interviewer that there might be “better” candidates around in 2024.

Not Pence but Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis seems to be the new heartthrob of the GOP. Republicans can forgive just about anything of a candidate who can raise money and take them to power. The one thing Republicans can’t tolerate is a loser.

After winning the presidency in 2016, Trump lost everything — the House, the Senate, and then the White House. In the 2018 midterms he lost 40 seats to the Democrats, despite facing no inflation problem or war in Ukraine. That makes Joe Biden’s midterm performance look like genius.

And in the most recent midterms, most of Trump’s anointed election deniers got waxed, including celebrity candidate Dr. Oz, Trump’s choice in Pennsylvania. Trump’s Big Lie turned out to be a dead-end.

In comparison to Trump, Gov. DeSantis looks like the man on top of the wedding cake. DeSantis has Trump’s brand of conservatism, but not Trump’s baggage. He is not associated with defamation and rape allegations, massive lawsuits for fraud, denying a valid election, inciting rioters on Jan. 6, or attempting a coup. He is associated with winning re-election in Florida by 20 points.

Given that election denial appears to have been rejected by American voters, the emperor has no pose. But what Trump does have is $100 million salted away in the coffers of his political action committee, Save America. That is a lot of mischief money, and it is not all that Trump holds in reserve.

Kevin McCarthy will likely be the Republican Speaker of the House. This is the same man Trump privately calls “My Kevin.” This is the same man who made the 2021 trip to Mar-a-Lago to kiss the ring after Trump left office. Trump will undoubtedly use McCarthy to push Trump priorities in the House, including the investigation of several Democrats and government officials, from Attorney General Merrick Garland to members of the Biden family, including the president himself.

And just in case McCarthy senses he might be able to stand on his own hind legs, Trump holds another ace. Some of his strongest supporters are in the so-called Freedom Caucus, including Marjorie Taylor Greene and Jim Jordan. This group is all in with the Big Lie. They are also 43 strong.

That means that unless McCarthy proceeds with certain items of the Trump agenda, the Freedom Caucus could make his life miserable. If he won’t submit to their demands, they might even prevent him from becoming Speaker.

One small mystery surrounds Trump’s decision to throw his hat into the presidential primary a full two years before the event. Members of his family were against it. Almost all of his top advisors pressed Trump not to announce his intentions until next January. Journalists like Maggie Haberman of the New York Times noted that Trump’s heart didn’t seem to be in such a long campaign.

So why now? Did he make the move for the legal protection he believed that running for president might give him? After all, being president had once meant being immune from indictment. And on the campaign trail he can shamelessly claim prosecutors are part of some grand scheme to prevent him from Making America Great Again.

So is he running with conviction or just to avoid being convicted?

Here is a coincidence. On the same day that Trump announced his third bid for the presidency, the chief financial officer of the Trump Organization was testifying in a criminal tax fraud case in New York. Allen Weisselberg and the company were indicted on tax fraud charges in April 2021. Weisselberg, who pleaded guilty to the charge, is now the prosecution’s star witness in the case against the Trump Organization.

On his first day giving testimony, Weisselberg told the court that Donald Trump knew about the tax fraud scheme.

Just saying.