As Florida Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis’ image as the GOP’s frontrunner for president continues to gain traction, former President Donald Trump is back in the spotlight and is in the early stages of his “campaign,” making public appearances perhaps earlier than he would like in an effort, I suppose, to assert his authority a bit and remind everyone in the party that he is still Alpha.
Given recent events, that’s not a bad idea. After all, DeSantis is out there, and has been, practically every day, accomplishing things in his state that conservatives nationwide can only dream of, and a recent 2024 poll showed the Florida governor narrowly ahead of the former president. If Trump even has any desire to run again, he probably knows he can’t stay out of the headlines for long.
Though he told Fox News host Sean Hannity last week that the decision on whether to make another run for president in 2024 at the ripe vintage age of 78 had already been made privately, the former president has been coy about making that decision public. Yes, it’s way too early for presidential declarations, even from the likes of Donald Trump, but given that this single decision will mean the difference between a real GOP primary, where candidates and ideas are tested against each other and (hopefully) the cream of the crop rises to the top, and another uncontested primary coronation, the sooner everyone knows, the better.
If you read this column regularly, you may know where I stand on this issue. Probably not, but I think it’s time for Donald Trump to pass the torch to someone who has all (or most) of his strengths and none (or not as many) of his weaknesses. Someone younger. Someone fresher. Someone who could serve two terms. Someone who doesn’t expand the Democratic voter base by simply being on the ballot.
While it would be straightforward to get through the Republican primary with virtually no opponent, winning the general election seems nearly impossible at this point. No matter how much Donald Trump and his most steadfast supporters would like to recapture the glory days of his legendary 2016 and pre-disaster 2020 victories — the raucous crowds, the electrifying speeches, the mesmerizing energy — 2024 will undoubtedly bring a very different political landscape. And despite his many accomplishments, countless voters’ memories of Trump’s presidency will unfortunately revolve around two unfortunate things — the “insurrection” of January 6, 2021 (no, it wasn’t an “insurrection,” but we both know that’s how the Democrats and the media are playing it and will continue to play it) and what is increasingly becoming MY primary conflict with the former president — America’s disastrous response to COVID-19.
Now, by “disastrous response,” I obviously don’t mean the media narrative that we should have closed earlier and longer or masked up “harrrderrrrrr.” None of those things made things better in the long run, and there’s a robust case to be made that they actually made things worse. No, what made the former president’s response to COVID-19 so disastrous was not that he was too lax on useless non-pharmaceutical interventions like lockdowns, business closures, and mandatory mask-wearing, but rather that he failed to stand up to this nonsense at the outset, and as such, as the man at the top, unfortunately became the founder and early leader of what many of us would later call “Covidstan” (American edition).
You think I’m wrong? Let’s go back in time, shall we?
Remember the “15 Days to Slow the Spread” that turned into 15+ months of hell? Yes, that started under the Trump administration.
Remember when Republican Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp was lambasted by the media for daring to reopen his state in April 2020, when it was obvious to any rational, thinking person that a literal apocalypse was NOT happening? Then-President Trump was one of the most vocal critics. (If you recall, his exact words were “too soon.”)
Remember when Dr. Anthony Fauci was elevated to the position of de facto head of the U.S. coronavirus response? Sure, it’s trendy on the right to hate Fauci now, but remember the guy who started that train to hell in the first place and then didn’t stop it when he had the chance? Oh, that guy was President Trump.
Remember who made the decision to put Dr. Deborah Birx, queen of the “stylish” diaper scarf, on the White House coronavirus task force and then let her gallop around the country on public dime encouraging red state leaders to implement and enforce mask mandates? Who allowed this traveling clown show, eh? The man upstairs, that’s who.
Remember how the sanctimonious media types were picking on Trump for not wearing a mask, and instead of making logical, rational arguments against it, he caved and backed down? He knew better, but he did it anyway, leaving us to fight without him.
Remember Dr. Robert “Masks Are As Good As A Vaccine Or Something” Redfield, the former fried chicken king who somehow became head of the CDC, who should have been unceremoniously ousted immediately after making that ridiculous statement but instead was allowed to continue his antics unchallenged? I’ll let you guess who did absolutely nothing about it (hint: his last name rhymes with Ronald Crump).
Remember when the former president threw us a bone by appointing Dr. Scott Atlas to the White House coronavirus task force, then gave him no authority and left everyone else in office to undermine him at every turn?
Remember when the US president allowed his agencies to literally forbid landlords from evicting nonpaying tenants, thereby subjecting countless investment property owners to mortgage foreclosure and financial hardship? The president who allowed this socialist nonsense to continue was none other than, you know.
Finally (and I know the verdict is still out on this one), remember when pretty much everyone thought that a brand novel mRNA vaccine technology should be released to the public at waaaarp-speed and injected into the veins of every living man, woman, and child to stop a virus with a 99.7% survival rate that primarily kills a known subset of the super-old, super-sick, and super-obese? Trump still considers this his greatest achievement, but if history judges these vaccines to be a bad idea, that achievement and what’s left of Trump’s legacy will have been for nothing.
In Trump’s defense, remember all the roundtables the former president hosted where he invited Team Reality experts like Stanford’s Jay Bhattacharya and Harvard Medical School’s Dr. Martin Kulldorff to discuss the uselessness of lockdowns? LOL Just kidding! That was Ron DeSantis.
I could go on and on, but you get the point. We can be mad at the Democrats for being power-hungry monsters and exploiting COVID for their own evil purposes, but like wolves or sociopaths, they are just doing what comes naturally to them. No, our real anger should be reserved for the people who were supposed to be ours, people like Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine, Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson, and yes, former President Donald Trump. THEY are the ones who allowed and enabled our God-ordained freedoms to be usurped based on a fabricated lie.
If Donald Trump wins the Republican nomination, I will vote for him, just as I would vote for a trained monkey over anyone with a D next to their name. But I hope it never comes to that, because the former president’s actions during COVID, particularly his inability to quickly pivot when it became obvious that things were not as Team Apocalypse would have us believe, make him unworthy of another term.
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