Tag: 2024 Election

Categories
Crime Donald Trump Elections

Trump Thinks Running In 2024 Will Protect Him From Legal Problems – Here’s Why He’s Wrong

With the midterm elections now less than two months away, more and more attention is turning to what may happen in 2024 if failed, one-term former president Donald Trump decides to run for a second term in office after losing badly to President Joe Biden in the 2020 presidential race.

Some political experts believe Trump will indeed seek the GOP nomination two years from now, if only because it helps him remain relevant and in the public eye, which he craves.

Democratic National Committee adviser Kurt Bardella notes that Trump needs constant attention:

“He’s an attention whore and everything always has to be about Donald. He has to make himself the centre of the universe so he goes out there and plays this little flirtatious ‘will he, won’t he?’ card and it’s just designed to continue to keep that conversation going.

“It’s also designed to try to keep his would-be competitors like Ron DeSantis or Mike Pence or Mike Pompeo at bay.”

But perhaps the biggest concern for the disgraced ex-president is the endless stream of legal issues that hang over his head and continue to expand, especially since he was caught hoarding classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach. The Justice Department now believes that Trump has committed multiple felonies for keeping the documents in violation of federal law, including the Espionage Act.

So would a 2024 run protect Trump from a possible indictment and trial? No, but it’s almost as if he doesn’t realize that, according to Larry Sabato, director of the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia:

“He believes incorrectly that, if he’s a formal candidate, that will somehow protect him from legal charges. It will not. We’ve had quite a number of candidates in American history who got into legal troubles so I don’t know why he thinks that. Somebody probably said something to him once and he never let it go.

Nobody knows. He is very likely to run again but I can see scenarios in which he wouldn’t. He said himself, let’s see how my health is. He hasn’t had the best diet in the world and doesn’t look to me to be in particularly good shape.”

What will Trump do? For now, reports are that he has told the Republican National Committee he won’t announce a 2024 run until after the upcoming midterms. Ironically, it’s expected the DOJ will also make a formal announcement after the election whether or not it will charge the former president with crimes related to his document scandal.

Categories
Donald Trump GOP Ron DeSantis

Insecure Trump Accuses Ron DeSantis Of Ripping Off His Hand Gestures And ‘Style’

As if he doesn’t have more than enough problems at the moment, disgraced, one-term, twice-impeached former president Donald Trump is now obsessing over what he perceives to be a threat to his primacy as head of the Republican Party: The hand gestures being used by Florida GOP Gov. Ron DeSantis when he speaks on the stump.

According to a fascinating article in Rolling Stone, Trump has even suggested he might want to sue DeSantis for using his gestures and “style,” as if such things are protected by copyright.

Trump has a distinctive (and much-satirized) way of gesticulating while casually talking, delivering political speeches, or even “firing” contestants on his former game show. The sources note that when Trump has seen video clips of of DeSantis speaking at public events over the past year and a half, the former president has scornfully mocked the ascendant Florida Republican for appearing to imitate his body language, movements, and even, at times, speaking rhythm. One of the other sources recalls Trump joking at a dinner event earlier this year that he should sue DeSantis for copyright infringement.

Even some members of the ex-president’s inner circle have noticed the imitations and suggested that it goes far beyond just gestures, suggesting that DeSantis even steals policy ideas from the Donald:

The alleged rip-offs have raised eyebrows with other members of “America First” royalty. Donald Trump Jr. has told those close to him that he has noticed an uncanny pattern: Often he will tweet something from @DonaldJTrumpJr — a culture-war grievance or a burgeoning trend among the online right — and then very soon after, he will see those specific topics incorporated into the Florida governor’s talking points. This has happened enough times that Trump’s eldest son has come to believe, according to a person familiar with the matter, that DeSantis and his staff likely look to his Twitter account for inspiration and to raid it for their latest policy ideas or red-meat-hurling rhetoric.

Of course, all of this is emblematic of a much larger fissure taking place inside the GOP as 2024 approaches and both DeSantis and Trump may wind up facing each other for the presidential nomination, which remains unclear since Trump may well be under indictment by the time the primaries are held.

But if the two do wind up facing each other in 2024, the primary debates should be a blast to watch, especially if Trump accuses him of imitating his “style,” which of course is little than bravado and bullshit.

 

Categories
Crime Donald Trump Fox News

Sean Hannity Tells The MAGA Faithful: ‘Constitutionally’ Trump Can Run For President From Prison

Question of the Day: If you’re Donald Trump, how do you know when you’re complete screwed and likely facing time in jail?

Answer: When Fox News host Sean Hannity starts trying to reassure the MAGA faithful that the U.S. Constitution doesn’t say a person can’t run for president from prison.

That’s what Hannity told listeners to his radio show Friday, according to Media Matters, which reports that Hannity had this to say:

“What do you think the next thing that happens here is, do you think that they would try and indict the former president in the hopes of convicting him and having him in jail at the time of the next election to prevent him from running?

“Because a conviction by the way, constitutionally, would not prevent him from running for office.”

Maybe not, but it would damn sure prevent him from actually serving as president, which would raise issues of its own.

Hannity added:

“You know, this code that is being cited by Marc Elias and all these other people negates the very enumerated qualifications in the Constitution, and the specific requirements for somebody not to be eligible to run, and that would be impeachment and conviction. It doesn’t mention anything about being, you know, maybe not following every single dotted i and crossed t in the Presidential Records Act of the National Archives Act.”

Here’s a prediction I would gladly wager as much as $1,000 on: If Donald Trump is indicted, convicted, and imprisoned before the 2024 presidential election and the GOP is dumb enough to nominate him, he’ll lose by the largest margin in U.S. electoral history.

 

Categories
Donald Trump Elections Social Media

George Conway Asks Twitter For Trump 2024 Campaign Slogans – Hilarity Ensues

According to some Donald Trump supporters, the FBI’s serving of a search warrant at Mar-a-Lago on Monday guarantees that the failed, one-term, twice-impeached former president will run again in 2024.

While that may be true, the fact that Trump is under civil and criminal investigation in multiple venues certainly complicates any planned presidential campaign, if only because he’s likely to be tied up in court (or even prison) for the foreseeable future.

That led attorney George Conway (husband of former Trump administration adviser Kellyanne Conway) to ask on Twitter what people thought should be the Donald’s campaign slogan if he does indeed run for the White House two years from now.

Conway kicked off the fun with this suggestion:

Once the ball was rolling, social media took things from there.

https://twitter.com/Politidope/status/1557700270221565952?s=20&t=TvoJeohQH5-KJRZBPUyQzQ
https://twitter.com/bellemymichele/status/1557666318706515968?s=20&t=TvoJeohQH5-KJRZBPUyQzQ

Feel free to join the fun over on Twitter and add your own.

 

Categories
Elections GOP

Florida Newspaper Warns The Nation About Ron DeSantis – ‘Terrifying To Contemplate’ As POTUS

Florida Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis is seen by many as one of the front-runners to secure the GOP presidential nomination in 2024, even if failed, one-term former president Donald Trump decides to run, if only because he doesn’t carry as much baggage as the ex-president and isn’t facing indictment in multiple jurisdictions.

But the South Florida Sun-Sentinel is already warning that DeSantis would be Trump on steroids and a tremendous danger to the country if he manages to reach the Oval Office.

In a blistering op-ed, the Sun-Sentinel editorial board writes:

Ron DeSantis was Ron who? — a back-bencher in Congress with little hope of political stardom — when Donald Trump enthusiastically endorsed him more than four years ago. One Trump tweet changed Florida history. Now, as the ex-president sees DeSantis emerge as his biggest rival, Trump must have buyer’s remorse. You can practically hear the dishware breaking at Mar-a-Lago.

A DeSantis candidacy, the editors warn, would be disastrous for the United States:

Anyone who admires DeSantis from afar should come to Florida with eyes wide open. After winning by just 32,463 votes, he has governed with total contempt toward the 4 million people who didn’t vote for him. He’s as authoritarian as Trump, just as disdainful of democracy, no less polarizing and openly hostile to scientific evidence that doesn’t conform to his narrow agenda

Branding DeSantis as a “bully,” the editorial goes on to note that the Florida governor has even seemed to condone Nazi protesters:

It’s terrifying to contemplate DeSantis in the Oval Office when the next pandemic inevitably comes along. When Nazis picketed at Orlando, he was silent. Exploiting society’s vulnerability to cultural warfare, DeSantis has prohibited schools, colleges and even private businesses from dealing honestly with racism and its ugly history. His law labeled ‘don’t say gay’ by critics openly caters to homophobia, chilling sex education in schools and putting students at risk of being outed to their parents.

The editorial concludes by urging voters to look somewhere other than Florida for their presidential nominee:

The present Republican Party has no shortage of qualified governors or ex-governors to nominate: Larry Hogan of Maryland, Charlie Baker of Massachusetts and Chris Christie of New Jersey all won election or re-election in blue states by governing from the center, not from the dark extremes. The party’s post-Trump future rightfully belongs to people like them — not to the intentionally divisive, polarizing and humorless DeSantis. Voters in America’s 49 other states, take note.