REVISED (Dobbs) Why Would Trump Take The Risk?
It's not just to complete his conservative agenda.
TO MY READERS….
In my haste last night to complete and transmit this column about Donald Trump’s third presidential launch, I accidentally omitted the very first line, which is key to what follows. This means that if you already have read the piece, something didn’t make sense. My bad. So with apologies for overloading your inbox, I am resending it with the line (in bold) that got omitted. If you haven’t yet read what arrived last night, please delete that one and just read this.
Greg Dobbs
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“I am running because I believe the world has not yet seen the true glory of what this nation can do.”
In an hourlong speech announcing his pursuit again of the presidency, a speech as loaded with boasts as with blueprints, more packed with hypocrisy than with honesty, more laden with fantasies than facts, that was the declaration tonight of Donald Trump.
But I don’t believe it. Since a theory is more than a wild guess but less than a hard fact, here are my two theories on why Trump’s running again for president.
The first is, he is running to insulate himself from all the charges, criminal and civil, currently leveled against him. Remember, he’s being investigated and could be indicted for a sweeping series of scandals and sins: his stewardship of the insurrection in Washington DC, his efforts to overturn the 2020 election in Georgia, his illegal possession of top secret documents in Florida, the crooked conduct of his businesses in New York, and issues in a Manhattan court concerning an allegation of rape.
This theory says he’s betting that politically, if not legally, it’ll be harder for the wheels of justice to roll over him if he’s a candidate again for the highest office in the land, because prosecutions against him would turn him into a martyr. And that might be a safe bet. After the FBI’s August raid to reclaim those government-owned documents from Trump’s estate at Mar-a-Lago, his capricious crony Lindsey Graham menacingly predicted “riots in the streets” if anyone indicts Donald Trump. We can’t discount that. After January 6th, 2021, anything is possible.
Whenever asked about the prospect of indicting Trump for crimes against the nation, Attorney General Merrick Garland has been consistent: “We pursue justice,” he told NBC News, “without fear or favor.”
In fact his mantra for a year now has been, “We will follow the facts and the law, wherever they lead.” Yet when it comes to bringing history’s first-ever criminal case against a former American president, Garland is damned if he does and damned if he doesn’t, politically and legally. As the Washington website The Hill points out, “Convicting an individual in a court of law is much, much more difficult than convicting someone in the court of public opinion.”
However, it’s not all up to Merrick Garland. If he is handicapped by anything from pragmatic impediments to political pushback, there are other prosecutors out there who won’t be. Like the District Attorney in Fulton County, Georgia, who has convened a grand jury to investigate Trump’s election meddling, and the Attorney General for the State of New York who has sued Trump for financial fraud, and the D.A. in Manhattan who is putting the Trump Organization on trial. They are all zeroing in on the ex-president, no holds barred.
The other theory is, he is driven not only by his hope for a reprieve from prosecutions, but also by his acrimony, his artifice, and his ego.
The acrimony came out last week, just the day after the elections, when Trump took aim at his most likely rival for the 2024 presidential nomination, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis. Trump warned that if DeSantis goes up against him, “I would tell you things about him that won’t be very flattering. I know more about him than anybody, other than, perhaps, his wife.”
Then on Monday, The New York Times reported on an interview with Trump’s second White House chief of staff, General John Kelly, in which Kelly says that Trump “repeatedly” told him “that he wanted a number of his perceived political enemies to be investigated by the Internal Revenue Service.” This is only the newest revelation of the former president’s vengeful streak, which could intensify if he wins back the White House.
His artifice was on full display yesterday when the Arizona governor’s race was called and Trump’s election-denying favorite was the loser. “Wow!”, he wrote, “They just took the election away from Kari Lake. It’s really bad out there.” It’s as if the man can’t see beyond his own unending heap of fraudulent fictions.
As for ego, that requires little elaboration.
We know that Donald Trump is hungry for the spotlight, hungry for the adulation, hungry for the applause. When he steps on a stage and whips up an adoring crowd, his face explodes with elation. Airing grievances on his flailing website Truth Social doesn’t cut it. Moving back to the White House would.
But what’s the chance that it could happen? Lower now, it seems, than before last week. Once-loyal lackeys have pointed out that in all three elections since his one-time victory in 2016, he has dragged the Republican ticket down. Some have even done some trash-talking on Trump since Election Day. Texas congressman Troy Nehls, who once called him “one of America’s greatest patriots and presidents” now says, “There’s just a lot of negative attitudes about Trump.” Virginia’s Lieutenant Governor Winsome Earle-Sears, who co-chaired a group in 2020 called Black Americans to Re-elect President Trump, says that if he runs again, “I could not support him. I just couldn’t.” Pennsylvania Senator Pat Toomey says, “There's a very high correlation between MAGA candidates and big losses.” The number two Republican leader in the Senate, John Thune of South Dakota, says, “You can’t have a party that’s built around one person’s personality.”
And, there’s the media. When Rupert Murdoch’s empire turns against Trump, it can’t bode well for the man’s future. The day after the elections, the headline on Murdoch’s Wall Street Journal opinion page was, “Trump is the Republican Party’s Biggest Loser.” On Fox News, commentator Michele Tafoya pleaded, “Please Mr. President, don’t run again.” Murdock’s New York Post ran a cover mocking the man it twice endorsed.
Can Donald Trump win the nomination in 2024, let alone the presidency, against all that? Remember, two years ago, he lost to Joe Biden by seven million popular votes, 74 electoral votes. It’s impossible to imagine, between his dishonorable conduct on and around January 6th and his drag on the ticket last week, that the man has more fans now than he had before.
In fact, probably fewer. Although surveys show that up to 70% of diehard Republicans still like Donald Trump, a September New York Times/Siena College poll showed that only 30 percent of voters overall said they’d back him if he runs again. And that was before last week.
On the other hand, as the chief White House correspondent for The New York Times, Peter Baker, pointed out this morning, “Critics have counted Trump out before and lived to regret it.”
Of course his prospects also will depend, in part, on who he would be running against. President Biden said last week, “Our intention is to run again,” but he also hinted that it would be decided during a Thanksgiving week “family discussion.” His family, if not potential voters, might decide that as he’s turning 80 this week, he’d just be too old for another presidential campaign and another presidential term.
That leaves the question, if Biden doesn’t run, who’s on the Democratic bench? Vice President Kamala Harris? California Governor Gavin Newsom? Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg? Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer? Or maybe someone will come out of nowhere. An otherwise obscure Illinois state senator named Barack Obama went to the United States Senate in 2005. In 2008 he was elected President.
All we know for now is, Donald Trump is running again. But while practically speaking, his candidacy might indeed give him some protection against prosecution— the courts have never had to rule on a situation like this— it doesn’t absolve him of responsibility for any crimes he committed. Nor does it make him a better man.
And that’s no theory. It’s a fact.
Over almost five decades Greg Dobbs has been a correspondent for two television networks including ABC News, a political columnist for The Denver Post and syndicated columnist for Scripps newspapers, a moderator on Rocky Mountain PBS, and author of two books, including one about the life of a foreign correspondent called “Life in the Wrong Lane.” He has covered presidencies, politics, and the U.S. space program at home, and wars, natural disasters, and other crises around the globe, from Afghanistan to South Africa, from Iran to Egypt, from the Soviet Union to Saudi Arabia, from Nicaragua to Namibia, from Vietnam to Venezuela, from Libya to Liberia, from Panama to Poland. Dobbs has won three Emmys, the Distinguished Service Award from the Society of Professional Journalists, and as a 36-year resident of Colorado, a place in the Denver Press Club Hall of Fame.
Regardless of ones political persuasion, the "cancelation" of Trump, by whatever political, social, or legal means would be of inestmable value to this country.