In 2015 and 2016, former President Donald Trump’s Republican primary opponents and other GOP officials tried to evade his dwindling personal insults “while hoping that external events and news media coverage would eventually lead to his downfall,” Maggie Haberman recalls. The New York Times. The strategy, of course, failed. But many Republican leaders hope again, mostly privately, that time or a heavenly sent deus ex machina will blur Trump, despite his clear intent to retain control of the GOP.
Some Republicans “are privately hopeful that the criminal investigation into Mr Trump’s cases by New York District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr. will lead to charges preventing him from running again or even a key figure within the party. be, “reports Haberman. adding that Trump is said to be “excited about the investigation.” Others say they believe he’s losing his own interest now that he’s out of office and started Twitter.
David Kochel, a Republican strategist and Jeb Bush supporter in 2016, is not one of them. “We’ve seen this movie before – a bunch of GOP leaders are all looking at each other and waiting to see who Trump is going to try to crack down on,” he said, adding that Trump and Fox News are taking care of the January 6 Capitol uprising . is “stuffed in the memory hole” for conservatives.
“This is Groundhog Day,” another GOP Trump critic, Tim Miller, told Haberman. It seemed ‘in 2015’ a ‘rational choice’, but ‘after we all saw the strategy fail to just hope and wish he should leave, no one learned from it. ‘
Meanwhile, most GOP leaders and 2024 hopefuls are going out of their way to stay on the good side of Trump. One reason is Trump’s ability to send large sums of money to friendly Republicans, Politico notes. But Trump also keeps swinging over a sizable fraction of GOP voters – no matter how controversial a matter of controversy – and he seems to like the fierce Republican critics.
Trump “intimidates people because he will attack maliciously and relentlessly, much more than any other politician, but somehow people yearn for his approval,” Mike DuHaime, a Chris Christie adviser in 2016, told the Times. “Trump has finally, after four years in office, committed self-destruction,” he said. “But he can still make or break others, and that makes him powerful and relevant.”
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