(Anthony Behar / Sipa USA via AP)
In the real world, the sordid, toxic, corrupt, and criminal time of Donald J. Trump as the head of the Republican Party would be done, but we know all too well that the purported “Mystic of Mar a Lago” is anything but real and the fawning GOP MAGA (Make America Great Again ) cultists appear to be turning on him only because the orchestrated too many losses in the midterm elections.
Columnist Frank Bruni looks at the Humpty Dumpty fall of Trump the Frump:
Donald Trump is done. I keep hearing and reading that, and I have no reason to disbelieve it: Announcing his 2024 candidacy at Mar-a-Loco on Tuesday night, he was less a phoenix rising than a balloon deflating. I could almost hear the helium seeping out of him.
But while that should have been music to my ears, it wasn’t. The prompt for his sudden abandonment by many Republicans is all wrong. They’re rejecting him not because of the countless ways in which he inflamed and imperiled this country, not because he’s an offense to decency and an enemy of democracy, not because he degrades almost anything and anyone he brushes up against. They’re just peeved at his losing streak.
It’s about math, not morals, and for that reason, there will quite possibly be a next Trump and a Trump after that. I don’t mean Ivanka, his fair-weather fair-haired daughter, whose self-absorption is self-evident in the studied distance she now keeps from dotty old Dad. I don’t mean Don Jr., who has her gift for grift but not her guile.
I mean someone whose case to Republicans is about the attainment of power, not the exercise of principle, which the party torched in its dance with the Donald. As best as I can tell, it hasn’t learned any lesson from that. It’s just trying to plot a path out of the ashes.
“He’s an impediment at this point,” says Pennsylvania National Committee member tells The New York Times. Andy Reilly, a member of the Republican National Committee in Pennsylvania, said in an article in The Times
“An impediment, mind you — not an offense, not an outrage, not a menace,” Notes Bruni. “At this point. A month ago, in the same noxious guise, Trump was wholly acceptable. And if Mehmet Oz, Blake Masters, Don Bolduc, and a few others had won on Nov. 8, he still would be.”
Trump, a real estate huckster who exaggerated his wealth, and successes and lied outright about his many failures, is under investigation for violation of America’s Espionage Act, involvement in a seditious conspiracy, obstruction of justice, and fraud in his business dealings and political affairs.
He claims that all he has to do is “think about” a classified document and it is declassified. Don’t worry about the process defined in federal law. As far as Trump is concerned, he is above all that.
Trump cut a deal to avoid criminal charges for his “Trump University Scam,” defrauded small business vendors who worked on his real estate products, paid off a porn star to keep quiet about his sexual antics with her, and was charged with raping an underage teen model among other multiple charges that make him a sexual predator.
But Republicans didn’t give a damn about such immoral and illegal acts. All they wanted was for Trump, in the White House, to appoint extremist right-wing federal judges and Supreme Court justices to they could outlaw abortion, eliminate same-sex marriage and strip away the rights of women and gays.
Donald Trump is a con man, sexual pervert, liar, immoral, and criminal but the Republicans didn’t give a damn about any of it as long as his stunts provided wins. When the wins stopped, so did their desire to support him.
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