Commentary: The Establishment Still Doesn’t Get Trump

Trump Speaking

A few weeks ago, a “Morning Joe” panel concluded that if Donald Trump were to become the Republican nominee (spoiler alert: he will), Republicans will lose in the fall. This is by no means a unique sentiment – former House Speaker Paul Ryan expressing this idea here, journalist Bernard Goldberg wondering if Trump is trying to lose here, and so forth.

As I read these analyses, I wonder if I’ve somehow been transported back to 2016, when such takes were de rigueur. Here in 2024, we know that Donald Trump won in 2016 and came close to winning in 2020. He carried Republican senators across the finish line in both years, and the GOP gained House seats in 2020, much to the surprise of most election analysts. And, at a comparable time in the campaign cycle when he trailed Hillary Clinton by 4.5 points in the RCP Average and Joe Biden by 5.6 points, Trump actually leads Biden by 1.9 points in national polling.

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Commentary: A Pointless Republican Primary

Trump AF1

President Trump will almost certainly be the Republican nominee. He is far ahead in every primary poll. His supporters originally worried that he would be too polarizing and would go down in flames in the general election, but it appears he will also win the general election against incompetent, unpopular, and increasingly demented Joe Biden.

Indictments, lawfare, media propaganda, and phalanx-style opposition from the organs of conservatism have all been arrayed against Trump. He has also earned the contempt of the managerial class’s elite: the judges, the academics, and the think tankers, as well as the GS and SES class around Washington, D.C.

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