When Donald J. Trump ran for president in 2016, he was a breath of fresh air.
Yes, he was rough around the edges. Trump didn’t do political correctness.
He took Republican and Democratic Party orthodoxies to task—and he was even harder on the scions of the two political parties.
Trump was appealing in that he was an outsider who hailed from the business world.
Trump’s greatest strength in 2016 was his utter unpredictability.
In an election season that had been almost perfectly tailored to hand power from the first African-American President Barack Obama to the person who would be the first female president, Hillary Clinton, Trump was the one obstacle to those carefully laid plans.
And Trump relished in being the fly in the ointment.
Full disclosure: I enjoyed every moment that he struck at both Hillary Clinton and the wider Washington establishment. As someone who had worked in government and saw the excesses and abuses firsthand, Trump came across as the man who truly could fix the inequities and “drain the swamp.”
Donald Trump as a Bunker Buster
One colleague of mine told me at the time that Donald Trump was the political equivalent of a bunker buster bomb. The man who’d become the forty-fifth president was always in the face of his opponents, never apologetic, and always moving toward the ultimate prize—the presidency.
Trump’s directness and sheer brutality (at least rhetorically) along with his utter disregard of any semblance of political norm propelled him into office. If Trump were the political equivalent of a bunker buster, once he’d detonated (by getting into office), he neither had the experience nor understanding of how to keep that power and build his agenda from there.
Donald Trump surprised his “Deep State” foes with his unlikely and unexpected campaign in 2016. By 2018, though, the Faceless Men of the Deep State had adapted.
Trump had bombast, whereas the Deep State had organization. The forty-fifth president had his throngs of adoring fans. The Deep State had the courts and intelligence community (IC). Trump was America’s chief executive. The Deep State had the Executive Branch itself.
The bureaucracy’s ability to damage and stymie the forty-fifth president over time and from within the shadows was far greater than anything that Trump could have threatened them with during his single term in office.
After years of this death-by-a-thousand-paper-cuts-approach, the Administrative State is clearly winning. Donald Trump cannot figure out how to adapt. In today’s cutthroat politics, one either adapts or they perish. That is why Trump has not only lost his first reelection campaign—the first time a president has lost their reelection since George H.W. Bush lost to Bill Clinton unexpectedly in 1992—but then he subsequently found himself under multiple indictments.
Any one of these indictments could essentially lead him to spending the rest of his life in prison (worst case scenario).
It’s true that Republican voters overwhelmingly like Trump. In key swing states, according to some polls, Trump is beating President Biden in a head-to-head matchup.
Yet, the pathway for Donald Trump to become the GOP nominee in 2024 and being able to remain the nominee is not a clear one.
Kneecapping Trump ’24
Indeed, should he be found guilty either in the federal grand jury investigation into his alleged role in the January 6 riots and/or the Atlanta-based grand jury investigation into his purported plot to overturn the election results in Georgia during the 2020 Presidential Election, under the Fourteenth Amendment of the US Constitution, Donald Trump would be ineligible to run for public office.
This is, of course, the ultimate goal of the Democratic Party: to kneecap Trump with a legal technicality just as he becomes the GOP nominee in 2024—throwing the GOP into disarray and ensuring that Biden and his Democratic Party are victorious.
Even if Trump manages to avoid conviction in the January 6 federal case and the Georgia investigation into his alleged attempt to overturn the 2020 election results in Georgia, Trump faces a likely conviction for his alleged mishandling of classified documents.
Most polls indicate that independent voters dislike the idea of having a man as president who mishandles classified documents. What’s more, they dislike a man who behaves as though he is above the law, as both Joe Biden and Donald Trump do in their respective cases of alleged mishandling of classified documents.
Because Trump is so toxic, Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-LA) is a staunch conservative who has made headlines recently by calling on Donald Trump to abandon his quixotic bid for the presidency. This is not the first time that the prominent GOP leader has denounced Trump.
But I suspect that Sen. Cassidy is speaking for many more Republicans than just himself. It remains to be seen if it is a majority of Republicans.
I doubt it.
Although, Republicans should be keenly aware that Trump will be kneecapped by the Deep State once he is nominated by the GOP in 2024. Trump has become a one-trick pony when fighting the Faceless Men of the Deep State. He comes right at them—even though they can see him coming from a mile away.
Often, Trump comes to the fight ill-prepared.
Donald Trump and the “Very Best People”?
Further, he usually surrounds himself not with the “very best people” but with pure sycophants who tend to get rolled by the bureaucrats of the Administrative State.
A new candidate who can deftly navigate the eddies and currents of the Administrative State, such as Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, would be infinitely preferable to Trump’s LeRoy Jenkins approach to politics.
We need a dynamic strategist to lead the Republicans in 2024, not a two-dimensional thinker and egoist, like Trump. The forty-fifth president should drop out of the race and work to secure a pardon for himself.
A 19FortyFive Senior Editor, Brandon J. Weichert is a former Congressional staffer and geopolitical analyst who is a contributor at The Washington Times, as well as at American Greatness and the Asia Times. He is the author of Winning Space: How America Remains a Superpower (Republic Book Publishers), Biohacked: China’s Race to Control Life (Encounter Books), and The Shadow War: Iran’s Quest for Supremacy (July 23). Weichert can be followed via Twitter @WeTheBrandon.
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