What does the future hold for Donald Trump? - threadbans in OP

As others have noted, 4 years is an eternity in politics, look at those who ran against trump in the last set of primaries, which of them is relevant now? Cruz, maybe?

I'd be perfectly fine with either, being totally honest.

No dying would make him a martyr. The GOP wouldn’t learn any lessons about supporting trump they’d just say welp he’s dead lol and spend several more cycles trying to really own those libz with nastiness.

Thats why I feel de Santis cannot beat Trump because the problem is how does he attack Trump on anything when his entire base are so far down conspiracy theory rabbit holes and the fake news doctrine. Like in theory it should be easy to attack Trump on his dreadful record on Covid with hundreds of thousands of preventable American deaths, more than in any American war. But the MAGAs believe that Trumps response to Covid was the best in the world ever and that in any case Covid was created by the Democrats in tandem with the Chinese to cripple Trumps beautiful economy and in order for the Democratic Deep State to control them by placing 5G chips in their arm. Thats the kind of nuttiness that Trump has cultivated and his cult are all in on it. They live in a post truth world where Trump and his far right media eco system like Alex Jones and Steve Bannon play his base like puppets on a string.

Like in any normal situation de Santis would be able to just simply stand up in the primary debates and make the perfectly logical argument that he should be the one to face Joe Biden becasue Trump already faced him in an election and he lost. That is a reasonable argument but if de Santis uses it the MAGA set will turn on him viciously at Trumps behest. And then suddenly de Santis is a deep state actor out to ruin Trump and rumour has it he runs a paedophile ring from the basement of a pizza shop and Hillary Clinton manages it and takes codified pizza orders on Hunter Bidens laptop, and so on and on.

So if de Santis takes on Trump in the primaries then battling him using truthful arguments is not an option available to him. He cant even label what Trump did on Jan 6th as an insurrection becasue we all know that the Trump supporters in Washington that day were just tourists having a day out to see the Capitol and anyone involved in violence were engaging in a false flag Antifa operation. Like QAnon told them so thats the truth they believe.

How do you take on a political opponent who has reconstructed the truth and now has millions of people believing his narrative? Id think it is impossible for de Santis to win that battle and if he goes up against Trump he cannot defeat him and simultaneously get the support of his base for a 2024 run. Its one or the other, it cant be both.

Yeah, I'm not seeing any great evidence that the Republican base is about to move on from Trump wholesale. According to Forbes, 48 percent of Republicans would still back Trump in a presidential primary tomorrow.

The best outcome of all may be if both men split the party in two.

I don't know if it would work like that. The specific reason why Trump controls the Republican party to the extent he does is because he went directly to the party's grassroots with a potent mix of celebrity, ignorance and vengeful rhetoric. He was able to tap into something that no other candidate saw or was prepared/able to go near. That's why the Republican party has spinelessly defended and covered for Trump these last six years. He's got the party's balls in a vice.

The party is not going to extend the same courtesy to DeSantis on a national level unless he can command the same level of grassroots support. He's done brilliantly in Florida, but replicating that nationwide very much remains to be seen.

Yeah thats the huge headache for the RNC right now. Do they let Trump go forth unopposed and basically give up on the White House in 2024. It is not an appealing strategy but if they can hold their noses it will be the electorate who finish Trump off and that would suit them given that they dont know how to do it themselves. They had their chance at his impeachment and they shirked it, then they had another chance right after Jan 6th to cut him loose and they shirked that too. It would suit the RNC down to the ground to let the electorate do the job for them. It would mean giving up on the 2024 WH but once Trump is a two time election loser then he is off the main stage for good and the Republican party can start afresh.

The alternative to that is that the RNC fight Trump by backing de Santis but that results in the party being split down the middle and ineffective in 2024 anyway. The primary debates between Trump and de Santis would be like some kind of extreme bloodsports and no matter who emerged victorious they will have totally turned off the 10% of independent, swing and moderate voters they need to convince in a Presidential election.

In any case de Santis doesnt strike me as having the balls to take on Trump no matter what the polls are showing. Trump has already been barbing him with the de Santimonious stuff and he had no response. It is clear that like all others in the Republican party that he is completely scared of Trump going full scorched earth on him.

They can try to pivot away from Trump, but it comes down to what kind of response that generates.

It isn't the first time that US conservative media has floated this idea of breaking from Trump, but it fell flat on its face.

I do not yet see any big polling evidence that the Republican base is ready to move on from Trump.

DeSantis actually has a basis for appealing to the MAGAs by attacking Trump on covid from the (libertarian) right and claiming he was the true 'Trumpist'.

Pretty decent impression to be fair

And I'll hold my hands up that I'm basing it on the crazies online suddenly pivoting.

Lee was one of his henchman for the Jan 6 insurrection 'mechanism.' I'm surprised he got away with whatever he was up to, but the committee's not finished.

Interestingly, this cycle the Democratic candidate running against him was Evan McMullin, who ran against TFG in 2020 (as an independent, and did poorly.) Utah's solidly GQP though, so McMullin didn't have much chance. Still, Lee seems dodgy enough even coming from such a strong religioius backround as Utah politics. Utah was always kind of a weird place to be if you weren't LDS. 3:2 beer on the ski slopes, dirty looks if you swore in public, and the BYU campus was something out of "Leave it to Beaver." Painfully cleancut.

I'm sure like most people who run for President it was a life-long ambition for Obama and something that he knew that he was going to do at some stage. However I do believe that in 2004, before he had even begun his job as a Senator, would have believed that 2008 was way too early.

In his book he says that his initial plan was to get some experience in the Senate and probably run at a later stage. However, in early 2006 Harry Reid told him "10 years in the Senate won't make you a better candidate" and then later on Ted Kennedy said to him:

Obama ran in 2008 even though he knew he'd have to take on the Clinton machine to do so and was considered a massive underdog.

DeSantis has to take his chance now. Who knows what the world will be like in 4 years time. If he doesn't do it now then that'll count against him in the future. Some other candidate could emerge. 2 years ago Andrew Cuomo was being talked about as a future Presidential candidate. Now he's done for. 4 years ago Rishi Sunak was a political nobody. Now he's Prime Minister of the UK.