On Monday, the Atlantic’s McKay Coppins published a piece about how the top minds of the Republican Party are approaching the problem of having voters who may nominate Donald Trump for president again in 2024. Trump, you see, lost the presidential election in 2020 and was largely responsible for dozens of avoidable down-ballot GOP losses in federal and statewide races in 2018 and 2022, as well. The technical phrase used by political scientists for what Trump is, at this point, is “an anchor dragging the Republican brand into the darkest regions of hell.”
Other elected officials and potential candidates in the GOP who make this point, however, are liable to be targeted by the former president’s many remaining hardcore supporters, who despite being insufficient to win most general-election races, have proven themselves at least numerous enough to determine the results of party primaries. It’s a fun little Catch-22 situation for them.
According to Coppins, the tactical approach that many disgruntled officials have settled on is to hope God resolves the problem in their favor, via smiting:
In his recent book Thank You for Your Servitude, my colleague Mark Leibovich quoted a former Republican representative who bluntly summarized his party’s plan for dealing with Trump: “We’re just waiting for him to die.” As it turns out, this is not an uncommon sentiment. In my conversations with Republicans, I heard repeatedly that the least disruptive path to getting rid of Trump, grim as it sounds, might be to wait for his expiration.
Ha! Good luck with that. Consider this:
• Donald Trump has a Filet-O-Fish–centered diet, exercises only by playing golf, and employs some of the least trustworthy-seeming doctors to have ever been associated with the medical profession.
• He did not take the threat of COVID seriously at all and actually got COVID himself just before the last election.
• He’s 76 years old.
• He nonetheless recovered fully from COVID and has had no known health problems since. He looks fine. (He looks less frail than the Democrats’ likely 2024 nominee, for one.)
Have you ever seen Velveeta go bad? No, because it’s not real food. The same is true of Donald Trump and being a human.
