George Will: Trump’s victory continues GOP’s 'eight years of self-degradation'

Conservative Washington Post columnist George Will has been a scathing critic of President-Elect Donald Trump and the MAGA movement's influence on the Republican Party.

In his November 6 column, Will argues that Trump's victory over Vice President Kamala Harris in the 2024 election continues the "eight years of self-degradation" the GOP has suffered thanks to Trump.

"Conducting a thorough autopsy on the cadaver of Kamala Harris' campaign will require the scalpel of voting data not yet sharpened," Will argues. "Two things, however, are obvious. Democrats should have remembered the ancient axiom 'be careful what you wish for.' And they should have remembered the warning attributed to their hero Franklin D. Roosevelt regarding Gen. Douglas MacArthur: 'Never underestimate a man who overestimates himself.'"

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Will is not only critical of Trump and the MAGA movement — he is also critical of the Harris campaign and the Democratic National Committee (DNC), accusing them of "self-sabotage."

"A wit once asked, can the phrase 'insipid beyond words' be applied to words?" Will writes. "Harris segued from vapidity ('joy!') to hysteria ('fascism!'), from Beethoven ('Ode to Joy,' without the music) to Wagner ('Götterdämmerung,' staged for swing states). She mocked Trump for being such a feeble president that he could not even build his border wall. Simultaneously, she intimated that in a second term, the triumph of his Hitlerian will would steamroller America's democratic institutions. Perhaps voters detected a contradiction."

Will, now 83, isn't optimistic about the next four years.

"It has been said that the future is a mirror without glass in it," the conservative columnist writes. "But Trump's scatterbrained approach to almost everything makes it likely that he will fail to do much of what he has vowed to do. Then, in 2028, Americans get to do this again. That is the good and bad news."

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George Will's full Washington Post column is available at this link (subscription required)