There’s 1 question Republicans 'dare not' publicly ask about Trump’s 'low-energy' campaign: journalist

15 December 2022

A month has passed since Donald Trump officially announced that he is seeking the GOP nomination in the 2024 presidential election. The November 15 announcement received plenty of media coverage, but so far, Trump’s 2024 campaign hasn’t caught fire the way his 2016 campaign did. And some prominent figures on the right, including author Ann Coulter and pundits at Fox News and Fox Business, are aggressively pushing Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis as an alternative to Trump for the 2024 election.

In an op-ed published by The Hill on December 15, journalist Myra Adams stresses that there is a question that “no one dares to voice” publicly at GOP gatherings: “Will former President Trump drop out of the 2024 presidential race?” But that, according to Adams, doesn’t mean that Republicans aren’t thinking it.

“After Trump’s widely panned ‘low-energy’ presidential announcement on November 15, the first month has been the campaign from hell,” Hill writes. “At the starting gate after the midterm elections, Trump was directly blamed for the GOP’s failure to win control of the Senate and why the much-ballyhooed red wave stayed offshore. Then, headlines exploded after he dined with celebrity Nazi lovers, racists and white supremacists — followed by his unhinged call for the termination of Constitution election rules benefiting him.”

Adams continues, “Pile on the Justice Department naming a special prosecutor to investigate events before and during the January 6 Capitol attack, enjoined with the Mar-a-Lago document scandal. Then add a host of legal setbacks after numerous political and business rulings. Furthermore, the first month saw major donors jump ship and the stratospheric rise of a young rival, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) — a Trump acolyte. Now, Trump’s 2024 campaign reality show is stranger than fiction, but the political reality is reflected in the downward trajectory of his poll numbers.”

Adams notes some recent polls that show many Republican voters preferring DeSantis over Trump as a 2024 presidential candidate. Those polls show Trump trailing DeSantis by 23 percent (USA Today/Suffolk University) or 14 percent (the Wall Street Journal).

Adams speculates that if Trump did drop out of the race, he would not make a “traditional campaign withdrawal speech” — as the last thing he wants to do is admit that he could be legitimately defeated. One possible scenario, according to Adams, is Trump, at some point, claiming that “health problems” forced him to drop out of the race even though he was winning.

Coulter, a former Trump supporter who has grown increasingly frustrated with him, believes that Trump doesn’t have nearly as much support in the GOP as some pundits think. But on the other hand, former GOP strategist and Never Trump conservative Rick Wilson is very skeptical over claims that Republicans will abandon Trump for DeSantis in the 2024 election. Wilson, in November, told The Guardian that when Trump fully unleashes his cruelty on DeSantis, he will crush the Florida governor — and the GOP will once again “bend the knee” to Trump.

Also, a presidential campaign that is “low energy” won’t necessarily stay that way. In 2020, many pundits were writing an obituary on now-President Joe Biden’s campaign — only to watch that campaign catch fire in the Democratic South Carolina primary and Biden going on to win his primary’s nomination and ultimately, the general election. But Trump has a lot of baggage that Biden didn’t have in 2020.

Adams has a “hunch” that “Trump’s presidential campaign will end by this time next year.

“Conversely, since Trump is known to be ruthless, narcissistic and can’t appear to lose, many will say the prospect of him dropping out is ridiculous,” Adams writes. “But that is the beauty of playing the health card in late 2023. Health problems, real or manufactured, could be used offensively, allowing Trump to maintain control of his non-defeat if he is careening toward inevitable primary defeats. Most importantly, the health card protects his winning persona, allowing him to play kingmaker from the sidelines.”

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