Could Trump actually run and win in 2024?

Just had to pop in to say that today, I saw a “Trump 2024” sticker on a car in a parking lot. I think I hurt myself shaking my head and rolling my eyes.

It’s crabs in a bucket. Always will be. Shame that we can breed and raise humans to be as unimaginitive as crabs.

I live around the corner from the police chief’s house in my town. He’s flying a large Trump 2024 flag these days. And this is in coastal Massachusetts.

With luck, his horrible diet and lifestyle will induce appropriate health consequences and we’ll all be spared. I’m not wishing death upon him, but I don’t want him to join Weight Watchers either…

“I’ve never wished a man dead, but I have read some obituaries with great pleasure.”
– Clarence Darrow

I love this headline: As Trump restarts rallies, GOP strategists hope against all odds that he won't rehash 2020 election

Yes, that’s what he’s famous for. Staying on message and avoiding past grievances. How many minutes do you think he’s going to last? Or should it be seconds? Or will he just open with a complaint about how the election was stolen from him?

Rally attenders won’t want to be beaten over the head with 2020 election grievances. They’ll want to hear about current grievances, like Twitter censorship and trans people using the wrong bathrooms. He won’t be able to help himself from whining about the stolen election but he can win them back with complaints that aren’t all about him. He’d rather not but he can do it.

No, he can’t.

I’m not sure that you’re not right.

ISTM the “stolen election” is one of the frothing RW’s favorite themes. Not because it’s all about Trump, but because it’s all about discrediting the idea that a D win is ever legitimate. So within the overall RW propaganda machine even the factions that aren’t totally subservient to Trump are all in favor of keeping the stolen election pot boiling or at least on a high simmer. Because it feeds the anger that gets them donations and revenue and statehouses passing corrupt voting laws and all the rest.

What do the rank and file RW think? Whatever their chosen delivery vehicle for frothing outrage tells them to be angry about. Whether it’s QAnon, OANN, Faux news, Stormfront, etc., the fundamental tune is the same: all outrage all the time. Folks get addicted to outrage and adrenaline. And will happily be angry about whatever they are told to be angry about.

I kinda think that part of the reason that high profile repubs are making nice with Trump is that they expect him to be indicted soon, and they hope that this will drain him of whatever money he’d need to launch a campaign.

They don’t necessarily like Trump but they are going to capitalize on all the dirty work he’s done in terms of undermining democracy. I’m watching Ron Desantis carefully. I could see him being America’s Victor Orban.

De Santis is definitely the front runner for Fuhrer in my book. Much more capable than Cruz.

Agreed with you and asahi. I’ve said DeSantis is the heir apparent should DJT decline to run in '24.

Cruz is a boob. My Texas GOP relatives can’t stand him any longer. You have to work at it to lose their support quite frankly and Cruz has done it.

Disagree, because …

That, plus it feeds their infantile sore-loserism. They wanted their team to win, but it lost, so they’ll continue to rally (pun intended) around the we-wuz-robbed narrative, like football fans bitching about a bad call that cost them a game a decade ago.

Heh. Trump’s rally organizers must never pay attention to the lyrics of their playlist. Or maybe the song selector did it deliberately.

If there were such a thing, you could drag out a stirring, upbeat decades old hit which had some sort of “USA! USA” chorus and it could have the lines “Donald Trump is a loser” and “Republicans are morons” in the verses and it would get played at Trump rallies. They aren’t sufficiently cerebral to notice or care.

Of course, Springsteen’s “Born in the USA” comes close.

I guess that was a joke, that Laura Brannigan tweeted about him using her song?

He said ‘the estate’ of Laura Brannigan.

Song titles for those of us who can’t watch videos at work?

Flog. Neiiiigh.
Flog. Neigh.
Flog.
Flog.

This was well put.

(CNN)The Republican Party has turned to another page in the authoritarian playbook as it whitewashes the history of Donald Trump’s presidency.

It’s as if the fawning over Vladimir Putin never happened. Or Trump’s assurance that Covid-19 would simply “go away” never passed his lips. Trump’s acolytes have, meanwhile, rebranded the worst assault in American democracy in modern times into a January 6 tourist jaunt as they seek to cleanse the reputation of the former President who told rioters to “fight like Hell” and, months later, still holds enormous sway over the GOP.

Trump and conservative propaganda media are also assailing Dr. Anthony Fauci to expunge the ex-President’s neglect of a pandemic that killed hundreds of thousands of Americans on his watch.

The attempt to reconfigure the often disastrous historical record of the Trump presidency comes as the former President eyes a political comeback ahead of a new round of political rallies this summer teeing up 2022 primaries. And it takes place as much of the Republican Party is engaged in a crusade built on the former President’s lies about election fraud to make it harder for many Americans to vote and easier for GOP officials to interfere in free and fair elections. Since the truth is too painful for Republicans and is detrimental to their future political prospects, an alternative narrative must be constructed.