On Thursday, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-Cuckooland), appearing on CNN’s Anderson Cooper 360, was foaming at the mouth as usual. However, she did make one point that I worry she may actually be correct about.
I know, it’s shocking, for sure, but hear me out.
Ocasio-Cortez was speaking with guest anchor John Berman regarding the vote to remove anti-Semitic Congresswoman Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) from the House Foreign Relations Committee. Somehow, AOC managed to blame this on Trump.
“Even with Donald Trump being gone, they’re cementing the transformation of the Republican Party into a Trumpian party,” she claimed. “One that settles petty political scores that is no longer motivated by a classic quote, unquote ‘conservative politics of reducing a tax base’ et cetera, but this is truly about service to their benefactors.”
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First, let me say here that she’s being stupid. She’s deliberately ignoring the way that Nancy Pelosi and House Democrats politicized committee assignments when, in 2021, they stripped Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) of all of her committee assignments over past comments she made. Later that year, Democrats also censured Rep. Paul Gosar (R-Ariz.) for a video he tweeted and took him off of committees. Republicans have long warned Democrats that they were setting a “dangerous” precedent whereby the majority party could punish members of the minority party by taking away their committee assignments, and Ilhan Omar has long been mentioned as someone deserving of losing her plum assignment on the House Foreign Relations Committee because of her history of anti-Israel, anti-Semitic, and anti-American comments.
Still, she did get something right. When Berman asked if Ocasio-Cortez believed that Trump would win the 2024 Republican nomination for president, she said, “I mean, we may see. He will either be the nominee, or he will burn down anyone who isn’t him who is the nominee.”
Yeah, I gotta say, I think she’s right about this. There’s no denying this is a legitimate issue facing the GOP in 2024. For starters, in 2016 Trump originally pledged to support whoever the GOP nominee for president would be, but later, when asked by Anderson Cooper during a CNN town hall, he abandoned that pledge.
“No, I don’t anymore,” Trump said. “No, we’ll see who it is.”
Trump ultimately won the nomination, so it was a moot point, but 2024 is a different ball game. Trump is obviously favored to win the nomination but faces a very real threat from Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis—who has yet to declare his candidacy but is reportedly preparing for a national campaign. But, as the former president, who feels robbed due to widespread allegations of election irregularities in 2020, Trump feels entitled to the GOP nomination and has not been shy about warning DeSantis, who has led Trump in some polls, not to run.
I have recently asked myself what Trump would say when asked to pledge to support whoever the 2024 GOP nominee is, and I can’t see him pledging to support anyone else besides himself.
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But would Trump, as AOC says, “burn down anyone who isn’t him who is the nominee”?
Of course, he’s already promised to do that. Trump said this past November that if DeSantis decides to run, “I would tell you things about him that won’t be very flattering — I know more about him than anybody — other than, perhaps, his wife.”
His comments may not have gone over very well, but they showed, quite clearly, that Trump doesn’t care about collateral damage in his quest to return to the White House, and he is not above friendly fire. AOC may not be the sharpest tool in the shed, and her judgment may be further clouded by her rabid hatred of Trump, but her assessment of what Trump may do in 2024 is, I’m sorry to say, spot on.
