Nothing is over until it’s over, but so far, there’s been little reason not to believe that Trump is going to be the Republican Party’s presidential nominee in 2024. He’s leading in the polls by double digits, and nothing seems to have changed the political headwinds in favor of any of his opponents to be able to make a significant dent in his lead.
Polls showing Trump beating Biden in most of the battleground states that will decide the next election have certainly helped buttress his candidacy, as many voters on the right see him as a target of a partisan Justice Department trying to thwart his return to the White House.
There’s no denying that the nomination is Trump’s to lose, and to that point, you could argue that his strategy of not participating in the debates makes good political sense. But very little of everything else he’s doing reflects that of a candidate who is the runaway frontrunner.
For starters, if Trump saw his winning the nomination as being inevitable, he wouldn’t be wasting time attacking his primary opponents, but instead, he went to extreme lengths to attack Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis before he entered the race, and has continued to do so after he got in — often with childish attacks. Since then, any time another candidate appeared to gain any momentum, he would quickly shift gears and attack them — like when he attacked Nikki Haley back in September after ignoring her for months and even giving her his blessing to run.
Trump is no doubt in this election to win it, but he clearly doesn’t care about who he destroys in the process. DeSantis was beloved by the MAGA crowd before Trump turned him into public enemy number one. His sense of entitlement to the nomination has made him willing to turn his supporters against the very people who will carry on Trump’s political legacy after his time in public life is over.
Still, there’s more about Trump’s campaign antics that bother me. While there’s been much speculation about who Trump might choose as a running mate, Trump really floated one heck of a trial balloon out there during a recent appearance on “The Clay Travis and Buck Sexton Show” when he said he’d consider Tucker Carlson as a potential running mate.
“I like Tucker a lot; I guess I would,” Trump said. “I think I’d say I would, because he’s got great common sense.”
“You know, when they say that you guys are conservative, or I’m conservative — it’s not that we’re conservative, we have common sense. We want to have safe borders. We want to have a wall, because walls work,” he added.
No one actually believes that Trump would pick Tucker Carlson as his running mate, nor would anyone actually believe Tucker would have the slightest interest in it either. Heck, in September, Tucker agreed with Barstool Sports founder Dave Portnoy that both Biden and Trump were too old for the presidency.
Given Trump’s need for absolute loyalty, why would he entertain picking Tucker? It makes Trump’s comment seems like a shameless gimmick. Seriously, for a guy who’s way ahead in the primary polls and is crushing Biden where it counts in general election polls, why does Trump feel the need to resort to such gimmicks?
It’s time for Trump to act like a frontrunner already.
