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Michelle Goldberg
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By Michelle Goldberg
opinion columnist
Donald Trump is a petulant narcissist, so his fights with governors. Ron DeSantis and Glenn Youngkin are actually candid, but they also show that Trump hasn’t lost his wild intuition for media attention. In recent months, the former president has become increasingly boring, and after sabotaging Republican hopes of a red wave, his strength is at an all-time low. By stoking a Republican civil war and pronouncing his candidacy for president, he could reignite interest in a new season of Trump’s exhibition.
Trump has very little else to do for other people to see. On Tuesday, he delivered an extremely boring speech and humming his new presidential campaign. “This is one of the least forceful and inspiring speeches I’ve heard from Trump,” tweeted Sarah Matthews, his former deputy White House press secretary. “Even the crowd gets bored. ” CNN cut 20 minutes. Fox News lasted about 40 minutes, though it came back for a rant, just as it was.
Yet as I listened to Trump talk about “cesspools of blood” and sadistic gangsters armed with knives, it was hard not to feel a sickening sense of déjà vu. Somehow, seven long years after descending his golden escalator, we’re back in a position where top conservative elites unite against him again, hoping a Florida Republican will pull him out, even if his fanatical base remains engaged. Once again, we have noticed that Trump bestows insulting nicknames on his supposed Republican competitors. He obviously missed a level – “Ron DeSanctimonious” is much less catchy than “Lyin’ Ted”, but no one assumes it’s over. “Trump told others he was looking to recreate the helpless atmosphere of the 2016 campaign,” The Washington Post reported.
Now it’s up to the rest of us if we’ll help him. In 2015 and 2016, much of the media encouraged Trump’s rise, amplifying each and every one of his provocations because it was fun and successful to make rubber while sweeping through the Republican Party. All those loose media helped propel Trump to victory. Now he is forcing us to do it again.
I perceive that we cannot avoid writing or talking about a former president who is now one of the leading presidential candidates; After all, I’m writing a column about him. But we can all prevent him from setting the terms of the debate. The appeal of his announcement speech was nothing he said. Rather, as Maggie Haberman of The New York Times noted in “The Daily,” he appears in part to escape an imaginable criminal prosecution, which may stem from his coup attempt or classified government documents he appears to have stolen.
It is also worth noting that, once back, he is in bed with authoritarian foreign powers. Just this week, we learned that Trump had signed a deal with a Saudi real estate giant to have Trump’s logo as part of a $1. 6 billion mission in Oman. Information continues to flow about the emoluments he earned as president. The House oversight committee recently revealed that officials from six countries, plus China and Saudi Arabia, spent more than $750,000 at his Washington hotel during his administration, infrequently renting rooms for more than $10,000 a night. .
Many have used the professional wrestling term “kayfabe,” which refers to the specter that the melodramas depicted through wrestling are real, whether it’s Trump’s manipulation of the truth and the willful suspension of his fans’ disbelief. It’s a clever way to perceive their recent attempts to grab attention. But the key to Trump’s story is oligarchic corruption enabled through legal impunity, not interpersonal disputes. In fact, I sense the vertigo of some Democrats eager for a Trump-DeSantis slap, infrequently even the percentage, but Trump has taken credit for it each and every time we have let him make politics a pro fight.
In the series finale “The Good Fight,” the only television screen to capture the far-fetched rise of Trump-era politics, a character based on flamboyant troll Milo Yiannopoulos appears at the Democratic screen law firm, peddling defamatory trash opposite DeSantis. The firm’s lawyers will have to decide whether they want to be part of a dirty trick orchestrated by Roger Stone to oust Florida’s governor, paving the way for Trump’s recovery. They pondered it, believing that Trump would be easier to beat. in a general election, but in the end it cannot be fulfilled. It’s the right decision in the not-so-fictional world of the screen, and it would be in real life. DeSantis, a more effective politician than Trump, can only damage liberal priorities more than Trump did. But Trump will do more damage to democracy itself. On Tuesday, he uttered a single sentence. The United States is “very fragile to begin with,” Trump said. “It can’t take long. “
Times Opinion will publish a variety of responses in one lengthy article.
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