Will nothing stop Trump winning a second term?
WITH the US election year now in full swing, Donald Trump is unquestionably beatable, but part of me increasingly feels he’ll get re-elected.
Whether it be the two-year investigation into his 2016 campaign or his recent impeachment trial, time and time again he has proved to be the most resilient politician in modern American history.
Nothing, no matter how great the controversy, has hindered him or prompted him to temper the cocky, showman style that has brought him this far.
Scandal is to Trump, what spinach is to Popeye.
Having repelled the US Constitution’s most severe penalty with his impeachment acquittal earlier this month, Trump has been left feeling even more untouchable.
His survival of the Democraticled attempt to remove him from office isn’t, of course, the same as winning a second term in the White House.
Trump’s resilience will be tested again in November when he will become the first impeached President to stand for re-election.
Between then and now, he also faces legal investigations into his family business, his personal finances, his inaugural committee’s spending and his now-defunct foundation.
However, the last three years have proved nothing sticks to Teflon Don and even his fiercest critics acknowledge there is a credible chance he will win again.
No politician in US history has endured more scandals, controversies, or mistakes. Any one of them would have destroyed another candidate or President.
Trump’s disasters are almost always self-inflicted, created by his own lies, deceit and uncontrollable mouth.
His ability to roll from one crisis to another makes the SS Trump seem an unsinkable ship.
It pains me to say but Trump’s capacity to weather a storm, to rebound from blow after blow, may be his greatest weapon in his fight to retain the keys to the White
House.
Meanwhile his rivals are in utter disarray, lurching from one crisis to another.
The Democrat party hoping to spoil Trump’s 2020 re-election hasn’t even reached a consensus on which presidential contender to back or what policy approach would fare best against their nemesis. In 2015 Trump set out for the White House with no experience in running for office or holding it.
While on the campaign trail, he endured one crisis after another without feeling the need to make course corrections.
To this day, he continues to post unimaginable tweets, repeat lies and savage political opponents, but throughout it all, nothing he does disappoints his support base. He’s still never had the approval of a majority of voters and continues to have severe problems with large swathes of the electorate, especially among women and ethnic minorities. And with nine months to go, there is still more than enough time for something to happen that could derail the President. There could be a foreign policy disaster. More damning evidence on Ukraine or some other wrongdoing that the public finds more convincing than what they have seen to date. Worse for Trump, the US economy could falter.
The Republicans I speak to know how awful he is. They know he’s bending the norms of democracy in ways America might not survive. They also know he’s dividing the country while fuelling racial and class divides. However, they are too cowardly to take a stand, putting their own political careers before the needs of the people they are elected to serve. Despite what he’d have voters and the world believe, America is not thriving under Trump’s leadership.
Far from “stronger than ever before,” the country is buckling under his divisive politics.
Unless the Democrats get their act together and quick it will be they, more than anyone, who help re-elect Trump.
Rarely have I wanted to be proven more wrong.