HARD-RIGHT AND LEFT WANT TRUMP TO BE GOP NOMINEE
My colleague Nicole Russell recently wrote that Republicans-turned-hardcore MAGA Trump voters are to blame for the persistence of the former president’s poll numbers.
They have been “conned by one of the best,” she explained, acting “more like a committed cult” than a political party. She isn’t wrong.
The lengths to which some members of the political right have gone to justify the misdeeds of their leader is mindboggling, even sad at times.
But the slavish devotion to Trump by the right is only half the reason the now thrice-indicted former president still has a significant chance of being the GOP nominee in 2024.
Because if the hardright is set on Trump winning the primary, then the left is, too.
Consider how leftleaning mainstream media sources have worked to keep Trump a perpetual feature of the daily news.
One can hardly turn on a cable news program (not just Fox) — or even a daytime talk show — without frequent and disdainful mention of the former president’s name.
Daily newspapers and online news sources are regularly splashed with photos and headlines about Trump.
It was the same phenomenon that occurred in 2016, when Trump, the unlikely Republican front runner, was practically the only GOP candidate receiving regular news coverage. Much of it was negative. But that didn’t seem to matter.
Whether for ratings or sheer entertainment value, Trump’s constant presence on television was mesmerizing; it was the greatest in-kind contribution to his campaign ever made. It helped build his cult of personality and almost certainly contributed to his election.
Today’s incessant coverage also serves to feed this beast.
And while the frequent stories follow the news — indeed, Trump was indicted for an unprecedented third time last week — the coverage is unbalanced and excessive.
This is especially true since Democrats have their own White House scandals with which to contend.
Indeed, the recent credible allegations that President Joe Biden may have been more involved in his son’s influencepeddling operation involving foreign nationals than we were previously led to believe should be news of the same caliber as a third Trump indictment.
It’s not.
As Becket Adams explained in a recent piece for the National Review, Biden is a Democrat, therefore any suggestion that “the president himself coordinated quid pro quos with wellheeled foreign interests,” isn’t just “old news” to news sources like The New York Times, “it’s also none of your damn business.”
The serious nature of Trump’s alleged crimes notwithstanding does not justify the apparent total disregard by many mainstream news sources of the alleged crimes of his political opponent.
The double standard is annoying and unfair, yes, but it also reinforces the notion that Trump loves to peddle: that he has been singled-out and even targeted for destruction by cultural elites. It’s hard to argue with that.
And it has undoubtedly hardened support for Trump, even among reluctant Republicans who might otherwise wish to elevate a different candidate.
Whatever the allegation — mishandling of classified documents or efforts to overturn election results — the unrelenting stream of legal actions against him fulfills the narrative that Trump and his followers are under attack.
The left knows that Trump is using and will continue to use his victimhood to fundraise and to build his support.
Still they double down, not out of a sense of justice, but one of spite, and dare I say, because they believe, as they did in 2016, that as a candidate Trump is unelectable.
His securing the nomination will all but ensure Biden’s re-election. They may be right.
But they’ve been wrong before. And in the meantime, they’ve made strange bedfellows of their arch political opponents.