Losing Trump

By BARRY FRIEDMAN

I have two wishes for 2024: nn1) Donald Trump isn’t the Republican nominee for president, and

2) Donald Trump is.

I have argued, considering all the Republicans who might run against him, that Biden has the best chance to be re-elected if he runs against Trump — after all, he’s already beaten him — so why wouldn’t I want him as the GOP nominee with, say, Michael Flynn on the ticket? Of course, the last time I wished for the GOP to pick Trump as its nominee was 2016, and look how that turned out.

Speaking of, as we were recently reminded by Olivia Nuzzi in New York magazine, Trump didn’t really want to win. He wanted to finish second or third in some early primaries, increase his brand, drop out, and then return to The Apprentice and NBC — and had he not announced that all Mexicans were rapists, which caused NBC to drop him, that might have happened. The network could have prevented all this, but it just had to develop a corporate conscience, didn’t it?

And the rest is dystopian history.

In 2016, when he was asked what he’d do if he lost to Clinton, he said, “I don’t think I’m going to lose, but if I do, I don’t think you’re ever going to see me again, folks.”

In 2020, when asked what he’d do if he lost to Biden, he said, “Maybe I’ll have to leave the country, I don’t know.”

But what happens this time?

It could get very ugly.

Imagine he suffers a string of defeats in the early primary states — South Carolina, New Hampshire, Nevada, Georgia and Michigan (all a distinct possibility) — how does Donald Trump lose? What would that look like? How unhinged will he and his minions be when it’s clear he has no path to the nomination? How long does he stay in the race even after Ron DeSantis’ nomination is assured? A normal candidate, a normal human being would bow out, make a gracious concession speech, and promise to help the party any way he can.

But Trump is neither normal nor human.

Even if he were to find his inner mensch (if he has one), even if it stuck around, even if he decided not to run as an independent, even if he accepted that the primary results were not rigged in all those states he lost, and even if he were to accept that his time has come and gone, what do Republicans do with him? Do they invite him to speak at the convention in Milwaukee? Of course they do. And with a guaranteed television audience, of course he’d accept. It would be the mother of all train wrecks.

I can see it now.

As he strides to the stage to a song the party has no permission to use, the camera spans the assembled throng adorned in authentic Trump merchandise. Many are jumping up and down. The camera cuts to a lone tear making its way down the face of a Texas delegate, cuts to two sobbing women from Georgia hugging, cuts to a man in the gallery giving the camera the finger. In the slickly produced introductory video, we see the border wall (which the party hopes won’t remind the rest of America how much he didn’t build and how much is sinking into the Rio Grande), his meeting with North Korea’s Kim (which the party hopes won’t remind the rest of America how this did nothing but embolden the dictator), his joint communiqués with Putin (which the party hopes won’t remind the rest of America how often it looked like the Russian president had him on leash), his post-COVID pose on the balcony of the White House, ripping his paper mask off his face (which the party hopes won’t remind the rest of America how he once encouraged the injecting of bleach to combat the disease), his phones call in the Oval Office (which the party hopes won’t remind the rest of America of his call Zelensky, the reason for his first impeachment), and his exultations to the troops at his rallies (which the party hopes won’t remind the rest of America of his speech at the Ellipse in Washington on Jan. 6th, 2021, the reason for his second impeachment).

And then the lights come up and Trump, pumping his tiny fists into the air waiting for an ovation that has already died down to die down, unleashes an unhinged, belittling, unfocused, accusatory, petty, delusional mess — part Pinter, part Beckett, part Mamet, part Elmer Gantry, part Ron Popeil, part Ye.

“A lot of people, A LOT,” he will say, “tell me how I would be the strongest candidate to beat Sleepy Joe and his criminal son Beau. And unless you’re a moron, you know I won last time. I helped Santos when he was a loser in Florida and he begged me for help. I made him, and now he has totally not been nice to me. Sad! But I’ll be here if he fails, which he might.”

As he rambles on, the camera will once again cut to the crowd, but it’s now confused — “Santos? Doesn’t he mean DeSantis? … Wait! Beau? Isn’t it Hunter? WTF?” Networks break away for commercials. When they return, the GOP elite, now in the anchor booths, shake their heads and roll their eyes when asked what they think, as Trump drones on in the background.

He won’t leave the stage.

The band begins to play.

And he won’t leave the stage.

In 2024, Donald Trump can destroy the Republican Party and we can watch the final episode in prime time.

Now that’s something to wish for.

Barry Friedman is an essayist, political columnist, petroleum geology reporter and comedian living in Tulsa, Okla. In addition to “Funny You Should Mention It,” “Road Comic,” “Four Days and a Year Later” and “The Joke Was On Me,” his first novel, “Jacob Fishman’s Marriages,” a book about the worst love story ever, was published by Balkan Press in February. See barrysfriedman.com and friedmanoftheplains.com.

From The Progressive Populist, February 1, 2023

Populist.com