Most of us will, at some stage, hear the old christian morality tale of the man trapped on his roof by a rising flood who turns away all offers for help because God will rescue him. He turns away all rescue efforts with the phrase “no, God will save me”. When he eventually drowns, he confronts the Almighty up in God’s blue heaven: “Why didn’t you save me?”
“Well”, answers God, “I sent you a helicopter. And a man on a boat. And many pieces of driftwood to cling on to. You turned them all down”.
The thought came to mind, this weekend, watching Mike Pence defend his former running mate, Donald Trump, from the criminal charges levelled against him by the FBI.
The charges themselves are deathly serious. If you do not believe me, then perhaps you might believe serial Trump defender Jonathan Turley, a professor at law at George Washington University:
Turley has easily been one of the most pro-Trump legal voices in the country. Anyone who tells you that these charges are baseless and will be easily dismissed, simply isn’t being honest with you. https://t.co/fLmlGrQUie
— AG (@AGHamilton29) June 12, 2023
Or Bill Barr, Trump’s own Attorney General until he left office:
Bill Barr: "It's a very detailed indictment, and it is very, very damning. This idea of presenting Trump as a victim here, a victim of a witch hunt is ridiculous…He's not a victim here. He was totally wrong." pic.twitter.com/xRwYChWZ5Q
— Republican Voters Against Trump (@AccountableGOP) June 11, 2023
Or Tim Parlatore, who was Trump’s own lawyer, in this very case, until….. last week?
Tim Parlatore interview w/ @jaketapper:
– says "absolutely right" storage was "not secure"
– admits 2 Chinese national intruders at MAL
– admits Indictment strong
– admits allegations really serious
– says kept in dark on moving boxes to avoid searcheshttps://t.co/sgXKAcI8aI— Ryan Goodman (@rgoodlaw) June 11, 2023
But back to Mr. Pence. The former Vice President has about 2% support in his campaign to be the next nominee for President of the US Republican Party. Mr. Trump, in polling before the indictment, sits at around 50% on average. Somewhere around half of Republicans do not want Trump, but they cannot decide who they want instead. If this persists, he will be the nominee again, despite his relative weakness in the Republican polls compared to Mr. Biden in the Democratic polls.
Traditionally, in American political campaigns, to beat the guy on 50% you need to give voters a reason to abandon him and choose you instead. Yet Mr. Trump’s rivals are terrified, it appears, to attack him directly.
I fear that when they reach the afterlife and ask the almighty why it was that Trump was made so unbeatable, God might answer “well I sent you the access Hollywood tape, and two impeachments, and a series of terrible appointments, and multiple indictments on criminal charges, including one where the fellow who said “lock her up” about Hillary Clinton mishandling classified documents ended up doing the same thing himself”.
Yours truly is accused, sometimes, by readers, of being an inveterate “Trump hater”. Nothing could be further from the truth: Much of what Trump identified as being wrong with the west was very accurate, and some of what he did as President was very, very good.
Examples include his focus on trade, and the loss of industry. His reluctance to commit US forces to adventurism. His dealing with ISIS. His refusal to play by the rules of a media that is institutionally rigged against conservatives in the United States, and indeed elsewhere. Few politicians utterly change their party: Trump is one who did.
And yet it is also abundantly clear that Trump is toxic to the very causes he espouses: Far from defeating the “deep state”, he has united it against him in a way unprecedented in history. If the “deep state” exists, it is objectively stronger now than it ever was before he became President. If there is, as he says, a crisis on the US Southern Border, then it exists because he did not “build the wall and make Mexico pay for it”. If he was constantly betrayed in office, then he was betrayed by people he appointed, having promised to “hire only the best people”.
Worse than all of that, he has made his party comfortable with losing, because he has made it possible for people to indulge the delusion that they have not truly lost at all. This weekend, for example, speaking in Georgia, he announced that there had been “funny business” that had cost one of his candidates an election: The candidate in question lost by 71% to 29%.
If you believe that elections are rigged, and that is why you lost them, then you need never change anything about how you conduct yourself.
For example, Trump is entirely resistant to the idea that he did anything wrong during Covid 19, when he handed his government over to lockdowners and school-closers, and condemned those who resisted. If he does not accept that he was wrong, then why would we expect him to act differently if presented with the same problem again? For those concerned about vaccines, recall that it was Mr. Trump who urged the vaccines into early production, and emergency use authorisations. He says today he could solve America’s problems “in six months”, which poses the obvious question of what he was doing for four whole years.
Similarly, if Trump believes that Mrs. Clinton should have been “locked up” for her emails, then what case is to be made that he should not be “locked up” today? If the only argument you have is “because she wasn’t”, then he and his supporters are essentially admitting his own hypocrisy.
The argument that politicians should not be prosecuted during campaigns because it is politicisation also makes no sense: Does anyone really think for a moment that the average Trump supporter would oppose the prosecution of Mr. Biden, had it been announced last week instead, on the grounds that it is “unfair” and “politicisation?”
All of which brings me back to the beginning: Trump’s Republican Rivals are trapped in a warped world of his own making: They cannot call him a loser, and point out why he lost, because to do so would be to “betray” those still convinced that he won. Even Ron DeSantis, the candidate in the field who utterly (and mostly correctly) resisted lockdowns, finds it difficult to criticise Trump directly because to do so would be to “side with the Democrats”.
But reader, ask yourself this question: What if the 2020 election wasn’t rigged? What if he just plain lost?
Trump’s opponents have a duty to ask that question, because if he lost last time, then the same blather but with extra added indictments is not going to win this time. And if he loses this time and says it is rigged, then what next? 2028? 2032?
Perhaps Republican voters are so wedded to Trump as saviour (some, this weekend, were openly comparing him to Jesus Christ) that none of this matters. But it is fairly obvious that if the likes of Pence or DeSantis want to beat him for the nomination, they cannot continue to rush to his defence every time he gets into trouble.
Especially when, as in this case, it is trouble entirely of his own making. The Democrats must be laughing their backsides off.