If Donald Trump had any capacity for shame, the day he left the White House in January would have been the last time anyone heard from him for months if not years. In addition to causing his party to lose control of both the presidency and the Senate in 2020 and the House in 2018, Trump, you may recall, incited a violent insurrection that left five people dead because he was upset about the results of the 2020 election, and fellow one-term presidents like George H.W. Bush and Jimmy Carter have gone into political exile for far less. But Trump, of course, has no shame. Or integrity. Or morals. Or decency. Or respect. Most importantly, he lacks the ability to say the words “I lost,” both to the public and to himself. And so instead of spending his remaining days at Mar-a-Lago planning his presidential library/theme park or playing with his grandchildren or cheating at golf, he’s decided he’ll terrorize the Republican Party and, in turn, America for all eternity or, at the very least, the next four years.
Speaking at the Conservative Political Action Conference on Sunday, the ex-president gave a preview of what the next half decade will look like. Attacking GOP members who had the audacity to speak out against his attempted coup, Trump vowed revenge on the Liz Cheneys of the world, calling the representative from Wyoming, who voted to impeach him last month, a “warmonger,” saying her “poll numbers have dropped faster than any human being I‘ve ever seen.” Going down his hit list, Trump singled out, among others, Representative Adam Kinzinger and senators Ben Sasse and Mitt Romney, upon whom he suggested revenge was coming. “The RINOs that we’re surrounded with will destroy the Republican Party and the American worker and will destroy our country itself,” he said, referring to the phrase “Republicans In Name Only,” adding that he would be “actively working to elect strong, tough and smart Republican leaders.”
Apparently seeking to sic his fascist mob of followers on the Supreme Court like he sicced them on Mike Pence, Trump, lying about the results of the election, said the nine justices, three of whom he appointed, “should be ashamed of themselves for what they’ve done to our country,” adding that the court “didn’t have the guts or the courage to make the right decision,” the decision being to overturn the results of the election that there isn’t a shred of evidence he won.
Building on the Big Lie that he won the November election, which a terrifying three-quarters of Republicans believe, Trump said he “may even decide to beat [Democrats] for a third time,” adding, “With your help, we will take back the House. We will win the Senate. And then a Republican president will make a triumphant return to the White House. And I wonder who that will be.” Not surprisingly, Trump‘s eldest son, who apparently only receives a biannual hug from his father, loved the line about winning for “a third time.”
A straw poll of conference attendees showed overwhelming support for the 45th president, with fewer people certain of whether or not he should run again in 2024. (Thirty-two percent said he should not run or that they were unsure if he should.) That, of course, hasn’t stopped major members of the party from backing him on the off chance he does make a third run for the White House; last week, for instance, Mitch McConnell said that he would “absolutely” support Trump as the party’s nominee, despite saying just a few short weeks ago that he was “practically and morally responsible” for the Capitol attack. Of course, knowing Trump, a reality-TV-show hack who teased a presidential bid for years before he actually ran, it’s unlikely that he’ll actually make anything official until the very last moment. For now, though, he’s clearly happy to ride the grift train all the way to the bank. Per The New York Times: