In GOP Poll From Hell, Republicans Say They Want Donald Trump Jr. to Be President in 2024

A recurring nightmare among millions of Americans is that come 2024, Donald Trump will forget the fact that he actually hated being president, decide to run again, and win. Seriously, can you think of a more horrifying scenario, except perhaps falling through a sidewalk into a rat-filled chasm, which some people might still prefer? We maintain that you cannot. But an equally terrifying, skin-crawling situation would definitely be to turn on the TV on January 20, 2025, and see Donald Trump Jr. being sworn in as president of the United States, which a number of Republican voters apparently actually want to happen.

Axios reports that the results of a new poll of conservatives puts the ex-president’s namesake at the top of a popularity contest among GOP front-runners, a sentence that has multiple things wrong with it. Don Junior, for those lucky enough to be unaware of the comings and goings of Donald Trump’s children, is a terrible person who succeeded his banned father as the biggest asshole on Twitter. When he’s not shooting defenseless animals or recording nonsensical videos in front of a gun rack, he seemingly spends much of his time claiming that Hunter Biden has benefited from nepotism in a way that he, a guy whose entire professional life revolves around his father, would never dream of. He’s also tried his hand at comedy, with predictable results, and insisted, re: the charges against his family’s business and CFO, that people dodge taxes all the time and it’s so not a big deal.

The poll, which was conducted between July 6 and 8, did not include Donald Trump Senior, who maintains an inexplicable grip on voters despite the mass-death stuff, an (ongoing) attempt to overturn the results of the 2020 election, and a mental state that suggests he should be in a home or studied by a team of Swiss doctors.

And the fact that Don Jr. came out on top is not where the scary news ends. Because apparently if Republicans can’t have Sheep Killer over here, their second-favorite choice is Florida governor Ron DeSantis, the man currently responsible for this:

Florida is recording more COVID-19 cases than any other U.S. state, as hospitalizations in some areas increase at the fastest rate since the start of the pandemic. The state accounts for one in five new infections in the U.S. and logged 73,181 cases over the past week, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Florida had 341 cases per 100,000 people over the past week, second only to Louisiana. The weekly total of new cases reported by Florida jumped more than fourfold between July 1 and July 22, reaching its highest point since mid-January. Deaths in Florida totaled 319 over the past week, the most among states, with a rate of 1.5 per 100,000 people, the fourth-highest, according to the CDC.

Epidemiologists say various factors are at play: large numbers of unvaccinated people, a relaxation of preventive measures like mask wearing and social distancing, the spread of the highly contagious delta variant of the coronavirus, and the congregation of people indoors during hot summer months.

“All of those things together are a recipe for the data that we’re seeing,” said Jason Salemi, an epidemiologist at the University of South Florida. “It’s a cause for concern…the speed with which the indicators are going up.” The number of people hospitalized in Florida has climbed steeply over the past month, reaching 3,849 on July 17, the largest tally since late February, according to a data dashboard created by Dr. Salemi. Patients are skewing younger, with 53% under age 60, compared with 30% at the start of the year.

Despite the governor admitting at a news conference on Wednesday that he expected the state to see an increase in cases, a spokesperson for DeSantis nixed the idea of new lockdowns or mask mandates. In May the governor invalidated all local COVID restrictions, and he is reportedly planning to ban schools from requiring masks in the fall, saying, “There’s been talk about potentially people advocating at the federal level, imposing compulsory masks on kids. We’re not doing that in Florida, okay? We need our kids to breathe.”

Meanwhile, the results of the poll putting Junior and “DeathSantis” at the front of the pack has Liz Cheney in dead last, because apparently standing up to a guy trying to overthrow the government remains a capital offense in Republicans’ eyes.

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