If there is one fantasy we in American political life are the most guilty of, it’s the delusion that Donald Trump will simply go away. I remember the first time someone suggested to me that Trump would magically disappear. It was shortly after the election that he was surely going to lose. (You remember the 2016 election, right? Just one day out, Hillary Clinton was leading Trump by nearly six points in the RealClearPolitics polling average—and then, poof, a shocking upset.) Well, a New York friend who knew Trump told me he would hate being president—after all, the White House was small and old. Trump was used to golfing whenever he wanted and flying off to Palm Beach, Florida. He would hate DC, with its lack of glamour, and yes, golf. I remember feeling slightly better after this conversation. Of course Trump would hate being president! Of course Trump would quit! And I wasn’t the only person lulled into such a dream, as before Trump won the race, people were betting he’d drop out of it.
Four years later, after Trump decisively lost the presidential election to Joe Biden, an anonymous senior Republican official was still in fantasyland, infamously telling The Washington Post, “What is the downside for humoring him for this little bit of time? No one seriously thinks the results will change. He went golfing this weekend. It’s not like he’s plotting how to prevent Joe Biden from taking power on Jan. 20. He’s tweeting about filing some lawsuits, those lawsuits will fail, then he’ll tweet some more about how the election was stolen, and then he’ll leave.”
In fact, plotting was exactly what Trump was doing! Non-MAGA Republicans could’ve killed off any chance of a Trump political comeback by impeaching him for inciting the insurrection, but of course, they let him off the hook, perhaps thinking he’d vanish in Mar-a-Lago. They could’ve coalesced around a single non-Trump candidate, but that never happened either. And so Trump trounced Ron DeSantis and Nikki Haley Monday night in the Iowa caucuses, where nearly two thirds of Iowa GOP caucusgoers on Monday night believed the lie that Biden’s indisputable victory was illegitimate.
Despite two impeachments, 91 criminal counts, and numerous civil cases, Republicans are once again falling in line behind Trump. “Little Marco” Rubio, who once called Trump a “con man,” endorsed the former president on the eve of the caucuses, where it was clear Trump would win handily. In another display of cowardice and craven political calculus on Sunday, North Dakota governor Doug Burgum—who once said he wouldn’t do business with Trump, because “you’re judged by the company you keep”—backed the former president. “I’ve seen President Trump and what he’s been able to do,” he told a crowd in Indianola, Iowa. “I’ve seen it as a business leader, and I’ve seen it as a governor. I’ve seen the difference that President Trump can make.” Even New Hampshire governor Chris Sununu, who has backed Haley and spoke for months of the need for a GOP alternative to Trump, said he’d support him even if convicted of a felony. “I think most of us are all going to support the Republican nominee—there’s no question,” Sununu said. And those are the people who weren’t already full-on MAGA.
And then there’s, Mike Lee, a Utah senator who professes to care about “defending the fundamental liberties of all Americans and advocating for America’s founding constitutional principles.” He was also very much on board with trying to overturn the 2020 election, texting then Trump chief of staff Mark Meadows, “If a very small handful of states were to have their legislatures appoint alternative slates of delegates, there could be a path.” On Friday, Lee officially officially got back on the Trump Train with an endorsement.
“Look, whether you like Donald Trump or not, whether you agree with everything he says or not, he is our one opportunity to choose order over chaos and putting America first over America last,” Lee told Fox News’ Laura Ingraham. Yeah, order is really what people think of when they think of Trump!
Even Fox News, which had once appeared all in on DeSantis, pathetically surrendered to Trump with last week’s town hall in Iowa. And DeSantis noticed the shift, “He’s got basically a Praetorian Guard of the conservative media—Fox News, the websites, all this stuff. They just don’t hold him accountable because they’re worried about losing viewers and they don’t want to have their ratings go down, and that’s just the reality. That’s just the truth.” As much as it pains me to say this, DeSantis is right. Fox News has discovered it’s not more powerful than Trump. (Rupert Murdoch’s dream of a post-Trump GOP with Glenn Youngkin running for president never materialized.) Meanwhile, Fox News was rewarded with giving Trump the 9 p.m. time slot as their town hall soundly beat Haley and DeSantis sniping at each other on CNN.
Donald Trump, in other words, is not going away. Some Republicans can continue to entertain the fantasy that he will get bored or fall victim to “actuarial arbitrage” due to, say, his age or health. And big-money donors like the Koch network can continue to try for a Hail Mary with Haley. But here’s the problem: Even if Haley magically won Iowa, New Hampshire, and South Carolina, Trump could run as a third-party candidate; he and his MAGA base would still be looming over her.
After all, the former president is running to stay out of jail, and few things are more motivating than the fear of imprisonment. So there is no wishing Trump away. Joe Biden must beat him again, like he did in 2020. And even then, we have to pray that Trump will finally abstain from political life and slink quietly off to golf in Palm Beach for the rest of his days.