Chunk 45: Heard immunity.
Donald Trump was never going to go quietly.
Even for someone without an ego as large as his, it would be difficult to say farewell to the level of adulation he’d grown accustomed to. Being the lead story on every news cycle, people standing to applaud every time you enter a room, tens of thousands of supporters chanting you on, all waving flags bearing your name. I mean, would you want to give all that up?
He was always going to go down fighting (although few imagined that would include an attempted coup at the US Capitol building).
But now comes the hard part: maintaining that level of enthusiasm among the faithful while not in power, a task made infinitely more difficult thanks to his social media bans and on-going feud with Fox.
I’m calling it “heard immunity”.
How do you keep your base engaged when they haven’t heard from you in a while or, worse still, when you’ve said so many outrageous things in the past they think they’ve heard it all before?
Well, this week, Trump proved he hasn’t lost his political gift. In his first speech since leaving office - talking at the conservative love-in that is CPAC - he did everything he needed to do in this one little sentence:
“Who knows, I may even decide to beat them for a third time, okay?”
Just fourteen words, only two of them two-syllable, and he did more to liven his base since he first rode down that gold escalator talking about Mexican rapists.
It was genius, and here’s why:
“Who knows” and “might” - Trump isn’t committing to run again. He’d be a fool to. This is 2024 we’re talking about. But he’s teasing his audience. He’s like one of those post-credit scenes at the end of a Marvel movie, letting you know that there’s more to come.
“I may even decide” - he just showed every Republican that he has no intention of going anywhere. Remember, former presidents are supposed to shrink away to write their memoirs and build their libraries. Trump is letting everyone know that if he won’t be king, he will certainly be the kingmaker.
“Beat them for a third time” - this is Trump at his most populist, still thumbing his nose at the establishment. While maintaining that the election was stolen from him, he now has the audacity to link it to the 22nd amendment of the US Constitution, which declares you can only serve twice as president. But those PC liberal rules don’t apply to the Donald! He’s fighting for the people!
It was exactly the sort of comment that his supporters love, and his enemies feared, he would make. He may have lost the White House, but he’s certainly retained the gift of pressing America’s emotional buttons.
Do I think Trump will ever actually run for president again? No, I don’t.
Personally, I think that the other major event that happened to him last week - having to turn his tax returns over to the New York district attorney - will ultimately prove more consequential than anything he said at CPAC. Trump appears to be heading for a world of legal hurt, because as The Clash song goes, “I fought the law and the law one”.
Finally, to Joe Biden: he is refusing to release copies of the president’s and vice president’s daily schedule and call sheet, showing who they meet and talk with. Such information has routinely been available in previous administrations, so why not theirs? The White House is otherwise known as the “people’s house” - so don’t those same people have a right to know what’s going on inside it?
