Coop Scoop: Four Reasons Trump Absolutely Will Announce Before Midterms
Trump wants protection against indictment. And against his rivals.
July 21, 2022
By Marc Cooper
As the J6 hearings reach a dramatic crescendo and as the Georgia-based investigation into false electors and Trump-driven attempts to overturn the state’s 2020 election seems ready to indict several high ranking Republicans, we see Donald Trump readying to announce his 2024 Presidential candidacy essentially a year early.
The Conventional Wisdom is that Trump is getting in as soon as possible precisely because as The New York Times put it: “Republicans close to Mr. Trump have said he believes a formal announcement would bolster his claims that the investigations are politically motivated.” The truth is that there are a number of reasons just as compelling for Trump to announce early.
We’ll get to those in a moment. But first: There might be some truth to Trump’s speculation that it would be harder to come after him if he is already a declared candidate though J6 Chair Benny Thompson knocked own any idea that a Trump candidacy would immunize him.
Nevertheless, it’s not Thompson or his committee who decides who if anybody gets indicted for January 6 and the overall coup attempt. That’s the domain of the very cautious, very aloof, very fastidious Attorney General Merrick Garland. While there are increasing signs that his Department of Justice is ginning up its probe into Trump’s inner circle, Garland obstinately refuses to come out publicly with any details about investigating Trump. And news came this week that two months ago Garland issued a department-wide memo reminding his staff that any and all high-level prosecutions and even investigations must be personally approved by him if they take place in a vaguely-defined period of election activity.
There’s already an internal DOJ memo preventing prosecution of a sitting president. There is no written guidance, however, about the protocol surrounding a former president or a presidential candidate.
Lots of Republicans are going to be very happy when and if Trump makes his early announcement. It seems there might just as many who are dreading that moment. Former Republican consultant Tara Setmayer told MSNBC that many Republicans are “scared to death” that Trump will announce before November. "Let me translate Republican speak here," Setmayer continued according to Newsweek. "It's 'For the love of God, please do not do this to us. That is what the Republicans are saying in Washington. They are scared to death that Donald Trump is going to declare before November because it absolutely changes the conversation for them."
With President Biden’s and VP Harris’ favorability ratings at a subarctic 33% and 32% respectively, with Democrats effectively paralyzed and with inflation as the dominant issue, Republicans can hope for a bountiful midterm and the notion of being tied to a ranting and damaged Donald Trump draws little allure.
"As soon as Donald Trump declares, Democrats have one singular issue to rally around: 'You do not want this guy and his enablers back in power again,'" Setmayer said. "So, yes Republicans are worried that Donald Trump is going to do this because he doesn't give a damn about the Republican Party or anyone else's electoral prospects, he only cares about himself."
That last part has certainly been repeatedly proven, And it’s in that context of Trump’s struggle to survive that we find the other compelling reasons that will force him to declare before and not after November. The three most outstanding reasons, to cadge from former Republican Congressman David Jolly, are Kevin McCarthy, Mitch McConnell and Ron DeSantis.
While the Supreme Court ruling on abortion and guns may wind up altering the outcome, it’s a pretty fair bet at this juncture that Republicans are going to be able to declare victory after the midterms and there will be a certain amount of GOP momentum toward 2024 coming out of that vote. Somebody in the party is going to try and take credit for that win and further capitalize it for the general election two years later. And Donald Trump, you can be certain, wants that somebody to be him and not the party’s congressional leaders and certainly not a possible rival like DeSantis.
Trump is also correct on this issue. He MUST pre-empt his rivals because, as is becoming clear, there is nothing inevitable about Trump’s future inside the party. While too many liberals continue to ascribe super human qualities to Trump, convinced he is politically and legally invulnerable, there is a mounting counterfactual.
The questions of whether or not the J6 hearings will “break through” and whether they will hurt Trump have been answered recently in the affirmative. How could they not break through given the gobs of evidence of what a miserable, self-serving, lying piece of filth Trump is? Trump has had a charmed career of avoiding responsibility for the serial shit shows he has produced, but nothing is forever and he has hardly suspended all the laws of societal gravity.
The slow, continuous battering of Trump has not been marked by millions of disillusioned former Trump supporters furiously burning their MAGA hats and ripping up their campaign posters. It was never going to be like that. Instead, we sense and record a persistent low-level hum of desertion of and distancing from him inside the ranks of the Republicans electorate.
Somewhat under-reported were the dramatic numbers two weeks ago contained in a New York Times/Siena College poll that brightly illustrated Trump’s deteriorating position. https://dnyuz.com/2022/07/12/half-of-g-o-p-voters-ready-to-leave-trump-behind-poll-finds/ In short: a full half of Republican primary voters want somebody else to be the party nominee and there’s even a measurable number of voters promising to leave the party if Trump is nominated.
In a matchup with five potential primary rivals, Trump would gather only 49% according to the poll and his closest competitor, DeSantis would get 25% Even more striking, two/thirds of Republicans with either a college degree or under age 35 said they would vote against Trump in a primary. And some 16% of Republicans say they would vote for Biden if Trump is nominated a third time.
The quiet but growing rejection of Trump has been detected far beyond one New York Times poll. Never Trumper and former Republican strategist Sarah Longwell has reported seeing the same rejection of Trump in a series of GOP voter focus groups she has hosted for her Bulwark-sponsored podcast, The Focus Group. “Among all the groups I did recently, as these are Republican voters, I asked how many plan to vote Republican in 2024 and everybody raises their hand. When I ask who will vote for Trump, not one hand goes up.” Longwell explains that in conversation with the voters they all say they like Trump and approve of his policies but it “it is is time to move on. To try something new.”
There was another set of numbers in that Times poll that caught the attention of party loyalists. If a Biden-Trump matchup were held today, Biden wins 44-41%. Trump is in trouble.
He will announce out of cold desperation,
“Just Need Two More Democratic Senators”
The muddled, muted Democratic response to the banning of abortion in half of America continues to amaze and disgust. So AOC and 16 some other women electeds got arrested Tuesday protesting the ban by blocking traffic in a Washington D.C. protest. Talk about performative! She and Rep. Ilhan Omar walked to police cars with their hands behind their back as if they were handcuffed – except they were not. We don’t need members of congress protesting the ban. We need members of congress working diligently to defeat the ban.
Mainstream Democrats, who failed over 50 years to codify Roe, are now blaming the voters for the fix we are in. We are now being repeatedly told by Democrats from Biden on down, that if we want to overturn the ban, we need to elect two more Democratic senators in the fall. If we fail, then it will all be our fault. This exhortation is but one more cynical ploy by the Democrats to buy themselves time and to quiet down any of the disgruntled masses.
The Democrats won’t tell you so I will: The chances of adding two more Democratic senators to be able to codify abortion in congress after the midterms is just about ZERO. With the Senate currently divided 50-50, there are presently seven senate races that will determine its future composition. The Democrats have a total of three targets. The Republicans have four. In order for the Dems to emerge with a majority capable of passing and codifying Roe (and anything else for that matter), they would have to hit at least 2 out of their 3 targets with the Republicans missing all four AND with the Republicans unable to win back the House with its current 4 member Democratic edge.
That, my friends, is highly unlikely given the current political environment. Indeed, it does not matter how many Democrat senators there are if they no longer control the House – where legislation is originated and funded. Even under the most optimistic of midterm scenarios, it seems nearly impossible for the Democrats to hold it.
Buddhists Take Over The Secret Service.
“First there is a mountain then there is no mountain then there is.” No, Donovan did not originate that verse he sang in 1967 in an album gifted to me for my 17th birthday. According to the Great Book of Knowledge, Wikipedia, “The lyrics refer to a Buddhist saying originally formulated by Qingyuan Weixin, later translated by D. T. Suzuki in his Essays in Zen Buddhism, one of the first books to popularize Buddhism in Europe and the US. Qingyuan writes:
“Before I had studied Chan (Zen) for thirty years, I saw mountains as mountains, and rivers as rivers. When I arrived at a more intimate knowledge, I came to the point where I saw that mountains are not mountains, and rivers are not rivers. But now that I have got its very substance I am at rest. For it's just that I see mountains once again as mountains, and rivers once again as rivers.”
Who knew that Suzuki’s book would be adopted as required reading by all Secret Service Trainees. I look forward to the J6 hearing where the two agents in question will testify before the committee. I can already hear their words: “Before January 6 I saw text messages as text messages. But after being shown a more intimate knowledge, I learned text messages are not text messages. Though, now at rest, I think they might just be text messages.” ++
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