Between Joe Biden’s disastrous performance in their first face-off and his coronation next week at the Republican Party Convention, Donald Trump is enjoying his best days on his way back to the White House.
Even in his wildest dreams, the Republican presidential candidate certainly did not imagine finding himself in this position less than four months before the presidential election.
Ronald Reagan’s party has melted before him, and no one criticizes the extravagant statements he continues to make. The Republican platform takes up his most controversial ideas – “the largest deportation of immigrants in American history” – but also rejects the tightening of access to abortion, a dogma that has been well-established for years.
Donald Trump rightly concluded that Americans were not as radical on this issue as the evangelicals who monopolize the debate on the right of the political spectrum; thus dismissing the intentions of giving fetuses the status of “unborn human beings.” Extremists need only fall into line.
THERE ARE NO MORE OPPONENTS
That’s what her fiercest rival in the race for the Republican nomination did this week. Nikki Haley – after calling Donald Trump a “deranged person” who “can’t win a general election” and whose idea of making him the party’s nominee “is like suicide for our country” – released her 95 delegates won during the primaries, urging them to support Trump.
The same docility is shown by Ron DeSantis, the governor of Florida. He who mocked the Republicans who were going to “kiss the ring” to win the favor of the former president will now deliver a necessarily laudatory speech about Trump at the party convention.
Donald Trump also takes obvious pleasure in fueling the suspense around his choice for vice president. You had to hear him Tuesday night at the political rally he held at his golf club in Doral, Florida, “one of the greatest golf courses in the world”… another boast to add to the list.
SPEAKING OF DOCILITY
Marco Rubio — the Republican senator from Florida whom Trump contemptuously referred to as “Little Marco” when they were both seeking the Republican nomination in 2016 — was grinning as Trump repeatedly called him out during his speech.
Rubio is, according to the best observers, on the short list of possible running mates for Trump, along with JD Vance, the Ohio senator and former “Never-Trump,” and Doug Burgum, the governor of North Dakota who, in July last year, dismissed the possibility of doing business with Trump, because “you are judged by the relationships you have.” All have made their act of contrition and are now ready to accompany the ex-president to the end.
SEE YOU IN MILWAUKEE
The four-day Republican convention will bring 50,000 people, plus several hundred journalists, to Milwaukee, Wisconsin’s largest city. It remains to be seen whether he will be held responsible for calling it a “horrible city,” a blunder his spokesman tried to correct by saying Trump was referring to the crime and voter fraud problems he claims the city is plagued with.
Loud and numerous, the Republicans will make themselves seen and heard, perhaps just enough to ultimately swing Wisconsin into their camp in the presidential election. Joe Biden, in 2020, won it by only 20,682 votes out of more than 3.2 million cast.
If Donald Trump were to win the state and bring down the “Blue Wall” (Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania) that Joe Biden’s team is counting on, he could, like in recent weeks, continue to laugh all the way to the White House.
DONALD TRUMP’S VICE PRESIDENT? ONE OF THESE THREE!
Marco Rubio
Getty Images via AFP
- Florida Senator
- 53 years
- Of Cuban descent, he would likely help Trump with Latino voters in key states like Arizona and Nevada, among others.
JD Vance
AFP
- Senator from Ohio
- 39 years old
- If Trump listens to his eldest son, he will choose Vance. He and Donald Jr are close.
- JD Vance embodies the next generation of “Trumpism.”
Doug Burgum
Getty Images via AFP
- Governor of North Dakota
- 67 years old
- Trump appreciates Burgum’s track record as a successful business executive. His fortune is estimated at more than $100 million.
- A quiet and loyal man, he would be an inoffensive choice for a presidential candidate who does not want to be upstaged.