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W. James Antle III, Politics Editor


NextImg:Trump has a 2024 message for the GOP: 'We've already defeated the Republicans'

Former President Donald Trump is wooing and providing dinner entertainment for Republicans, but he’s not afraid to take shots at members of his own party even when addressing partisan audiences.

“Nobody even has a chance,” Trump told the big Alabama GOP fundraising dinner on Friday night. “We’ve already defeated the Republicans.”

HOW DEBATE CAN BE MAKE OR BREAK FOR CANDIDATES

That was Trump’s segue into telling Alabama Republicans not to count on seeing him at the first Republican National Committee debate in Milwaukee later this month.

“You know, they all want me to go onto the debate stage. And I say, well, if we're at 71 and there is 0, 1, 2, 3 some of them are 4 or 5,” Does it really make a lot of sense? Does it really? I love to debate but sometimes you don't want to be a fool. You want a smart president, you don't want a stupid president.

Trump isn’t polling quite at 71%, but he does have a majority in the RealClearPolitics national polling average while only one other candidate is in the double digits and most of the field is below 5%. Trump’s smallest lead in the average is 32 points.

Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie is largely premising his campaign on his ability to take shots at Trump in debates. Christie averages 2.3% nationally on average, more than 50 points behind Trump, and notches 0% in the latest Reuters/Ipsos poll.

Trump said former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley was “afraid” to attend the state GOP’s fundraising dinner, where he was the keynote speaker and introduced by the current governor as “the former and next president.”

“You’ve got to show up at these events, Nikki,” Trump continued. “Ooh, did I say that?” Sen. Tim Scott (R-SC), another 2024 rival to the former president, went unmentioned.

Addressing Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) at the Palmetto State event, Trump questioned what President Joe Biden “had” on Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) that made him weaker than his House counterparts.

At both dinners, Trump belittled Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL). He told the story about how he came to endorse DeSantis for governor in 2018. He mentioned the ad showing DeSantis teaching his small children Trump campaign slogans. In what has become a staple of Trump’s stump speech, he recalled hearing DeSantis subsequently decline to comment on a 2024 campaign, saying, “That son of a bitch is running!”

In Alabama, Trump suggested that country singer Lee Greenwood, who was sitting in the audience, pen a ballad about DeSantis’s treachery. In South Carolina, he spoke of frightened political advisers counseling him against harsh DeSantis attacks on the grounds that he is a fellow Republican.

“I don’t give a damn that he’s a Republican!” Trump exclaimed.

Trump made his bones hitting fellow Republicans on the debate stage in 2015-16. Jeb Bush was his comedic foil and rhetorical punching bag, a symbol of a failed Republican establishment. But Sens. Ted Cruz (R-TX), Marco Rubio (R-FL), and Rand Paul (R-KY) — otherwise known as “Lyin’ Ted,” “Little Marco,” and the butt of a Trump joke about his appearance — were hardly spared personal attacks.

Shortly before the 2016 South Carolina primary, Trump went beyond criticism of “Low Energy Jeb” to assail former President George W. Bush and say the Iraq War was based on lies. Many political observers thought at the time it might be a bridge too far.

Trump won the South Carolina primary. Jeb Bush dropped out of the race.

But Trump is now the titular head of the Republican Party. He has been the party’s presidential nomination in the last two elections and despite his legal problems remains the heavy favorite to be the standard-bearer for the third time in a row.

DeSantis was once a congressional ally. Haley served as his ambassador to the United Nations. McConnell helped him beat back one impeachment, voted to acquit him in the second, and was a critical partner in building the 6-3 conservative Supreme Court majority that is a centerpiece of Trump’s legacy. Trump now delivers these lines — and at times speaks of “Republicans” as something distinct from his own brand — not as an insurgent, but the leader of the party.

And if Trump does lose the Republican presidential nomination, his freedom many depend on his rival reaching the White House and pardoning him.

Apart from Trump's distaste for the Republicans running against him, he has feuded with Gov. Kim Reynolds (R-IA) ahead of her state’s first-in-the-nation caucuses. He is on even worse terms with outgoing Gov. Chris Sununu (R-NH), whose state hosts the first primary. He is closely aligned with Gov. Henry McMaster (R-SC), whose state votes early and has usually picked the winner.

For an outsider to conservative movement politics, Trump displayed good judgment in 206 about which parts of the GOP coalition he could afford to alienate and which he could not. Gun owners and abortion opponents got considerably more deference than entitlement reformers and free traders.

Trump has been exhorting Republicans in his stump speech to improve how they “talk about” abortion. He takes credit for the reversal of Roe v. Wade, describing it as giving pro-lifers “leverage” to “negotiate” more restrictive abortion laws. But he said the issue was best handled by the states, claiming this view was held by “legal scholars” on both sides, and that exceptions for rape, incest, and the life of the mother were important.

Trump, who in 1999 described himself as a “very pro-choice” while contemplating a run for the Reform Party’s presidential nomination against Pat Buchanan, says Democrats are the real “radicals” and “extremists” as supporters of abortion until the moment of birth. But his current preference for state action is not the position taken by the biggest anti-abortion groups.

A key question is whether Trump still knows what he is doing when it comes to navigating internal Republican politics. When he went after the Bushes on Iraq in 2016, the GOP crowd booed and he won anyway. Now they often laugh at his jibes against DeSantis, McConnell, and Haley.

At the Alabama dinner, Trump was introduced by Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-AL). Tuberville was the first senator to endorse Trump for 2024. He won the Senate seat in part by beating Jeff Sessions, who had been the first senator to endorse Trump in 2016, in a primary. Trump had viewed Sessions as being insufficiently loyal while serving as his attorney general, so he endorsed Sessions in the primary. In South Carolina, Trump referred to Sessions's sucessor at attorney general, Bill Barr, as a coward.

Trump appointed, then turned against, both men.

CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER

Trump told Alabama Republicans the stakes in the 2024 were high. "And the Republicans better get tough and they better get smart because most of them look like a bunch of weak jerks right now," he said. "And you got to get tough and smart and you have to fight fire with fire. You can't allow this to go on."

He then asked the Republicans for their votes.