Even the losers get lucky sometimes

I've tried to avoid talking about Trump for the past two years, but my conservative friends keep posting memes like this one on facebook.  The meme comes on the heels of Trump giving out bottled water at East Palestine, Ohio, after the toxic train derailment last week.  Conservatives were upset that Biden would travel to Ukraine rather than deal with domestic catastrophes back home.  Trump being Trump saw a golden opportunity to peddle his new brand of bottled water, Trump Natural Spring Water, which I well imagine will be available on his website soon.

Many conservatives are still under the deluded belief that Trump somehow gives of himself at his campaign rallies, forgetting how much money he siphons off campaign contributions. They honestly think Trump sacrificed himself for the good of the nation, by giving up his presidential salary, despite numerous accounts of how much his family businesses profited off his presidency.  

Apparently, his brand is still strong enough among the Republican grass roots that Cruz, Hawley and other archconservative senators have decided to sit out this election cycle because they don't think they can beat him.  The only persons to announce their candidacies for GOP presidential nominee are Nikki Haley and a young Indian tech entrepreneur who called Trump the OG and that he is taking "America first" to the next level.  Ye is running as an independent.  Everyone is still waiting on "Meatball Ron" DeSantis to declare his candidacy, but you kind of wonder if he has stage fright after Trump called him out on the campaign trail.  

While Trump's support has been dwindling, conservative estimates still say he holds around 30% of the Republican electorate which means any candidate that runs against him for the presidential nomination would have to secure at least that much of a base to have any chance of beating him.  Republican strategists say that is a tough hill to climb given the winner-take-all nature of most Republican primaries.  Thirty percent is usually enough to win a primary in the early going.

For whatever reason, Republicans can't get past Trump.  It doesn't help that the Justice Dept. is dragging its feet on the insurrection charges against Trump and may never indict him, even after virtually all his top aides testified against him before the House January 6 committee, including his own daughter.  Neither the GOP nor the country can move on if US Attorney General Merrick Garland allows this guy to go around claiming the 2020 election was stolen.  This is precisely what led to the insurrection.

Trump has emboldened an insurgency at every level.  Fortunately, it was contained for the most part in the 2022 midterm elections, which should have reset the direction for the GOP in the next two years.  Instead, Kevin McCarthy gave Trump's most vocal supporters everything they wanted to secure the House Speaker seat on the 14th ballot.  Not fully content with her Homeland Security seat, Marjorie Taylor Greene now calls for a "national divorce."

Ironically, Trump and his MAGA movement seem to win by losing.  It's the Lost Cause of the 21st century.  Just like those who continue to proudly wave their Southern Civil War battle flags, Trump supporters proudly wear their red MAGA caps and other paraphernalia firmly believing the 2020 election was stolen from them.  This is something they won't be denied at all cost, showing just how powerful conspiracy theories can be, especially when you combine them with political unrest.

Many Americans still hold an unfavorable impression of Biden.  This despite the far-reaching domestic legislation that was passed during his first two years in office, most prominently the bi-partisan infrastructure law that will go a long way toward repairing railroad lines like the one in Ohio that resulted in the toxic train derailment.  Yet, most Americans still complain about inflation and high gas prices that rocked the nation last year, oblivious to the fact that both have gone down since the start of 2023.

This allows populists to capitalize off that unrest.  We saw the East Palestine mayor berate Biden for choosing Ukraine over his town.  Trump has a good nose for political opportunities and immediately changed labels on his leftover bottled water and headed to East Palestine, hoping to recapture the feeling of 2016.

Not to be outdone by all the positive attention Biden got for his visit to Kjiv, Trump guaranteed at a West Palm Beach rally that he would end the war in a day, brazenly claiming only he could bring Putin and Zelenskyy to the table. 

I think Trump and his supporters were mostly upset that Biden could pull off a logistical feat like this given his age and presumed "senility."  For years, the conservative media has been pushing the narrative that Biden is himself on the edge of dementia and too enfeebled to go anywhere.  Yet, here he was taking a ten-hour train ride from the Polish border to Kjiv and back again in time to meet with Eastern European leaders in Warsaw to discuss long range defense planning.  Something Trump would have never been able to pull off.

It's not like Biden ignored East Palestine either.  His administration responded immediately to the crisis, and has offered continued support to Ohio and Pennsylvania officials throughout the crisis.  But, conservatives are determined to leverage this disaster in the upcoming election cycle.  The big question is how the media responds.  They set the tone and surly responses at a press briefing don't help.

Fortunately, this disaster is too far outside the election cycle to have any real impact.  It will be forgotten, just like Biden's train ride, in a matter of weeks, if not days.  That's how the media cycle works.  Trump will have to find other crises to capitalize on.  

Meanwhile, Merrick Garland has to get off his lazy ass and indict Trump.  The longer he drags this out the more it will look like a political hatchet job, rather than the necessary course of action against a man who literally tried to overthrow the country when he failed to get the desired results from the 2020 election.  We cannot afford to let Trump sidestep the law!