TRUTH HURTS: Trump trashes potential 2024 challengers in latest rage-fest
Donald Trump spent Wednesday raging on Truth Social, posting polls and links calculated to convince his supporters he’s still the preferred candidate for 2024, despite party leadership making it clear that he’s not their first choice.
Trump posted a screenshot of a tweet citing a biweekly sentiment poll, showing himself leading the potential Republican primary candidates, 30 points ahead of Ron DeSantis, and with an even greater lead over other potential challengers, including Mike Pence, Liz Cheney, and Tim Scott.
Awkwardly, the same poll-sharing source has followed that up with a newer poll, in which Trump is the second choice, trailing by 12 points.
At the same time, the Republican National Committee are meeting this week — and in interviews, they’re overwhelmingly pulling away from Trump.
It’s not because they oppose his behavior, such as lying about winning the 2020 election, but because they genuinely don’t believe he can win in 2024, either.
While Trump’s support may still be vocal, he’s lost voters, as evidenced by cross-party voting in 2020, and his resultant loss.
He’s also seeming lower-energy, no longer up to holding multiple rallies in a week, and the party seems ready to support someone who is a bit younger and more prepared to lead a fascist movement. The New York Times reports:
“[I]nterviews this week with 59 [RNC members] — more than one-third of the committee’s membership — found few eager to crown Mr. Trump their nominee for a third time…First mentioned is almost always Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, though members cited other would-be rivals, including Nikki Haley and Mike Pence…”
DeSantis, in fact, is the very candidate who has surpassed Trump in some polls, including one carried out by Different Data, specifically focusing on the primary in North Carolina, and shared by the same poll-posting Twitter account Trump had just the day before used as evidence of his electoral superiority.
See Trump’s post below, with a screenshot of Interactive Polls‘ previous tweet.
Like Trump, he’s anti-immigration, and happy to use oversized political stunts to prove it.
In Trump’s case it was a border wall, and for DeSantis, it has been the possibly-illegal transportation of a group of asylum-seekers, allegedly under false pretenses.
Like the MAGA king, he’s facing potential legal repercussions, with his actions being investigated as a potential crime.
He’s also made a massive legislative display of his anti-LGBTQ sentiments, actually passing the “Don’t Say Gay” bill and anti-education legislation that has teachers in his state worried they could be charged with felonies for simply having books available in their classrooms.
As for racism, Trump was criticized for xenophobia beginning with his first campaign announcement, when he referred to immigrants as rapists and drug dealers — but DeSantis has actually gone so far as to block an AP African American History course from being taught in his state’s schools.
Even as the party begins to give up on Trump, they’re replacing him with someone who could potentially pose all the same concerns.
With both Trump and DeSantis hit with legal challenges though, what remains to be seen is whether the Florida Governor will prove to have the same Teflon coating as Trump, or if some of the lawsuits and charges filed and proposed against him will actually stick.
