Writing in The Washington Post, Lincoln Project co-founder Rick Wilson makes a case for not calling Trump “the former guy” lest it minimize the impact and control he exerts on a significant swatch of both the GOP apparatus and a legion of followers and leads to our letting our guard down.
He writes about the “long shadow” Trump casts:
His endorsement will decide primaries. He’ll play kingmaker down to races for deputy dogcatcher; a vengeful spirit against those who oppose him, and potentially a man in complete control of the House of Representatives. Trump didn’t like Cheney, so she was benched with a cowardly voice vote. He opposed a bipartisan Jan. 6 commission, so McCarthy opposed a deal to create one that members of his own caucus had struck with Democrats. Memo to McCarthy: If the GOP wins the House in 2022 and Trump tells Republican members he wants to be chosen as speaker, there won’t be a thing you can do to stop him.
He elaborates:
Trump toadies run the Republican National Committee and many state Republican parties. Elected Republicans fall over one another trying to show fealty to their Dear Leader in ways that would make Kim Jong Un ask his own suck-ups to dial down. For the foreseeable future, there’s no way to ignore our way out of Trump’s influence. No form of nonchalant hand-waving that changes what he is: their emperor-in-exile; their Napoleon at Elba-Lago.
Wilson references Trump’s “megalomaniacal radar” which will target any politician wanting to run for president like Ted Cruz, Josh Hawley, and Ron DeSantis if they don’t show absolute loyalty to him, that is assuming doesn't decide to run himself again. He is still the favorite among Republicans to be nominated if he decides to run.
Like it or not, Trump is not the “former guy” when it comes to the power he exerts. Wilson notes that his friend Steven Schmidt calls this the Voldemort Strategy, name for the villain who everyone except Harry Potter dared to utter his name.
Pretending you can just ignore Trump is akin to telling your oncologist, Yeah, that spot on my MRI looks bad. But let’s not talk about it. It’ll go away. Because to the Republican base, Trump isn’t the former guy, he’s the forever guy. He hasn’t left an ugly mark — past tense — on American politics. He’s still in the process of leaving it.
If we call him “the former guy” it may make us feel good, but I agree with Wilson that there’s a good rationale for eschewing using this term. Perhaps we should either just refer to him as Trump or the former president. We don’t have to show him the respect given to previous presidents by ever calling him President Trump again, even if he is reelected.
If that happens then we can call him anything we want
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