When I read “GOP megadonors flock to Tim Scott, building 2024 buzz” (Politico) it occurred to me how interesting a primary pitting Trump, DeSantis, and Scott against each other would be.
Trump, who is now pro-vaccination because, after all, he personally developed the vaccines (unless you think it infringes on your personal freedom of course), would be running against the governor who is solely responsible for making his state a Petri dish for Covid with so many cases that one doctor tweeted this:
Trump, the hero of white nationalists, would be running against someone who is quite obviously not white.
In front of cameras Scott is frequently seen smiling. Perish the thought that anyone would think he’s an angry black man.
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You can find more serious photos of Scott on Breibart and The Hill. I couldn’t find any photos of him looking angry. He almost always comes across as friendly and amiable when he appears on camera.
Tim Scott has an inspiring narrative to relate about how he evolved from parents who worked the cotton fields of South Carolina to become the state’s U.S. Senator.
Then there’s another presidential hopeful, Nikki Haley:
Former South Carolina Governor and UN Ambassador Nikki Haley appointed Scott to the U.S. Senate in 2013. On Monday night, she talked about being the daughter of Indian immigrants who came to America and settled in a small town in South Carolina.
“My father wore a turban. My mother wore a sari. I was a brown girl in a Black and white world. We faced discrimination and hardship, but my parents never gave into grievance and hate,” she said. Reference.
While she looks white and I think she’d be careful in telling her own origin story if she ran because she’s not exactly the dream candidate for Trump’s white nationalist base.
If Trump does run against these three it sure would make for an interesting primary season. If he doesn’t run it remains to be seen if DeSantis could take up his mantle with Trump’s active support and how he would fare running against a black man and a woman of Indian descent.
Michael Wolff is sure Trump will run:
To write three books in four years about Donald Trump has been an immersion into his obsessions and fixations. This is why I know the obvious: Donald Trump will run for president again.
This spring, in another of his compulsive bids for attention — indifferent to whether it is good or bad — he hosted me at Mar-a-Lago, even after I had written two unflattering books about him (one whose publication he tried to stop), for an interview and dinner. After dinner, I asked about his plans for a presidential library, the traditional retirement project and fund-raising scheme of ex-presidents. There was a flash of confusion on his uniquely readable face, and then anger, aroused, I figured, by the implication of what I seemed to be saying — that his time in office was past.
“No way, no way,” he snarled, “no way.”
It is an existential predicament: He can’t be Donald Trump without a claim on the presidency. He can’t hold the attention and devotion of the Republican Party if he is not both once and future king — and why would he ever give that up? Indeed, it seemed to be that I was strategically seated in the lobby of Mar-a-Lago when I arrived precisely so I could overhear the efforts by a Republican delegation to court and grovel before Mr. Trump and to observe his dismissive dominance over them.
Wolff, the anti-trumpet who, with the exception of Mary Trump and possibly Bob Woodward, probably knows him better than anybody, concludes:
“For Democrats, who see him exiled to Mar-a-Lago, stripped of his key social media platforms and facing determined prosecutors, his future seems risible if not pathetic. But this is Donald Trump, always ready to strike back harder than he has been struck, to blame anyone but himself, to silence any doubts with the sound of his own voice, to take what he believes is his and, most of all, to seize all available attention. Sound the alarm.
The Poll below includes everyone on this list and then some. I am assuming that based on polls like this if Trump runs he will be the candidate if he’s not in jail or is on major psychotropic medications at Univ. of Florida’s Shands or another top Florida psychiatric hospital. He could end up at Maudley Hospital in Abu Dhabi since the UAE doesn’t have an extradition treaty with the United States. It’s also possible he will succumb to undeniable long haul Covid symptoms now being reported which would be impossible to hide.
