There's a new CNN report that suggests failed coup planner and ongoing traitor to his country Donald Trump might be wavering on that supposedly-maybe-imminent declaration that he's running for president again, and it needs to be taken with All The Salt because this is the sort of story that gets offered up to the media when somebody in political inner circles wants to make something happen, not suggest something is happening.
The premise is that "sources familiar with [Donald Trump's] thinking," which is already a hell of a thin reed to hang any premise off of, are telling CNN that Trump is "nervous" about declaring his candidacy. "After months of eyeing Labor Day weekend" as his preferred announcement date, says CNN, he "has spent the past few weeks backing away from that timeline following the FBI search of his Mar-a-Lago estate and an increased panic among Republicans that the party may not be in for the red wave it has long anticipated this November."
This has him "feeling nervous" about "prematurely" announcing, say "nine former and current Trump aides." Well, that's a lot of Trump aides, but the whole premise of the bit is that Donald Trump (a traitor) is genuinely listening to advice being given as opposed to throwing ketchup to the wall and seeing what sticks, and that's ... really now? No, this reads like somebody's trying to push Trump in one direction or the other.
"Everyone was operating under the assumption that shortly after Labor Day would be the best possible time to launch, but that has changed and he's being told to deal with the FBI stuff first," one of them tells CNN. Yeah, you mean the Espionage Act stuff? The photograph of reams of classified government documents found in Trump's private club, after reams of classified documents got returned earlier, and then more classified documents got handed over after that, and after Trump's lawyers swore to a court that For Sure they'd handed over all the classified government secret documents this time and there was no need for a warrant? That stuff? The going to prison-level stuff?
Goodness, I would certainly imagine that being caught with boxes and boxes of stolen government secrets and having pretty much every political observer in the country wondering how the Justice Department can possibly excuse not indicting the already-known-treasonous grifter, not gonna lie, could impact that Labor Day timing a bit. Maybe.
"Otherwise, advisers say, the former President is more likely to be blamed for potential losses in the midterms if he becomes a candidate for president before November and his legal troubles distract from the bread-and-butter issues most Republicans -- but especially those running in competitive races -- would prefer to focus on."
Who the hell wrote this thing, Kevin McCarthy? Yeah, that's the ticket. Republicans are running on bread-and-butter issues like the need to put their hands down the pants of every student athlete in their states, real heartland stuff like launching themselves into a spittle-flecked rage about history classes mentioning Anne Frank, but Donald's newest foray into possibly-straight-up-espionage is a real fly in the ointment here.
Don't get involved with the midterms, say these advisers. If it goes badly Republicans will blame you and your ratbastard treason stuff.
As if there's more than two (2) Republicans on the entire planet willing to "blame" Trump for anything.
Perhaps the more honest bullshit news is that Trump is "complaining in private" about how much Republican candidates Mehmet Oz and Herschel Walker Suck. The guy who was just caught with armfuls of stolen national security secrets is worried that associating with Mehmet Oz will hurt his brand. Hiding top secret documents behind a stack of magazines, that’s the Trump brand—and here’s this jerk over here getting into weeklong fights over veggie trays? There is nothing about the Donald Trump brand that has, at any point, been anywhere adjacent to the words "veggie tray."
Yes, this is a definite case of Somebody's Planting Something. Trump's various advisers seem so desperate to stop him from announcing a new presidential run before the already-shaky midterms that they're going to the press with all the reasons they can think of why he shouldn't. The odds are near-zero that Donald actually listens to any of them, however, so the main thing the leaking advisers are getting out of pushing this news to the press is a report they can point to, later, to show that they tried to talk him out of it. That may be important for those strategists who want to avoid the typical outcome of working for Trump, which is a total decimation of one's further career.
But it also goes strongly against the conventional wisdom of the last few weeks, the rampant speculation that the nation's most deadly modern traitor will announce a new presidential run as an explicit attempt to avoid being indicted for Espionage Act violations and other felonies. The wisdom says that the Department of Justice mustn't interfere with elections by pursuing charges against criminals who have a side gig running for something, and therefore Donald needs to be a candidate for something right quick in order to slow the indictment trolley down. Maybe president. Maybe dogcatcher. Just something.
It sounds like at least "nine" of the Republican partisans around him would really prefer the party not be further dragged into his possibly-treason-adjacent mess, at least not between now and November, and are putting the pressure on. But it's simply implausible to think that any of them can do a damn thing about it. At all.