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Something is very much wrong with how Donald Trump is conducting himself and his campaign. Everyone watching this should have serious concerns regarding his unfiltered comments regarding his former allies and staffers.
It’s not even that these people are actively opposing Trump. It’s that Trump has decided that they are not showing him sufficient loyalty. This was his major complaint when Ron DeSantis entered the race just last week. “DISLOYAL” was the theme of Trump’s Truth Social comments. But… this is not a coronation. This is a primary. Trump is not acting like a front runner who is confident in his lead in the least. He is snapping at anyone who once worked for him, campaigned for him, or stood up for him if they dare utter an opinion favorable to DeSantis.
Trump’s latest target was none other than his former press secretary, Kayleigh McEnany. Now, McEnany was exactly the kind of press secretary that Trump needed. She was smart, came prepared, and could think quickly on her feet, and she was far and away better than Jen “Circle Back” Psaki or Karine Jean-Pierre. McEnany has been working as a Fox News contributor, and has been complimentary to Trump while still analyzing the Republican field.
So, what did Kayleigh McEnany do? She dared to report poll numbers that Trump disagreed with while on Jesse Watters’s show.
“The DeSantis team would say, you know, ‘We just had polling come out that shows we closed the gap by 9 points since we announced in Iowa.’ Still, Trump’s hugely ahead, but they say they’re closing the gap. That’s their argument,” said McEnany, who served as Trump’s press secretary between April 2020 and January 2021.”
“If you look at the polling now, it was Trump 34 in Iowa, it’s now Trump 25,” she continued. “That’s double digits.”
And Trump promptly flipped out, even though McEnany pointed out that he was still leading by double digits.
First of all, it’s “milquetoast,” not “milk toast.” Second, stop trying to make “fetch” happen with “DeSanctimonious” (or “DeSanctus,” which sounds like Trump slept through Latin class) – it’s stupid, it’s too long, and isn’t catchy. Third, Trump, who liked to say that he would only hire “the best people” sure seems to get pissed off easily if those same people aren’t kissing his ring and kneeling before Zod. This is now an issue because Trump is attacking DeSantis from the left, which means Trump is now PRAISING ANDREW CUOMO in order to score some kind of “dunk” on Ron DeSantis.
We should not be surprised that the president who handed over the country to Anthony Fauci is praising the disastrous COVID response by New York's disgraced governor, Andrew Cuomo. pic.twitter.com/FUb7qGQIQo
— RBe (@RBPundit) May 30, 2023
Andrew Cuomo, for his part, is happy to be back in the conversation and trying to avoid blame for his shitty COVID policies.
Donald Trump tells the truth, finally.
New York got hit first and worst but New Yorkers acted responsibly. Florida’s policy of denial allowed Covid to spread and that’s why they had a very large second wave. https://t.co/dZb59fsSPu
— Andrew Cuomo (@andrewcuomo) May 30, 2023
Donald Trump is living moment by moment by the philosophy “the enemy of my enemy is my friend” and in the process, is alienating any real allies that he has for a general election. Leaving aside the fact that both Cuomo and Trump are completely wrong on the numbers, how on earth can he possibly explain his flip-flop on Andrew Cuomo except that he really really really wants to lash out at Ron DeSantis? And we haven’t even gotten to Trump’s questionable hires and appointments from his administration yet. We have seen Trump go from praising people as “the best” to being “the worst,” never acknowledging that he hired them or put them front and center in the first place. Remember, Trump nominated Christopher Wray to head the FBI, and now has his campaign attacking DeSantis over Wray’s nomination. Trump brought Anthony Fauci into the White House to dictate COVID policy, and then complained about those decisions but didn’t send him back to the NIH in favor of someone else. Any primary opponent is going to take shots at Trump over those two appointments alone, and deflecting by yelling “DISLOYALTY!” isn’t going to work.
And he’s going to turn on his former administration staffers just because they dare to hold a differing opinion?
When Kayleigh McEnany was Press Secretary under Trump, MAGA loved posting videos of destroying the regime propagandists. Now she’s “milk toast.” Christina Pushaw went from BASED to traitor. This is garbage. Those of you going along with it have no honor.
— Cernovich (@Cernovich) May 31, 2023
This is a bad strategy. Trump will alienate both current and former supporters, as well as potential voters, if he cannot exercise some discretion and self-control. The thing is, those are not strong virtues for him. Attacking someone as universally liked on the right as Kayleigh McEnany smacks of desperation.
We once mocked Hillary Clinton for thinking that she was “owed” the Democrat party nomination, and the presidency, and how she just could not come to grips with the fact that she lost. Donald Trump is not “owed” a second term. He has to earn it, the same as any other candidate, and that means he has to go through the primary like every other candidate. And if he wants to stay ahead of DeSantis in the polls, then he had better start campaigning seriously instead of lashing out on social media.
Featured image via Gage Skidmore on Flickr, cropped, Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic (CC BY-SA 2.0)
Bucky says: IMHO one of Trump’s problems is that since he does not currently hold any office he has no current accomplishments to campaign on. Harking back to his term as POTUS is fine, but “what has he done lately?” may be in the minds of voters this year. Acting petulant and petty is not a good look for a candidate.
Halifax says: Fauci, Wray, Milley, Esper, Powell, Tillerson, Pruitt, Bolton, Kelley, Chao (McConnell’s wife) and the “best” of the bunch… OMAROSA!… who walked around the White House all day long secretly recording everyone and nobody seemed to notice. He hired and fired Scaramucci in the same day!
“Milktoast,” “stollen,” “Kentuckey,” “smocking gun,” “Marine core,” “Capital Hill.” “hamberders,” “highjacked,” “leightweight,” “Infair,” “councel,” “Rupublicans,” “played no roll in this transaction,” and, of course, “covfefe.” Remarkably, this is the same illiterate who insists that his SCOTUS nominees attended Ivy League schools.
I’ve been asking the same question for the last two years: Considering how those who worked for him are still under attack from leftwing activists even at their new places of employment, and considering how DJT has treated the people who work for him, who in the hell would ever agree to be in his cabinet? Nobody legitimate is going to damage their future career prospects by working only a few years for a three-ring circus. It would take him all four years to try to fill his cabinet. After how he treated Pence who the hell is going to agree to be his running mate? The My Pillow Guy? Kari Lake? Lake has never been elected to anything and hasn’t had a job in four years, so that’s probably his pick. Unfortunately, that decision is made after the nomination has been secured.
Even if he was able to win a general election (Spoiler Alert: he cannot), he would be lame duck the moment he was sworn in to such a degree that even members of his own party (McConnell, Romney, Murkowski, etc.) would be joining with Democrats to assure that none of his crackpot cabinet appointees could be confirmed. But again, that won’t be an issue since swing voters have already made up their minds that this stooge is unfit for office and every day he seems intent on proving them right.
Joe R. says: Trump hired the best, but it was slim pickins from the swamp. So, yeah, Trump right again.
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