Now playing: Trump scandal #8,374,312

Before we dismiss Trump's latest anti-Semite troll meeting as simply being moronic (even Trump, a notorious double-downer, backpedaled on having agreed to it), let's consider the possible strategic implications here.

After the '22 midterms, where Trump's handpicked candidates disproportionately lost, Donald Trump is bleeding support from:

--Most mainstream Republicans,
--Rupert Murdoch's conservative media empire,
--Evangelicals (yes, some of them are finally waking up to the fact Trump is a heathen), and
--Many of the independents/libertarians who supported Trump's first run back in '16.

Most of those GOP-allied groups are now ready to support someone like Ron DeSantis: A combative culture-warrior, but without some of Trump's more appalling features.

So, Trump's looking for fresh blood. To that end, Trump has been more explicitly cozying up to QAnoners, and otherwise signaling his willingness to actively court the very most fringe people out there, as a way to shore up the support that he still retains from his diehard loyalists.

It's hard to know just how effective this might be, as it's hard to gauge just how many true wingnuts are out there. They're irregular voters, they're hard to reach in polls, and their beliefs aren't easily polled, either. Few people are going to honestly answer questions like: "Are you a Nazi?" "On a scale of 1-10, how much do you believe Hitler was right?" "Do you think the Jews should pay?" etc.

Being the front-runner for the '24 nomination - and I still think that Trump is (he is at least the only formally declared candidate at this point) - gives Trump more pathways to victory, even seemingly-insane ones like this.

Example: If Trump already enjoys 33% support from the "always-Trump" diehards in the GOP, then all he needs is to scrounge up another 17% from *somewhere,* and then he can already win an outright majority (50%+) of GOP primary votes, and that's before you account for other candidates dividing the field.

So: Could the anti-Semites, QAnoners, and other paranoid-schizophrenic political lunatics put him past the post? Quite possible.

Appalling as this is, don't count Trump out yet.

If trump doesn't get the nomination he'll run as a third party candidate, and the republican elites know this. Even so, it's unlikely his opposition will be able to gather enough votes around a single candidate to defeat him. I put his chances of being the republican candidate at over 99%. I believe it's a structural and mathematical near certainty.

Why not 100%? His health.

The "respectable" conservative media has definitely been trying to anoint Ron DeSantis as the GOP's successor. Indeed, the GOP had a fantastic night in Florida. In a rational world, the case for a DeSantis candidacy in '24 speaks for itself.

But Trump greeted the news with the "Ron DeSanctimonious" slurs, some coded threats against DeSantis's wife, pointed out Trump's own role in making DeSantis's political career, and even called into question his election victory - saying it was Trump who "fixed" Desantis's election. That last insinuation is remarkably twisted - Trump crafting a *false* narrative of himself(!) stealing an election, theoretically incriminating himself in the process, purely in order to politically damage an adversary.

https://occupydemocrats.com/2022/11/11/election-fraud-did-trump-just-confess-to-fixing-desantiss-narrow-2018-win/

This is not how normal Party leaders behave. It's how Mafia bosses treat their capos when they start puffing up their chests and getting ideas.

Even after all these years, I don't think establishment Republicans are fully attuned to Trump's abusive pathologies and how much the MAGA base loves it. Trump can and will do everything to drag any adversary into a mud pit brawl. This will likely be Trump's last election, so he'll pull out all the stops.

So: DeSantis, who's not yet a declared candidate, who's still in his 40's, and who has a perfectly secure future for himself in Florida, may sit it out and just wait for '28. There are huge risks in a head-to-head combat with Trump. Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio have never been the same since '16, to say nothing of Jeb Bush.

i think he doesnt get the nomination, maybe runs 3rd party, personally hope that happens as it will siphon off gop votes.