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.
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