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Trump's 2024 outlook: more vulnerable after Jan 6 hearings
Ian Bremmer's Quick Take: Hi, everybody. Happy Monday. And a Quick Take for you to get your week started off. Wanted to talk a little bit about a topic I haven't discussed very much and that is the implications of the January 6th commission and where we are heading for US elections.
It's pretty clear to me that Trump is still the most popular in the Republican Party. And if you want to make a bet, you would certainly still say that he gets the nomination. I think it's virtually a hundred percent that he's going to announce his candidacy. Closest people around him certainly believe that in relatively short order. But he is more vulnerable than he was just a few months ago. And some of this is obvious. I mean, he's not president anymore and so he doesn't have the platform that he had when he was president. Of course, he's going to lose a significant amount of attention, impact as a consequence of that. He's been banned from Twitter. He's banned from Facebook. And his new Truth Social is not doing very much to speak of, at least to date. Doesn't seem to have any real management. And a couple times I've taken a look at it, doesn't seem to have a lot going on in terms of the space. He's not attracting the same crowds he used to when he gives speeches.
Now, the January 6th committee, which has been an anti-Trump effort... There's no question that the decision by Kevin McCarthy to pull those that he had appointed to serve on it and make sure that it was basically only Republicans that were strongly anti-Trump, in this case, Liz Cheney, Adam Kinzinger, would participate, meant that it was going to be perceived as a more partisan affair than it would have if there had been full participation from across the political spectrum. No question about that. But it has still had impact. And I think one of the reasons it's had impact is because so many of the people that have participated are hardly Democrats. And in fact, many of them are people that were strong pro-Trump characters until January 6th; a bunch of former staffers, the deputy press secretary, Sarah Matthews, the deputy national security advisor, someone I know pretty well, actually, Matt Pottinger, members of Pence's team, others. I mean, these were all people that had been strongly loyal to Trump for the entirety of his first term.
Now, I want to be clear, the rank and file of the Republican party still think that this whole thing is a nothing burger. There's only a small minority of the Republican party that believed on January 6th that he was responsible for it in any way. And that number has basically not moved. It's within a margin of error. But independents have shifted against Trump. And by the way, so has Rupert Murdoch. And I think it's very interesting that over the last few days, you see opinion editorials from the editorial board, from both the New York Post and the Wall Street Journal saying that Trump is unfit to run again for the presidency, shouldn't be president in 2025. These are press outfits that were all in for Trump in 2020 and they're not anymore.
Now, the Wall Street Journal is an elite newspaper. It has a lot of Democrat and establishment Republican readers, few that would be considered ultra-MAGA. That's not true of the New York Post. Though, of course, New York itself is a heavily blue voting urban area, but they're going to lose a lot of subscribers in Staten Island, certainly on the basis of taking that perspective. But even Fox News itself... I mean, you watch Hannity, you watch Tucker Carlson, they're a hundred percent still for Trump. But the daily coverage that you see that has been much more straight up news over the last couple of years has also covered a lot more. They haven't been covering the January 6th commission, but they have not been promoting Trump and they've not been trying in any way to whitewash him or actively cheerlead for him in a way that Newsmax, for example, has consistently no matter what time of the day that you watch it.
So I think at the very least we can now say that we're going to have a lot of alternative candidates for 2024. I think it's increasingly likely that Ron DeSantis, the Florida governor, is going to run against Trump. I think there will be a number of others as well. Again, you wouldn't bet against him at this point, but you wouldn't think it's going to be easy. And I think that's important. By the way, that's of course also true of Biden in the sense that Biden is at his most unpopular of his entire presidency right now. He's polling in the mid to high thirties. He's got big problems, particularly with the economy, particularly with inflation. He's vulnerable on COVID issues as well. And he also is looking increasingly slow, and his age is a factor, by the way, as is Trump's. And that fact is something that's going to make a lot of people much more interested in having anyone but Biden run in 2024 in the Democratic side and anyone but Trump run on the Republican side.
But this matters more about Trump because frankly, if you get Biden or if you get someone else, there's not a lot of impact in terms of the ultimate trajectory of US political institutions, the role of democracy, the kind of policies that you get in the way that the United States is perceived globally, where if it's Trump vis-à-vis another more mainstream Republican, it matters a lot, precisely because of Trump's unfitness, his willingness to call elections illegitimate and do everything he can to undermine them, certainly something you'd expect to do again, as well as his indifference to rule of law. So I do believe the fact that both Trump and Biden are increasingly vulnerable to significant challenges is a much greater impact and import when you look at the Republican side. Now, again, if you make me bet right now, I would still say that Trump gets the nomination and that it's close to a conflict for 2024. But again, overall, the likelihood Trump becomes president a second term has gone down significantly.
Now, one danger I'd like to raise. I really think we need to call out those Democrats that are spending money and channeling money in a number of races to try to get pro-Trump stop the steal election deniers to win in Republican primaries, because they believe that those pro-Trump candidates are going to be easier to defeat in a general election. Now, first of all, a lot of Democrats felt that way about Trump himself in 2020 and look what happened as a consequence, but I'll go further than that. This is a very dangerous game they're playing, and they should stop.
One more Marjorie Taylor Greene, in the House is too many. One is too many. It leads to violence. It leads to lunacy. It leads to disinformation. She's a self-avowed Christian nationalist. She's doing everything she can from a weak position to try to undermine the American political system and the values that it's built upon. And if you end up with five or 10 of them in the House, a couple of them in the Senate, a couple of them as governors, you do a lot more to deeply undermine the structural integrity and stability of the American political system. So the Democrats should stop playing that game right away.
Finally, I want to make a shout-out to Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger, two people on the Republican Party. Kinzinger voted for Trump, was full-throated about it. Cheney votes with Trump over 90% of the time in the House. They have basically given up their political careers. Liz Cheney lost her role in the leadership of the House and is almost certainly going to lose her upcoming race for re-election. Kinzinger has already had to step down. In both cases, these are people that are standing by democracy and rule of law in the country above their narrow political preference. There are not many people in the country that are leading by example right now. And if by doing it, that means you have to lose your job, well, they're showing us what a leader really is and I tip my cap to them. That's it for me. I'll talk to you soon.
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Opinion: Has the Jan. 6 committee killed Trump’s 2024 chances?
Opinion: Has the Jan. 6 committee killed Trump’s 2024 chances?
Donald Trump remains the most popular and strongest figure in the Republican Party. The former president is almost certainly going to announce his 2024 candidacy in relatively short order, and if you made me bet right now, I’d say he is more likely than not to clinch the GOP nomination.
But it's a close call.
Trump is more politically vulnerable than he was just a few months ago. Roughly half of Republican voters say they would support a candidate other than Trump. Recent polls show that Trump would lose in a rematch against President Joe Biden, even though the latter is historically unpopular and most Americans currently prefer a Republican president in 2024. And Trump’s endorsement record in GOP primary elections has been mixed at best.
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Some of the erosion in Trump’s support is natural. He is no longer president, meaning he doesn’t have the platform he had when he commanded the bully pulpit and the airwaves. He is banned from Twitter and Facebook, his most significant megaphones in the past. Truth Social, the social media network he created, has been a flop. As a result, he’s lost a significant amount of attention and visibility. Even his speeches and rallies are not drawing the crowds they used to.
Some of it, however, can be attributed to the impact of the January 6 House select committee.
I know what many of you will say: the committee is nothing more than a partisan witch hunt, it’s a rigged show trial/kangaroo court that violates Trump’s due process rights, Democrats didn’t let pro-Trump Republicans on the committee to cross-examine witnesses and defend Trump, what about the Democrats/Biden/Hunter/Hillary/Obama/Pelosi/BLM...
I’ll happily grant that the committee would have been perceived as a much less partisan—and therefore much more legitimate—affair had there been full participation from across the political spectrum. There’s no question about that.
But let’s not forget it was House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy’s (R-Cal.) decision to pull Trump allies from the panel—after Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Cal.) vetoed two of his five picks for being election deniers and, potentially, material witnesses—that ensured only the solidly conservative but anti-Trump Reps. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) and Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill.) would participate (to great personal cost, I should add). Trump himself acknowledges McCarthy’s mistake and reportedly blames him for it.
More importantly, many of the people who have testified are hardly Democrats. In fact, many of the panel’s witnesses were unrepentant Trump loyalists until January 6. The list includes White House counsel Pat Cipollone, Trump’s deputy press secretary Sarah Matthews, his deputy national security advisor Matt Pottinger, his chief of staff’s top aide Cassidy Hutchinson, his campaign spokesman Jason Miller, his campaign manager Bill Stepien, his attorney general Bill Barr, and even his own daughter Ivanka.
These are people who not only voted for him in 2020, but who also stood by him through numerous scandals. Yet even for them, Trump’s conduct on January 6 was a bridge too far. This, I think, is one of the key reasons why the hearings have resonated despite the committee’s political imbalance.
Now, let me be clear. The rank and file of the Republican Party still thinks this whole thing is a nothingburger. Only 18% of Republicans believe Donald Trump deserves a good deal or more of the blame for what happened at the Capitol—barely 4% more than in December before the hearings, an increase that’s within the poll’s margin of error.
But independent voters have shifted against Trump, with 57% now blaming him for January 6 compared to 48% before the hearings. Nearly two out of three independents have an unfavorable impression of the former president.
So has Rupert Murdoch, the powerful owner of Fox News Channel, The Wall Street Journal, and the New York Post who had been a staunch Trump ally and booster since 2016. These outlets were all-in for Trump in 2020, and suddenly that’s not true anymore. Following the committee’s second prime-time hearing on Thursday, the editorial board for the Post called Trump “unworthy to be this country’s chief executive again.” On the same day, the Journal’s editorial board accused him of lacking “character.” Fox News, meanwhile, has stopped carrying Trump’s rallies, and its daytime coverage—unlike opinion shows like Tucker Carlson’s and Sean Hannity’s—has shifted in tone ever so slightly against the former president.
At the very least, we can now say Trump’s hold on the GOP is weakening, and he is no longer a shoo-in for the 2024 nomination. It’s increasingly likely that Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, the most popular non-Trump choice among Republican voters, will run against him. Fox News has certainly been showering him with positive coverage in recent months. Of course, with a year and a half to go, DeSantis could also be the latest in a long line of candidates to peak too early. At this point in the 2016 contest, the leading contenders for the GOP nomination were Rand Paul, Mike Huckabee, Chris Christie, and Jeb Bush. But there will be other candidates, too. Trump won’t have a clear path.
That’s also true, by the way, of Biden’s road to 2024. The president is currently the most unpopular he’s ever been, with approval ratings firmly under 40%. He’s fighting a losing battle against record-high inflation, a slowing economy, and a resurgent pandemic. He’s also looking increasingly slow and ineffectual owing to his advanced age, leading many to question his competence for office. That’s making two-thirds of Democrats wonder about whether Biden represents their best chance at holding the White House.
Both Trump and Biden, then, are increasingly vulnerable to serious primary challenges. As far as the nation is concerned, though, the identity of the Republican nominee matters much more than that of the Democratic nominee. That’s because whether it’s Biden or another Democrat that wins, it won’t make much of a difference to the integrity and stability of America’s political system or to its global standing. Given the former president’s exceptional moral turpitude and his indifference to the rule of law, the same cannot be said about the impact of Trump relative to any other, more mainstream, Republican.
Again, if you made me bet right now, I would still say Trump gets the nomination. But the likelihood that he becomes president for a second time has gone down significantly. That’s a good thing for America.
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