By Darren McKinney
Analysts across the political spectrum are either crediting or criticizing Democrats and California Gov. Gavin Newsom for running successfully against Donald Trump – not against anyone actually on the ballot — in the Formerly Golden State’s recent gubernatorial recall election. And in light of both Georgia’s January runoff elections that sent not one but two hard-left Democrats to the U.S. Senate and their party’s wider plans to run against Trump yet again in next year’s congressional midterms, it would seem the former president’s albatross effect on the GOP is both real and persistent.
Despite Trump’s bombast and ample ignorance, the hostile media’s willful gullibility and obsession with an insurrectionist FBI’s “insurance plan,” aka the Russia hoax, and House Democrats’ impeachments du jure, he managed to do plenty of good for our country. In addition to reducing regulations and taxes, taking a hard line on trade with thieving China, discouraging illegal immigration with tough love at the southern border, helping to broker the Abraham Accords and demanding that European allies contribute their fair share to NATO defense, Trump as importantly exposed the Washington establishment’s neuroses, hypocrisy and craven willingness to abandon the rule of law whenever doing so is expedient.
But his seemingly ego-driven insistence on still hanging around and implicitly threatening another bid for the presidency serves no one at this point, certainly not the party that gave him his stunning win over Hillary Clinton five years ago.
After all, even if he were to miraculously win back the White House in November 2024, the Twenty-Second Amendment — limiting presidents to two terms that needn’t be consecutive — would immediately make him a lame duck. And if the FBI and Pentagon were plotting bloodless coups against him when he might still win another term, imagine what they’d do if he had no such leverage.
Which is why Trump and comparably ego-driven but aging, often injured and otherwise finished tennis great Serena Williams should call a joint news conference tomorrow at a Denny’s all-you-can-eat breakfast bar to announce their respective and overdue retirements. He can face-savingly say he’s leaving his party in the capable hands of Mike Pompeo, Ron DeSantis, Tim Scott, Nikki Haley and feisty free-speech advocate Nicki Minaj. She can say she’s leaving tennis in the very capable hands of younger, leaner, quicker Emma Raducanu and Leylah Fernandez.
If they ignore this friendly advice, they both risk grave injury — he to his party’s chances for electoral success in 2022 and 2024, and she to her legacy and 40-year-old ligaments, tendons and overburdened knee and hip joints.
Retire with some dignity while you still can, folks.