Steamrolling through the Republican primaries, for some time former President Donald J. Trump has known he will be the 2024 GOP nominee.
For an even longer period of time that despicably continues, Mr. Trump has been persecuted by the left for the sin of being elected president and—gasp!—being a Republican populist. (Spare me the argument that Mr. Trump is not a Republican, as he sought and has won the GOP nomination.)
That Mr. Trump believes his persecution by the left and this GOP primary win are entwined is inarguable. Consequently, it is understandable that he employs his current rhetoric regarding “revenge,” be it his own and/or his supporters.
Understandable, however, is not the same as helpful, particularly heading into a tight general election where every vote will be critical to victory, and the left is doing its level best to unlevel the electoral playing field.
Thus, the timely query: when will Mr. Trump’s revenge tour turn into a presidential campaign?
In his March 7th, American Greatness article, “Trump Is Right: His Best Revenge Will Be His Success: A Successful Trump Term Will Be Retribution against the Left,” Mr. Jeremey Frankel does a stellar job explaining why Mr. Trump’s messaging focus on “revenge” and “retribution,” despite its echoes of solipsistic coarseness, has positive public policy implications for voters. Indeed, he goes further by getting to the heart of the matter by positing the most important questions regarding this vengeful messaging:
It would be understandable for anyone who has seen what Trump and his supporters have been through over the last nine years…to ask why Trump would seemingly want to take the high road here. Why let the persecutors get away and not have a dose of their own medicine?
In short, will Trump ‘be our retribution?’
However, this might not be the right question, as the two are not mutually exclusive in the slightest. In fact, they go hand in hand.
‘Revenge,’ in this context, will consist of Trump simply keeping his promises, which, by definition, will set the left back tremendously.
This is a perfectly suitable answer for Mr. Trump’s supporters. Yet, for those who do not yet support Mr. Trump, such as some Republicans and independent voters, the problem is that Mr. Frankel is having to do Mr. Trump’s job for him. Bluntly, as the standard bearer for the Republican Party, it is incumbent upon Mr. Trump to explain why his policies are beneficial to all Americans. If your campaign rhetoric requires contextualizing, you are going to lose. “Bigly.”
True, in every primary there is an element of internecine battle, and rhetoric can become heated both against one’s intra- and inter-party rivals to secure the nomination. Such heated rhetoric is usually cooled by the nominee (if not their advocates) to unite their party, garner a majority of undecided voters, and win the general election. This has not been the case to date with Mr. Trump’s messaging.
Yes, the left loathes Mr. Trump, and the “retribution” they seek is against him. Yes, large numbers of his GOP primary voters are seeking varying degrees of “revenge” and “retribution” against the leftist forces destroying everything they cherish, including Mr. Trump. Both of these groups know the context of Mr. Trump’s “revenge” rhetoric. In fact, undecided voters are unaware of Mr. Trump’s political persecution. The question is whether they care about it or, worse, welcome it.
Thus, Mr. Trump’s promise to be his primary voters’ instrument of revenge, retribution, and justice is counterproductive to winning the 2024 presidential election. Such rhetoric plays into the hands of the left’s smear merchants, furthering their paranoiac depictions of Mr. Trump as a chaotic, impulsive, and vindictive would-be dictator. This, even as this failed leftist administration is attacking—often in collusion with multinational corporations—such fundamental, God-given, and constitutionally protected rights such as freedom of conscience, religion, and speech and wreaking havoc through its spendthrift policies and inflation with American families’ budgets and finances.
These are but some of the momentous stakes in the 2024 presidential election. Americans already have a petty, divisive, and vindictive leftist in the oval office. Offering to return a petty, divisive, and vindictive GOP populist to the oval office may not have the appeal to voters that Mr. Trump’s supporters think.
Americans are not a vengeful people. We are an aspirational people. The vast majority of undecided GOP and independent voters are not looking for a president vowing revenge or retribution against anyone or to be their unilateral arbiter of justice. They are looking for sane, sound governance by their elected servants to transcend the insanity of the age. It is past time for the GOP’s decidedly “unhappy warrior” to transcend his travails and positively affirm why he is the best candidate, not just for his loyal supporters but for all Americans.
After all, the best “revenge” is living well. But if Mr. Trump’s lack of impulse control and vindictive calls for vengeance continue, no amount of contextualization will prevent his defeat—and, with him, the entire GOP populist agenda. Then, come 2025, only the left will be living well.
An American Greatness contributor, the Hon. Thaddeus G. McCotter (M.C., Ret.) served Michigan’s 11th Congressional district from 2003-2012, and served as Chair of the Republican House Policy Committee. Not a lobbyist, he is a frequent public speaker and moderator for public policy seminars; and a Monday co-host of the “John Batchelor Radio Show,” among sundry media appearances.
Trump has been asked by reporters what he considers the revenge he intends to wreak, and his answer has been success------the success of his policies, the success of bringing America back to economic growth, the success of lowering inflation, the success of closing the border, and many other similar things.
It isn’t Trump’s own speaking he and we have to fear, it is the Left’s framing of Trump as a man, and Trump as a presidential candidate. Placing the burden of nuance on Trump with the claim he will lose if those still uncommitted HEAR the wrong message is the same thing we’ve heard hundreds of times from those trying to “help” Trump get his message out. STOP HELPING.
Trump could come out and say that motherhood is one of the most important jobs in the world and the press will frame it as Trump being anti-feminist. The reader should note I emphasized “one of” meaning not exclusive nor superior to all, but it makes no difference. The press will frame it as Trump saying motherhood is THE MOST important job in the world to the detriment of all others. It is the game they play.
Again, STOP HELPING. Every article purporting to help Trump reinforces the Lefty idea that Trump is a man who desperately needs “our” help to overcome his “nastiness”. ( I don’t believe I’ve ever used this many scare quotes in a post before–but it is what it is.)
Leave the man alone and just tell his critics to go pound sand. The Left never apologizes, the merely re-attack. Why should we be different?
There is a reason why articles are written by the left, and even by Republicans, that attempt to legitimize what, to normal thinking people, is impossible to rationalize. America is full of Tokyo Roses. We are being indoctrinated so that when insanity is snatched from the jaws of defeat it will be accepted as something that was predicted when, in reality, democracy, as defined by reasonable thinking people, has nothing to do with the presumed winner. The election will be rigged by people who have been doing such things for decades. Did you not listen to the DOJ the other night when he made it clear that voter ID requirements are a form of racism? The Robert’s Court will not even use the clear language of the Constitution to do what the Rehnquist Court saw, as obvious in 2000, when it gave a lecture to the Florida Supremes. In the later case the Court pointed out that the legislature, and not the Courts, get to determine how and where votes are counted. In the former case the Court allowed lower courts to permit everyone but the legislature to do what the Constitution demanded. How did they do that? By avoiding even hearing the case based on standing. They should have jumped in before a case was actually brought to them via the Texas DOJ.
Donald Trump no longer has to appeal to voters. He will win the majority of legal voters but the election will be even more fraudulent than was the 2020 election. Since 2020 those that rigged the state elections to win now have the power to rig the elections even better than before the Covid-19 pandemic.
Kemp, the RINO GA Governor, and, Raffensperger, the Secretary of State could make a Jackass vomit. Shakespeare could never have imagined a stench so rotten and obvious when he wrote about Denmark and yet American Journalists see and hear nothing…crickets.
https://www.americanthinker.com/author/jay_valentine/
Absolutely Task.
Chuckle, so after the edit, I deleted the other part of my message to you. When I went to post I got a message I’d never seen before-----“post must be at least 20 characters”. So much for brevity (in which I so rarely engage).
I think it very indicative of the state of the American citizen’s mind that personality and campaign rhetoric (which we are later told we should never take “seriously”) ought to determine the choice of President. I firmly believe based on facts and evidence that Meat Puppet was not elected, but installed and so do millions of American citizens watching not 4 years, but 8 years of the Blob’s actions (illegal and unconstitutional) with regard to Donald J. Trump, first as candidate, then President, then wrongfully deposed but legitimately re-elected President.
As someone so profoundly wronged, Donald Trump exhibits a natural emotion: the desire for revenge. What his actions demonstrate are a person dedicated to truth and justice. That is what will motivate his base and voters come November, not a thirst for vengeance which is the hallmark of the Democrat Marxist Party. Communists wreak “revenge” on the populace and the communists in the United States dreaming of a One World government have thoroughly demonstrated what they are willing to do to those who disagree with and dissent from their view of the world. They have wielded an 8+ year (longer, if one counts the ineligible Obama’s “Presidency”) wrecking ball on our society, institutions, culture, people and economy. Revenge, you write? Point the pen in another direction, Mr. McCotter!
I wish we had more posters here! If we had, I think there would be a super consensus that our friend Thaddeus, while earnest, is offering poor advice.