There were no surprises in Donald Trump’s pre-taped town hall-style Fox News interview with Sean Hannity outside Des Moines, Iowa last night. The former president was relaxed and confident, Hannity was deferential, the audience was eager and enthusiastic. In sum, the hour-long interview was a love fest from start to finish. There was no drama, only vote-for-me boiler-plate from Trump and adulation from the audience.
I suspect, however, that certain segments of the population were riveted by the performance. Anyone working for Trump’s rivals had to be dispirited by the interview. Fox is officially off Trump, but here their most popular TV personality (now that Tucker Carlson is gone) was troweling on the love while the audience clapped and and cheered. USA, USA, USA...
The conventional wisdom is that Trump really has only one serious rival, Florida governor Ron DeSantis. I think that is wrong. It is early days yet, and who knows what reversals of fortune tomorrow will bring. But events of the last few weeks — DeSantis’s hobbled launch, Trump’s commanding performance at the CNN town hall — have shown that the quest for the Republican nomination is all but over. The contest is between Trump and a half dozen also-rans, including Ron DeSantis.
Trump’s lead everywhere in the polls — thirty points in Iowa, double digits even in Florida, ditto for New Hampshire — has taken the excitement out of the process. But it cannot have done anything to soften the gloom in the campaign headquarters of the other GOP contenders. They may carp. They may bluster. They may stamp their collective feet and talk about how normal, well-organized and generally competent they are. But they know, just as Trump knows, that he is the uninterruptible source of energy for they whole campaign. He has defined the issues, he has attracted, magnet-like, the media attention.
Ron DeSantis was predicted to get a huge bump in the polls after he formally announced his candidacy. That has not happened yet. Meanwhile Trump has hammered home his message. Energy independence followed by energy dominance for the US; a secure border; bringing down inflation, taxes, and interest rates; ending the carnage in Ukraine; restoring confidence in American institutions from the Veterans Administration to the FBI. These are his themes, and his audiences know that they are his themes. No matter how hard the other candidates try to get a word in edgewise, so far all they have managed to do is squeak “What he said, but without the ‘juvenile’ distractions.”
Again, we have seventeen months to go till the election. A lot could change. But as of June 2, 2023, the rational prognostication is that Trump wins the nomination hands down. Does he then go on to win the election? Opinions about that differ widely. If — and it is a big “if” — the election interference can be kept down then I believe that the answer is yes: Trump is the likely victor. What happens then, as the Deep State goes into panic mode to nobble him again, is anyone’s guess.
