Happy Birthday, President Trump!
The day after Trump was arraigned by the senile president Joe Biden Justice Department in Florida, today, June 14, 2023, marks the seventy-seventh anniversary of Donald John Trump’s birth. As has been reported over and over the past eight years (since he’s been in presidential politics), Trump was born at Jamaica Hospital in Queens, New York City, the fourth child of Fred Trump, a Bronx-born real-estate developer whose parents were German immigrants, and Mary Anne MacLeod Trump, an immigrant from Scotland. Thus began an unparalleled journey that has included just about everything anyone could possibly expect to encounter from a daily existence, except maybe for poverty.
The thrice married Trump has enjoyed a life that anyone seeking fame and wealth would greatly envy. In the process, he’s not only built a brand for the family business, concocted a celebrity persona that includes near one-hundred-percent name recognition, an unimpeachable reputation for star power and, in the latter part of his career, a political aura that meets or exceeds any living American politician.
Not bad for a kid from the big city.
I can’t say for sure, but Trump’s campaign leaders aren’t likely to make a big deal out of his birthday today, not wishing to call attention to the fact he’s now roughly the same age as Ronald Reagan was when the 40th president left office in 1989. Trump is about three and a half years younger than current president senile Joe Biden, of course – and seems about a decade Biden’s junior – but nevertheless, the folks wishing to win another term as president wouldn’t want to go overboard on a celebration.
At the same time, it’s difficult to imagine Trump and his immediate family seated around a modest table with a birthday cake in the middle and party hats on their heads. Trump doesn’t do anything small scale, and those around him probably reason that to plan an understated birthday celebration wouldn’t be well received by their admiration-seeking patriarch. None of this matters within the scheme of things. The former president is in the midst of another high-profile campaign to propel himself to the top of the political mountain – again. Unlike with his likely Democrat opponent, age is just a number in Trump world. Trump’s Republican challengers will probably mention his birthday in some sort of off-handed “tribute” to the man today, but it won’t be in a congratulatory spirit.
Many Trump fans believe the hub-bub in the party primaries is proportionate to the size of the threat the political outsider represents to the swamp establishment itself. In a piece titled, “It’s Trump 2024 versus Never Trump cartel”, former Trump White House manufacturing czar and chief China strategist Peter Navarro wrote at The Washington Times:
“The 2024 Republican presidential primary campaign is not a traditional contest among independent political entrepreneurs. It is a chess match pitting Donald Trump against a deep-pocketed Never Trump cartel with vast media reach.
“This Never Trump cartel is anchored by a dark-money Koch network, Big Pharma vaccine peddlers and Democratic Wall Street billionaires who hedge their political bets by funding Republicans. This globalist troika is united in their love for open borders to import cheap labor and the offshoring of American factories and jobs to leverage the sweatshops and pollution havens of Asia.
“The Never Trump cartel likewise includes corporate media conglomerates ranging from CNN and MSNBC to the RINO Right of Rupert Murdoch’s Fox News empire. Rounding out the roster is a coterie of Silicon Valley venture capitalists and social media oligarchs, including Mark Zuckerberg, who spent vast sums to defeat Mr. Trump in 2020, and the richest man in America who has offshored his largest Tesla factory to China, Twitter’s Elon Musk. This Never Trump cartel will provide much of the Republican primary fundraising, polling and strategy…”
No doubt that Navarro is correct in his assumption that these Trump-averse entities will be putting their dollars behind a smattering of the former president’s intra-party opponents. He has certainly earned the right to be suspicious of the forces who’ve never hidden their animosity towards Trump, and, in many ways, their current campaign contributions are made solely to stop Trump from attaining another GOP nomination.
The only questionable part of Navarro’s theory is the one where he sees everyone joining together simply to battle Trump, as though the former president is the center of the political universe and no reasonable person could possibly oppose a third Trump go ‘round except to put a halt to the MAGA mission. This hypothesis sounds good in op-ed form, but even public opinion polls suggest that there are millions of Republicans who are genuinely seeking an alternative this year.
There’s no unwritten rule that says conservatives have to be nice to Trump all the time, even on his birthday. I happen to know a number of good people who back other Republican candidates, and it isn’t just because they despise Trump. Far from it. At 77-years-old, wishing for a change of jockeys on the GOP horse doesn’t make one crazy. And it definitely doesn’t make the folks who back certain other candidates a tacit supporter of the swamp “cartel”.
It seems clear that most non-Trump candidate backers would concede that there are good reasons for Trump’s army of enthusiasts to hope for a second Trump term. What’s harder to fathom is how Trump’s supporters can’t admit that maybe, just maybe, his opponents’ people desire their own candidates for something other than disparaging Trump?
There’s little question that Trump’s swamp enemies are formidable – no matter how obvious it is that the Biden Justice Department and various state and local prosecutors are solely out to get Trump no matter what the means or cause – donors and public backers of non-Trump candidates have their own reasons for choosing an alternative. If the race, in mid-June, has narrowed down to an “anyone but Trump” scenario, please provide evidence for the claim.
Many, many conservatives see Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’s multitude of policy victories as a positive basis for sending money to his campaign. Likewise, someone like Mike Pence has been a solid conservative his entire political career, so opting for a quieter version of the Trump team makes perfect sense to some. I can even see solid rationales for favoring Senator Tim Scott and a couple of the other candidates, no apologies necessary.
Trump is very good at defending himself and has been doing it for his entire eight years in the political spotlight. But by demanding that others (including former Trump officials) rubberstamp his every move and historic legacy makes him appear weak and desperate. Trump doesn’t need to endlessly jab at DeSantis or some of the others in order to look strong and capable. It’s below him to punch down – or even sideways – to impugn reputations of people who aren’t even part of the process (like Kayleigh McEnany).
One way or another, Trump’s legacy is already set in stone unless he starts taking a different tone, at least with his fellow party members. Courting controversy isn’t going to endear him to the swamp “cartel”, but it also doesn’t seem wise to the GOP’s uncommitted voters who are open to other candidates as well as Trump. There’s a very good argument that he’s helping to make up the minds of fence sitters – and not in his direction.
On his seventy-seventh birthday, everyone is aware that this is Trump’s last rodeo in the political arena. Even someone as youthful-acting and vigorous as Trump wouldn’t be taken seriously as a candidate four years from now (if he somehow loses this cycle), and, the last thing Trump wants is to be viewed by posterity as a bitter and vindictive loser. The establishment media and his leftist opponents will never give Trump his fair due, so it should be of paramount importance that Trump consider how his former supporters think of him now.
This is more than just a party primary campaign. This is the future we’re talking about.
As the Republican race’s clear frontrunner, it wouldn’t take much for Trump to begin the process of toning down his attacks on his rivals. If he still would like to savage the big donor entities that Navarro mentioned in his piece as part of the swamp, more power to him. Big money interests don’t always have faces and names. Candidates do.
Because Trump is already so famous, he doesn’t need to try and define himself. If anything, the candidate would benefit from a slight re-branding to be seen as an elder statesman with stellar experience who’s the best choice for Republican voters because he’s been there before and knows who to call and what to do on Day One of his second presidency. No one else can touch his qualifications if presented properly.
Wouldn’t this new attitude be much better than another social media post containing the word “DeSanctimonious”?
Perhaps by necessity, Trump’s Republican opponents are largely staying away from direct assaults on the former president, much less making it personal. Trump should be the one raising the bar and discussing his agenda rather than sending meaningless digs and taunting people he will need to support him in less than a year’s time.
Former president Donald Trump has earned our gratitude and respect, and it’s not hard to find the motivation to wish him a happy seventy-seventh birthday. Perhaps he can use the grand occasion to commit himself to waging the type of primary campaign we’d expect from so accomplished a human being. Happy Birthday, Donald Trump… and many more.
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