The Right Resistance: Trump cracks open the door to not running in 2024, but will he close it?

“Yup, that would do it.”

Former President Donald Trump didn’t utter those exact words last week, but when mentioning the one thing that would prevent him from running for president again, the much beloved (to conservatives and America First adherents) second career politician indicated that a downturn in his health would do the trick.

Jack Phillips reported Trump’s candid concession at The Epoch Times, something we’re not used to hearing from the 75-year-old former Oval Office occupant. It’s not as though Trump was trying to tell us something by even broaching the subject, but the possibility will no doubt linger in the back of people’s minds when they consider the upcoming big decision by the most emotion provoking political figure of our times.

Trump will turn 76 in June and will be 78 on Election Day in 2024. By way of comparison, senile president Joe Biden was 77 when he was declared the winner of the 2020 election (he turned 78 later that month). He’s now a very old looking 79 -- and not nearly as spry as the Democrats would have had you believe during the phony COVID altered campaign of two years ago.

Ronald Reagan was a few weeks short of his 78th birthday when he passed the nuclear codes to George H.W. Bush in January of 1989. Reagan was quite lucid when he left office, though some believe Alzheimer’s disease was beginning to slow his cognitive function. Would the country have opted for another four years of The Gipper if he were constitutionally eligible and chose to go for a third term? We’ll never know. Maybe it’s better that way. For his part, Biden’s train of thought left the tracks a long time ago. It’s getting to the point where his gaffes don’t even generate immediate notice or instantaneous headlines any longer because his staff automatically corrects them, practically in real time. It’s almost like Jen Psaki is the real spokesperson for what Biden means to say. Why not save minutes and hours by cancelling senile Joe’s public appearances outright and just have Psaki deliver the remarks herself?

It could be that Biden’s age accelerator is working overtime as he tries to deal with the mounting dilemmas in the country and world these days as well as to deflect, to the extent it’s even possible, the ethical and legal issues surrounding son Hunter’s overseas businesses. With the liberal establishment media’s recent acknowledgements that Hunter’s shady foibles were true, it’s getting harder and harder for the senile old chief executive dolt to remain apart from them. Simply put, if and when Hunter goes down, senile Joe’s brother James -- and himself -- won’t be far behind. Democrats are restless, like a party on a political death watch.

Though Trump revealed that health concerns could keep him from running for office again, he also reiterated, for the umpteenth time, that Americans would be “happy” with his decision when he announces it. In typical Trumpian fashion, “happy” in this sense could have dual meanings. Trump fans would be ecstatic by his giving it another go, while Trump haters would be just as “happy” if he indicates he’s planning to retire and play lots of golf at Mar-a-Lago.

Those in the middle won’t know quite how to feel. This group includes Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell. The Kentuckian establishmentarian extraordinaire has done his best to avoid talking about Trump -- at all -- but recently was forced to declare that he would back Trump if the former president does run again and wins the Republican nomination in two years.

Haris Alic reported at The Washington Times:

“Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell now says he would support former President Donald Trump if Mr. Trump were to win the GOP nomination for the White House in 2024. Mr. McConnell, Kentucky Republican, said supporting the eventual GOP nominee is part of his duties as a party leader.

“’I think I have an obligation to support the nominee of my party,’ Mr. McConnell said in an interview with Axios …. ‘That will mean that whoever the nominee is has gone out and earned the nomination.’ Mr. McConnell has made similar comments in the past, despite having broken publicly with Mr. Trump on numerous big issues.

“Mr. McConnell says that his support for Trump in 2024, if the former president were to win the GOP nomination, is ‘not at all inconsistent.’ ‘I stand by everything I said about January 6,’ Mr. McConnell said. ‘I don’t get to pick the Republican nominee for president. They’re elected by the Republican voters all over the country.’”

What a flagrant and politically expedient copout, wouldn’t you say? This way, McConnell doesn’t have to express anything about his real positions. He can just blame everything on Republican voters and sit idly by as the man who frequently refers to him as “old crow” takes over the party and makes bold statements about the failure of the Washington political class to address issues like the porous American border, broken immigration system, exploding national debt, huge annual budget deficits, unfair trade agreements, and poisoned culture on Capitol Hill.

The bespectacled “Murder Turtle” McConnell’s had a hand in everything that’s gone wrong in Congress mostly because he chose not to use his considerable powers to apply the brakes on out-of-control spending and force Democrats to bend on issues that couldn’t afford to wait. To be fair, Mitch has done a few things right over the years -- he deserves much credit for a conservative originalist majority on the Supreme Court -- but he’s been a disaster in most other ways.

Trump was a first-hand witness to the damage McConnell inflicted on the GOP. Someone should ask McConnell if he’s apologetic for his post 2020 opinions after it’s come out that there were serious vote counting irregularities discovered in numerous states as well as the media’s full-on suppression of the Hunter Biden news that almost certainly would’ve swung the election to the incumbent if the cat had been let out of the bag at the proper time.

As a side note, where is the apology from CBS and Leslie Stahl for accusing Trump of spreading unverified rumors about Hunter’s laptop during the campaign? Everything Trump said about senile Joe’s son was public knowledge at the time -- thanks to reporting from the New York Post -- and the deep state’s “misinformation” about Russian “disinformation” and meddling was all phony.

The deniers -- which includes McConnell himself, Liz Cheney, Mitt Romney and a host of other RINOs -- haven’t been made to account for the positions they took. In essence, their worst nightmare has now come true: Trump was right. He was telling the truth all along about the fake Russian collusion investigation. He was spot on about the Biden family’s crooked dealings in Ukraine. He was right about the Biden family’s complicity in China.

No wonder McConnell is now backtracking about his position on Trump. The more facts come out concerning what went on during Trump’s four years and about the final months of the 2020 campaign, the more vindicated the former president becomes. One can’t help but conclude many of his claims about the 2020 election being stolen will also prove salient (after the Republicans retake Congress and investigate the perpetrators).

Americans have long memories for such things. McConnell can bob and weave around the Trump topic all he wants, but he can’t fully escape it. There’s a solid possibility he’ll be majority leader again after this year’s midterm elections (because Republicans only need to pick up one seat to make it happen). There’s also a decent chance he’ll be senate leader under another Trump presidency.

If you think Trump was tough on McConnell during his first term, you ain’t seen nothin’ yet. A lame duck Trump presidency means the New Yorker would have zero incentive to hold back -- not that he ever did. The GOP establishment would be on its last leg as public support flourished for Congress to actually do something and for McConnell to make good on his campaign promises from decades past.

That’s what leaders do -- not make excuses about not having sufficient numbers or putting off a fight until some undetermined future date when Mitch is back home doing whatever it is he does when he’s not on the floor of the senate. Perhaps McConnell won’t have to worry about Trump and 2024. Maybe now that Trump has presented the possibility of not running due to health, he’ll cite an excuse from his doctor as the reason he’s passing on another arduous campaign. Trump wouldn’t need to completely leave politics -- he could still do what he does best, please audiences -- but would pass the torch to someone else to deal with the media’s falsities while feeling absolved for everything that happened before.

Here's thinking Trump still plans to run in 2024, but he’ll be weighing the other side a lot more heavily than he was just a few months ago. It may depend on whether there are other good candidates who could pick up the MAGA mantle. Nothing is ever assured in the ever-changing universe of American politics.

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