Shortly after Trump was elected in 2016 I asked if he actually believed in his campaign rhetoric or alternatively had he just spotted an opportunity to deploy it to win the Biggest Prize Of All. The answer surely lies between those extremes but equally assuredly must tilt massively towards the latter. While he did some good things (some immigration restrictions, court appointments, no new wars, pulling back from international bodies) he delivered on almost none of the promises he made to his base. And how could he given he appointed to key roles people who hated both him and the deplorables he supposedly represented? Above all his decision to make Kushner his right-hand man must have doomed the project from the outset. (This is not 20:20 hindsight, regular readers will know that I've flagged this from the beginning.) It's hard to conceive of anybody more viscerally hostile to Traditional America than this Chabad Lubivicher snake. It would be hard to imagine anybody less suitable or willing to implement Trump's campaign platform.
Yet Trump made him his right-hand man. He was privy to everything, feeding the poison, undermining the few Trump loyalists in the Administration such as Bannon, Sessions and the early speech-writers. All of whom were quickly dispatched. And replaced with the likes of John Bolton and Nikki Haley. This suggests another thing: Trump seems neither to extend nor inspire personal loyalty, appearing instead to be largely transactional. 'You don't like this policy? Here, I got plenty more'. Such a person was never likely to take on the project of saving Heritage America.
And most certainly is not the one to lead a new "Deplorables" third party. (Speaking of which I hope said deplorables abstain en masse in forthcoming elections. Let the Republican Party die. They're useless RINOs.) But personalising a party around Trump would be disastrous, tempting as it may be to capitalise on his personality. First he's proven himself incompetent in that he has snatched defeat from the jaws of victory. (Had he taken on social media and Big Tech early on in his Administration he'd have coasted to victory.) And we now know that he'll throw his base under the bus again in the unlikely event of a successful comeback.
Am I being unduly cynical? Well his final act as President in many ways defines his legacy: Using his Presidential pardon powers to set loose a rancid gaggle of Jewish crooks, Israeli spies and black murderers while Assange languishes in captivity.
But seventy million Americans voted for him. That constituency is still there and crying out for an inspiring and effective leader.
Trump is not that man.
