Now that the primary season is beginning to really heat up, there are some who have expressed concerns about former President Donald J. Trump’s increasingly nasty attacks on his top rival for the 2024 nomination, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis and whether the fallout from the coming battle between the two GOP titans will adversely affect that party’s hopes of retaking the White House from Joe Biden and his left-wing wrecking crew.
One of those who is cautioning about Trump’s take-no-prisoners approach to politicking is Fox News contributor Tomi Lahren who in anticipation of a brutal primary process on par with the down and dirty, eye-gouging scrum of the 2016 path to the nomination in which Trump dispatched his 16 Republican competitors with the brutal precision of Clint Eastwood working his way through the bad guys at the end of “High Plains Drifter,” warned it could be even bloodier this time considering what’s at stake.
On Friday’s edition of “Hannity” before a live studio audience, Lahren was asked by host Sean Hannity about how bad she expects it to get even though DeSantis has yet to formally jump into the ring despite sending out strong signals that a declaration of his candidacy is imminent.
“I fear for how bad it’s gonna get,” she responded.
(Video: Fox News)
“I’ll tell you this, I’ve been a Trump supporter for a long time, 2016, 2020, if he’s our nominee I’ll go harder for him than I ever have before,” Lahren continued. “I will say this though, what Trump needs to convince his supporters of is that he can win an election.”
“He needs to do that,” she added. “Instead of just taking cheap shots at Ron DeSantis, he needs to say I can win more so than a Ron DeSantis, but I think we all know, no matter who jumps into this race, it is Ron versus Don, that is it, everybody else is in there to raise their name id, none of them are going to be serious contenders, we’re waiting for that battle royale and we hope that the best man with the best policies wins and then the other one, join together and let’s take back the White House.”
“A leopard can’t change its spots, Trump is going to have to stay Trump. We just hope that he fights the left, and he fights the drug cartels, and he fights China,” she added later in the segment. “Don’t fight Ron DeSantis. Because Ron DeSantis at the end of the day is a Trump supporter. So, you don’t need to fight him. We need him. No matter which one is the nominee, we need them both.”
Last week, Trump again laid into rising Republican star who was the recipient of the support of former Florida governor and failed GOP presidential candidate John Ellis Bush or as he is more commonly known, Jeb Bush.
“So now we have ‘Jeb!’, RINO Paul Ryan, and Marxist George Soros wanting Ron DeSanctis—Does that tell you anything? Remember, Ron fought hard to very unfairly cut Social Security and Medicare. Also, wanted to raise the age limit for Social Security to at least 70-years-old,” the former and perhaps future POTUS wrote on his Truth Social platform.
(Image: Screengrab/Truth Social)
Jeb! was among those who were crushed by the Trump train as it rolled to the 2016 nomination, only the bombastic billionaire businessman seemed to take particular pleasure in needling the Bush family scion, mocking him as having “low energy,” dragging his wife into it to question his masculinity, and demolishing his brother, former President George W. Bush over the invasion of Iraq as well as pointing out that the World Trade Center came down on his watch during an epic exchange during a debate in South Carolina before the critical state’s primary.
(Video: YouTube/CBS News)
Trump’s denuding of the one-time frontrunner before a hostile audience in Greenville was the coup de grace and Jeb dropped out of the race shortly afterward, preventing a third member of the Bush family dynasty from taking up residence in the White House.
Some Republicans are envisioning a redux of the bruising primaries of 2016.
“It’s not a one-to-one comparison with 2016, but I think everyone needs to be clear-headed about their chances here,” said one GOP consultant who worked on a 2016 primary campaign who was quoted by The Hill. “There are a lot of people that think they can be the one to take Trump down, but there comes a point where you’re hurting your own cause.”
Others expressed the opinion that a crowded field would benefit Trump, one of them is former South Carolina GOP chair Katon Dawson who is backing former Palmetto State governor Nikki Haley who has already declared her candidacy.
“I think it’ll be a four- or five-person race — and that certainly helps Donald Trump,” Dawson said. “So the question is: who can take some away from Donald Trump and who can get the other 50-something percent out there who are still undecided?”
Taking the opposite view was veteran GOP strategist Keith Naughton who was unconvinced that Trump would benefit from more opposition in the race for the nomination and that while acknowledging that the crowed field “definitely helps” the ex-POTUS in a trio of early states, Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina, that his advantage would likely soon evaporate.
“The Republican side is a lot more goal oriented; ‘we have to have a nominee, let’s figure out who it is,’ ” he said, according to The Hill. “The bottom line is the first three contests are going to decide who’s viable. Maybe there’s a surprise and you have someone sneak through and last a little bit longer.”
“But, if Trump wins all three, he has the nomination, it’s all over,” Naughton added. “If DeSantis wins two out of three, he can knock out Trump pretty quickly.”
“Ron DeSantis is still going to be the future of our party whether he runs as the nominee or not,” Lahren said.
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Chris Donaldson is an ordinary American who is concerned about rampant corruption as well as the ongoing attacks on our way of life by those who have contempt for our hard-earned freedoms. A Navy veteran, he has been a frequent contributor to conservative websites and resides in Florida.
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