The 45th president never really went away, as his pernicious influence continues, his elections are tainted, and most Republican lawmakers still fear his cult of personality. And on Tuesday, Trump will return for the first time since escaping a city traumatized by his attempted coup and steeled to contain its rebels.
While he was kicked off Twitter and sulking in his Mar-a-Lago palace, Washington has spent nearly every day since he left struggling with his legacy.
Only now, after a summer of blockbuster televised hearings by a special House committee, is the full extent of Trump’s political abuses becoming clear. And the 45th president is indulging in more.
He does not return to Washington on a ceremonial visit as a retired commander-in-chief claiming membership in the exclusive “president’s club.” This is one fraternity Trump would never want to join. And he wouldn’t have been welcome anyway. Instead, the 76-year-old former president is on his way back. He will address the America First Agenda Summit, a gathering of former aides and staffers from his administration who are trying to impose a coherent policy framework on the chaos of Trumpism.
Millions of Americans voted for Trump in 2016 because they rejected what they saw as distant political elites and global trade deals that cost them jobs, and saw him as a guarantor of a predominantly white, conservative American culture that they saw as threatened by rapid social changes and rapid – diversifying nation. Yet Trump’s presidency, and the way he left it, raises a question that transcends the legitimate ideological struggles that have long divided Americans: What are the implications for the nation of a potential presidential candidate who was willing to destroy American democracy, to stay in power and crush the will of the majority of voters who wanted him gone?
Moreover, Trump has legitimized the use of violence to resolve political disputes and to try to impose the will of a minority, an act contrary to the spirit of the American political experiment that is more than two centuries old. That’s why the prospect of a new Trump campaign for the White House comes with such serious undertones.
Trump still dominates Washington
Tuesday’s appearance ostensibly will give Trump a chance to begin crafting a policy agenda for the campaign, which sources told CNN he is desperate to launch any day, even if the GOP would prefer he wait until after the midterm elections. But if recent experience is any guide, Trump’s speech will be overtaken by his lies and self-obsession about his 2020 loss to Biden.
In the run-up to his return, and even as the Biden White House has struggled to fend off the idea that the US is slipping into recession, Trump has been at the center of major developments in Washington that could yet expose him to judicial censure.
It was revealed on Monday that Mark Short, Pence’s former chief of staff, had testified before a federal grand jury investigating what happened on January 6, 2021. Pence confirmed to CNN’s Erin Burnett on Monday night that he spoke under a subpoena, but said it could say no more, citing legal advice. The New York Times and Wall Street Journal reported Monday that Pence’s second top former aide, Greg Jacobs, had been subpoenaed during the investigation and testified before a federal grand jury.
The revelation that former senior White House officials appeared before the grand jury raised the possibility of a wide-ranging Justice Department investigation that had not been seen before — which would be an extremely important development.
On another front, the House Select Committee on Monday released damning new evidence that shows Trump did not want to violently condemn the rioters a day after their rampage at the Capitol. The then-president, whose handwriting was later identified under oath by his daughter Ivanka, removed references in his speech to the culprits who deserved prison and did not represent him.
Biden — whose political legacy will rest on limiting Trump to one destructive term in 2020 and may depend on his ability to defeat him again — once tried to ignore Trump. As he tried to move the country forward and unite it, he called his predecessor “the other guy.”
But on the eve of Trump’s return to Washington, Biden launched one of his sharpest attacks yet on his predecessor, prompted by the damning evidence amassed by a House committee.
The president was personal, dismissive and direct about Trump.
“We saw what happened: the Capitol Police, the DC Metropolitan Police, other law enforcement agencies were assaulted and assaulted before our eyes. Pierced with a spear. Sprinkled with sprinkles. of black law enforcement officers in Florida.
“And for three hours, the defeated former president of the United States watched all of this while sitting in the comfort of the private dining room next to the Oval Office,” Biden said, describing police officers at the U.S. Capitol as the subject of “three hours of medieval hell, dripping in blood, surrounded by carnage.”
“Face to face with a maddened mob that believed the lies of a defeated president, the police were heroes that day. Donald Trump lacked the courage to act,” Biden said, praising law enforcement for saving American democracy.
The president’s comments sounded a lot like a preview of a potential campaign against Trump if the former president goes ahead with a run and wins the GOP nomination and if the current president follows through on his promise to run for re-election.
Trump is facing questions about his popularity
While he remains very popular among conservative base voters and polls show him to be the hottest prospect in the early buzz of the 2024 GOP primaries, Trump arrives in Washington with questions about his political strength. Although many Republican voters opted out of the summer’s House Select Committee hearings, the revelations about his behavior are unlikely to help his standing with the general election public given his existing problems with suburban voters.
There are also signs of tentative but significant challenges to Trump. Pence, who held a political duel with his former boss in Arizona on Friday, was scheduled to speak in Washington on Monday night, but his flight was delayed due to stormy weather. The former vice president intended to draw a clear distinction between Trump’s speech on his lies about the last election and the evolution of the conservative movement at the Heritage Foundation.
“Some people may choose to focus on the past … But I believe that conservatives should focus on the future,” Pence planned to say, according to his prepared remarks as reported by CNN’s Michael Warren.
The former vice president damaged his reputation among Trump’s most loyal voters by refusing to break his oath to the Constitution, ignoring Trump’s pleas for him to block the certification of Biden’s victory, a step he had no power to take. And polls show Pence is a longshot for the 2024 Republican nomination if he runs.
But Trump’s acceleration of the 2024 presidential campaign, which will be at the forefront of his speech on Tuesday, poses an early test of where the party wants to go. And other potential candidates, not just Pence, will have to decide whether they have the guts to stand up to the former president and buck the trend among Republicans who have always condoned or encouraged his extremism.
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