Trump Is a Jackass and It's Time to Move On

Four years ago, I was humbled and grateful when President Trump nominated me, along with three federal judges, to be members of the US Sentencing Commission. To be put forward for a position like that is a great honor, and was especially so for me. I had spent most of my professional life before then as a career (i.e., non-political) Assistant US Attorney and a part-time law professor at Georgetown.

And it’s only fair to acknowledge that Trump’s work, certainly in judicial nominations, was a boon to the country. Thanks to him and those advising him, we now have the most Constitution-faithful Supreme Court of my lifetime. In that Court, the rule of law has taken a big step forward and the rule of sentiment a big step back. The Left is furious, and I love it.

Finally for the good part, can any sensate person doubt that the country was better off when Trump left office than it is now after two years of a decrepit Joe Biden, a man who embraces policies he must know are wrong, but is too weak or indifferent or cowardly to resist?

With all that, there are those in precincts in the Republican Party who will welcome Trump’s announcement (apparently tomorrow) that he will seek the Presidency again. I will not be among them and neither should you. For the good of the country and their own good, Republicans should turn elsewhere, and elsewhere’s name is Ron DeSantis.

I’m not going to go through all the reasons Trump should not be returned to power. Perhaps the most obvious is his complicity, whether legally culpable or not, in the riot at the Capitol attempting to thwart the lawful (if not particularly welcome) counting of the electoral votes that would make the indigestible Biden the President. In a county founded and anchored by the rule of law, the place to challenge election results is in the courts. Trump did so, in dozens of cases (I think it was 90 if memory serves). He lost every time. He had an obligation, not merely as a citizen but particularly as President, to abide by the results. He refused, despite the entreaties of numerous Republican leaders and his own adult children — not that their entreaties ever should have been needed, or would have been needed by a person who took the most basic obligations of citizenship seriously. Trump didn’t and doesn’t, and that is sufficient reason per se to disqualify him from public office — any office, and still less an office with the enormous powers of the Presidency.

And then there was his making off with government documents, some classified and some not, when he left office. He had no right to them. Even a nine year-old knows you don’t take property that doesn’t belong to you. This is not real complicated. If Trump won’t live by the basic rules of honesty a normal person knows by the time he hits middle school, he cannot hold a public trust.

But even that isn’t what sets me off now. It was this, reported by the New York Times (emphasis added):

Several hours before polls opened on Tuesday for Election Day in Florida, former President Donald J. Trump warned the state’s governor, Ron DeSantis, against mounting a challenge to Mr. Trump’s own anticipated presidential candidacy in the 2024 election cycle.

“If he runs, he runs,” Mr. Trump said of Mr. DeSantis to a handful of reporters traveling with him on his private plane — recently refurbished and put back into use — after a rally Monday night in Dayton, Ohio.

But Mr. Trump added, in remarks published on Tuesday by The Wall Street Journal, “If he did run, I will tell you things about him that won’t be very flattering. I know more about him than anybody other than perhaps his wife, who is really running his campaign.”

The former president, preparing to announce a rare candidacy for the White House after a defeat, was thus openly threatening to smear the person who would be considered his leading rival, should he choose to run.

Excuse me, but isn’t that blackmail or something real close to it? And it might not be that unusual for Trump, as an astute acquaintance of mine just reminded me, but that of course just makes it worse.

And blackmail or not, it’s disgusting. I just don’t believe America is in such bad shape that we have to put up with this. We can do better, and last week’s election tells us, among other things, that we need to. But it’s not pragmatism that’s principally at work here. I’m well aware that politics is hardball, but we have to draw the line somewhere, and basic decency is the spot.

Now of course simply to emote about Donald Trump is not enough, as the Never Trump crowd should have, but did not, learn long ago. When Trump announces, he may or may not become the frontrunner (Paul tells us that DeSantis now leads in at least one poll). But he will be a very formidable candidate. Those serious about stopping him and returning the country to responsible conservative leadership need a strategy.

What should it be?

My suggestion takes root in the fact that Trump won the nomination in 2016 largely, although not exclusively, because the opposition was splintered. What’s needed, and what has the best chance to defeat first Trump and then either Biden or the Biden stand-in, is for Republicans to unite early behind one candidate, and the clear leader is DeSantis (who most helpfully just won a landslide re-election in what was easily the brightest spot for Republicans last Tuesday). Accordingly, there should be a summit among the leading prospective candidates — DeSantis, Pence, Pompeo, Haley, Cruz, Noem, perhaps others — to get behind the Florida governor.

Now I’m aware that asking politicians voluntarily to give up a shot at power might possibly be criticized as, ummmmmmm, a flight of fancy. But there are three factors that make it more realistically possible in the present circumstances. First, DeSantis has a big lead over the other non-Trump candidates, plus great momentum. Second, he is almost certainly the only one who can take Trump down; none of the others is even remotely close. Third, the need for unity for the preservation of Republican hopes at all is pressing. As the last week’s elections strongly suggest, Trump is at best unhelpful and at worst toxic for the Republican Party in a national election.

Is such a summit going to happen? Probably not. But if it did, it would give the Democrats the shivers and the country its best hope for a renewal two years from now.