It's Time for Trump to Leave the Race
Staying in only hurts him, his party, and our country
It’s time for Donald Trump to leave the 2024 presidential race.
Continuing his candidacy promises nothing positive for himself, the Republican Party, or our country.
Iowans have witnessed from front row seats some of the multitude of reasons he should get out - and they have a unique opportunity to help him exit the race, if he won’t do it on his own.
They should use that opportunity and leave him now.
First, the obvious reason. He’s unfit to be president.
Donald Trump does not believe in, support, or practice democracy. He clearly wants to “rule” America as an authoritarian, anti-democratic, dictator. This isn’t even in question any more.
Donald Trump betrayed his country, multiple times. He failed to protect national secrets, stole and then withheld top secret documents. We still don’t know why, but there are few possible good explanations.
Donald Trump tried to overthrow our democracy. He waged a months long fake elector scheme to corrupt the constitutionally mandated vote counting process; and when that didn’t work, he launched a violent insurrection; and gave aid and comfort - as president - to those doing the actual fighting at the Capitol on January 6, 2021.
4. Donald Trump is a loser. He’s never won a majority of votes cast in a general election, not even in 2016, when he “won” the presidency despite losing the popular vote by 3 million votes, even after strategic help from Russia’s Putin.
He has never been anything but a drag on Republican efforts to win or keep control of the US House and Senate.
5. Donald Trump is corrupt. He corrupts everything and everybody who comes near him. He actually makes Richard Nixon look like a pargon of law abiding virtue.
6. He was an awful president the first time around. What part of his ignorant, blundering incompetence and the multiple disasters left in the wake of his time as president sounds like a good idea to repeat?
The millions of Covid deaths that resulted from his lies and mishandling of the deadly virus in the early stages of Covid and throughout the pandemic? The crashed economy that followed? His soaring new deficits? The loss - likely permanent - of overseas U.S. farm markets to other nations? The damage done to international partnerships and relationships with allies? The betrayal of America’s values as he snuggled up to deadly despots, dictators, and America’s adversaries?
7. Donald Trump’s character is deeply flawed. He is a pathological liar, a narcissist, and a sociopath. He believes the world revolves around him. He is loyal to no one and nothing but himself. Nothing and no one else matters.
8. He wants to be president again for all the wrong reasons: Basically, they boil down to just three: (a) he can pardon himself as president; (b) he can hide behind the presidential seal to avoid prosecution for the 91 criminal indictments he now faces; (c) being president again would allow him to resume a very lucrative career as a grifter, pocketing millions in federal cash.
It’s baffling why so many Republicans don’t seem to care about any of the above, but far too many clearly do not.
Then there are the practical reasons. He’s simply a bad choice, for Republicans and for America.
Donald Trump will not have time to campaign in caucuses and primaries. Court dates are already stacking up for the 91 criminal indictments he is facing. Given his penchant for playing “stall ball” in courtrooms, that backlog and those scheduling conflicts are only going to grow. The court dates will and must always take precedence over campaign dates - unless he’d like to add a few new “contempt of courts” to his resume.
When Tump finally faces this reality, he will predictably complain that "they” are trying to keep him from winning.
No. He will simply be facing the inevitable result of his own behavior that resulted in 91 criminal indictments. He will simply be experiencing what every other American faces when court dates call.
It is important for Republicans to remember than even though their base may love Trump, the rest of America loathes him. He may win a primary or a nomination, but he has never won a general election, and he never will. And there is no guarantee even the Republic base won’t desert him once convictions start piling up.
America has a lot of problems that have nothing to do with Donald Trump. They need attention. Trump, however, continues to suck up all the oxygen in the public square. As a result, America’s problems - and possible solutions - don’t get the focus they need from Republicans and are also a distraction for the rest of us.
An entire generation is learning - by watching Trump and his gangs - that it is normal for a president to be corrupt, to be a criminal, that democracy can be shed easily if your side is losing, that authoritarianism is an easy, available option, and that violent resolution of political differences is acceptable. What Trump is making normal does real long term damage to our democracy. Every American who loves a democratic America ought to be highly concerned about it.
Trump’s legal entanglements have already made it impossible for Trump to effectively campaign for president even if he had the time. This may be the strongest practical argument for why Trump ought to get out of the race - and that Republicans ought to insist that he do so.
Iowans have already seen Trump “campaign” at the Iowa State Fair, where he dodged the Des Moines Register’s Soap Box stage, where he would have been asked questions in public by voters, with his answers recorded by the news media.
During that same state fair visit Iowans saw him place himself ionly in situations where he could limit interactions to brief, on the run exchanges of a just a few sentences, all of which were difficult to cover and therefore unlikely to be covered by reporters.
The nation has already seen Trump skip a national Republican candidates debate where informed moderators and competing candidates would have been able to confront and question him.
We have all watched as he announced, and then cancelled a press conference where he would have been asked questions about his 91 criminal indictments and upcoming court dates.
All, no doubt on the advice of his lawyers who don’t trust him to stop making his legal situation worse with more lies - or ironically, more public confessions.
America does not need, and should not accept, a candidate for president who thinks he doesn’t have to say anything of substance, or on the record, or about what he would do as president, or about troublesome legal problems he may be facing. This is not a new strategy for Trump. Remember - at his insistence - national Republicans didn’t even bother writing a national party platform in 2020.
Harry Truman used to describe a party’s platform as its “contract with the people,” which was a pretty good description. Trump’s view seems to be that it’s nobody’s business what he would do as President. That’s not the way democracy works, nor is it the way election campaigns in a democracy should work.
There are plenty more reasons why Trump should get out of the race - for his own good, for his party’s good, and most importantly for the good of the nation.
If he won’t do it on his own, Iowans - through the caucuses - have a special role to play in making it happen - and in making it happen sooner rather than later.
If Iowa Republicans are going to nudge Trump out the door, and into the past for their party, it will have to start with Republican voters and caucus attenders.
Iowa Republican leaders - state wide elected officials, party officials, and the state’s US House and Senate congressional delegations - have all proven to be pretty much spineless when it comes to taking on Trump. Apparently none of them have a problem with a twice impeached, 91 times criminally indicted, pathological liar, grifter, wanna-be dictator being America’s president.
If they do, they sure haven’t said so publicly.
It’s time for Trump to get out of the race. If he won’t go willingly, then Iowan Republicans can and should help him find the door.
The best thing Iowa Republicans can do for their party and their country is to abandon Trump now - and do it quickly - in order to give some oxygen in what little time remains before the caucuses, to more electable, thoughtful, non criminal Republicans who might actually believe in and want to practice democracy.
Barry Piatt on Politics: Behind the Curtains is a weekly column that is part of the Iowa Writer’s Collaborative. The Collaborative links some of Iowa’s best thinkers and writers directly with readers to help fill the gap left as many of Iowa’s traditional newspapers cut back on opinion, analysis and even reporting on a wide range of topics. Please review the Iowa Writer’s Collaborative columns listed below and consider subscribing - either for free or with a paid subscription - to help ensure that readers continue to have access to informed and thoughtful opinion, analysis, commentary, and reporting. Your subscriptions, especially paid subscriptions, are what makes this effort work and allow these columns to be available.
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Excellent distillation of need for Trump to go
I think it is the mob mentality that is pervading the Republican party. Very similar to all the people who followed Hitler during his reign.