Republican Party

I wouldn’t be shocked if the Republicans end up sending a woman to the White House in 2025 🐘 👩🏼

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Donald Trump is the GOP favorite and likely to seize the presidential nomination in 2024. But, I am not really convinced that Trump will be the person that ends up in the White House come 2025. I think his legal problems, his declining health and age will keep him from returning to the White House even if the GOP can ride the wave of Joe Biden’s unpopularity back to the White House.

The truth is the GOP has a better chance of winning back the White House if not for Donald Trump. He is unpopular but so is Biden. Yet right now, Trump sucks all of the air out of the Republican primary. Trump may very well win the Republican Primary or many of the early states, but a dramatic change events leads him not to ultimately cinch the nomination. That leaves a potential opening, one that I doubt will be filled by Ron Desantis which many people view as the ultimate political faker, a stunt master of dubious political acts but who has little leadership capacity.

Who would fill this void? I am thinking a dark horse might be out there. And it might be a women, especially should Donald Trump pick somebody like South Dakota Kristi Noem as the Vice Presidential-candidate. A women leading the Republican ticket could help blunt the messaging around abortion and women’s rights, especially a strong women with working-class roots. Being a rancher and having that Western-spirit doesn’t hurt either. If Trump ultimately doesn’t win the presidency, I am sure the candidate he would most likely want to be in the White House is a hand-picked successor.

And even if it’s somebody else, a working-class (at least in appearance) women could be a very strong GOP candidate next year for President. People really don’t like elites or at least educated people who are too condescending and act like they no better then everybody else. Opposition to wokeness is likely key to winning the White House next-cycle, especially for a Republican candidate as most highly-educated people are increasingly becoming Democrats. But many don’t like that as they feel like scientists and educators too often wrap their science and education into their politics, and they want a new voice, who isn’t the traditional white male, but also doesn’t cowtoe to the establishment.

Why does Trump think he can win in 2024?

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There isn’t a plausible explanation in my mind why Donald Trump thinks he can realistically expect to win the 2024 Presidential election. Even on his most simplistic explanation – his claim that he lost due to massive fraud in 2020, there is little reason to believe there would be less fraud in 2024.

You can debate what counts as election fraud but ultimately the rules of elections are defined primarily by incumbents and few changes to election law favorable to Republicans have occurred in blue states. If anything with Democrats winning several state legislatures in 2022 post-Dobbs decision, the terrain has become more unfavorable to Republicans. If Trump wants to win back the presidency in 2024, he obviously has to win back states he lost in 2020.

Incumbents often win re-election because they have previously perfected the strategy to win election plus have had several years of the state’s apparatus to further their candidacy. Doesn’t always happen that way, incumbents either do a bad job or are of unfortunate circumstances and get voted out of office, witness Donald Trump. But all things the same, a re-run of the 2020 election against Trump in 2024 only is likely to produce the same result – Biden re-elected.

Like it or not, the most likely thing to happen in a Trump – Biden rematch is just another 2020 election. Same result in most states, same amount of fraud and voter turnout. States that were blue in 2020 are likely just to be as blue in 2024. If anything, Biden might pick up additional states assuming that Trump is even less popular after his multiple felony indictments and trials.

Biden himself doesn’t have an automatic ride to the presidency though, he does own the economy and everything else that has happened in the past four years in the country. Inflation and crime are down slightly after peaking in the first years of his presidency after COVID-19 but they are still leaving a sting in voters minds, especially as gas prices creep back up. Recession fears continue even if they’ve slowed lately too.

I don’t know but I don’t think Trump is a good candidate at all for 2024 – but I could be wrong. Not the first time.

NPR

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Prosecutors obtained secret search warrant for Trump’s Twitter account : NPR

Special counsel Jack Smith obtained a search warrant for former President Donald Trump's Twitter account back in January and requested Twitter not disclose this information to Trump, newly unsealed court documents show.

On Jan. 17, 2023, prosecutors applied for, and received, a search warrant directing Twitter, a company now known as X, to produce data and records related to the @realDonaldTrump account, documents from the U.S. Court of Appeals for District of Columbia Circuit show.

The social media company subsequently fought the Justice Department on this warrant request as well as its demand not to disclose this information to Trump or others, the court filings show.

In a since-rejected appeal, Twitter had argued that the nondisclosure order violated the First Amendment and the Stored Communications Act.

Twitter did eventually comply with the warrant, but failed to produce all of the requested information until three days after a court-ordered deadline, placing the company in contempt and was ordered to pay a $350,000 fine for the delay.