There for a moment, I knew how Alexei Navalny felt.
It was the scene in the White House, right after the film celebrating Trump’s victory over the virus. Trump awkwardly offered thanks to the little people without whom his great triumph would have been impossible, including Post Office employees. The little people, for their part, shook their heads at the unfounded attacks on the great man by the radical left, and applauded him fulsomely for his genius.
Is this a parallel universe, or what?
Trump has to thread the needle here by soothing the fears of whatever moderate swing voters are still out there, while still firing up his base. I don’t think he is succeeding, because the anger is overwhelming the bridge over troubled waters. Don Jr. in particular was so amped up, I thought he was going to jump through my TV screen and punch me in the face. That isn’t going to get it done.
Nikki Haley was the best of the bridges, but she’s wrong if she thinks she can win in 2024 by quietly rejecting the worst excesses of Trumpism. The right isn’t going to vote for a woman who helped get rid of the Confederate flag. It just isn’t going to happen.