Former US president Donald Trump has had a busy week.
He’s been on the campaign trail for 2024 (it’s always election season in the US), going places he normally wouldn’t and largely striking an uncharacteristically conventional tone. Footage has been released of him at a fraud deposition pleading the Fifth Amendment (which prevents self-incrimination) a mere 400 times when asked about his financial affairs. He’s suing Bob Woodward. And most strikingly, some of his colleagues are idly fantasising about his death.
According to The Atlantic, several Republican party figures are thinking that Trump — the figurehead of three consecutive poor showings for the party, and displaying no signs of going quietly into retirement — will finally have his legal troubles catch up with him before 2024. And if not… well… the Trump situation could “resolve itself naturally”.
The 76-year-old famously eats like a 10-year-old who’s allowed to pick their every meal, and once argued that exercise depletes the body’s finite energy. Apparently GOP figures are relying on that to do what the January 6 hearings as yet have not:
The scenarios Republicans find themselves fantasising about range from the far-fetched to the morbid. In his recent book Thank You for Your Servitude, my colleague Mark Leibovich quoted a former Republican representative who bluntly summarised his party’s plan for dealing with Trump: ‘We’re just waiting for him to die.’ As it turns out, this is not an uncommon sentiment. In my conversations with Republicans, I heard repeatedly that the least disruptive path to getting rid of Trump, grim as it sounds, might be to wait for his expiration.
