You know how the saying goes: if at first you don’t succeed then sulk like a toddler, baselessly claim that an election was stolen from you, then try, try again. After lots of will-he-won’t-he it now seems almost certain that Donald Trump will run for president in 2024. Last Thursday, Kellyanne Conway, Trump’s 2016 campaign lead, said that we can expect Trump to announce his candidacy soon and rumours have been flying ever since. Over the past few days, Trump advisers have been dropping hints to the media that the former president will run and Trump himself has been teasing a comeback at events across the country. On Monday, shares of the company that will take Trump’s social media venture public rallied in anticipation of the idea that the guy who reportedly drinks 12 Diet Cokes a day, likes to flush White House documents down the toilet and is mired in multiple lawsuits, might become the most powerful man in the world again.
So when will Trump make this cursed announcement? Probably as soon as I file this column, knowing my luck. And I’m not the only one nervous about Trump’s timing. A number of Republicans reportedly spent Monday frantically calling up Trump and begging him not to announce his candidacy until after Tuesday’s midterm elections. The worry among some Republicans is that Trump’s news would overshadow the midterms and send Democratic voters scrambling to the polls. Trump, in an unusual display of self-restraint, has suggested that we should all mark our calendars for 15 November when he’ll make a “very big” announcement from Mar-a-Lago. “We want nothing to detract from the importance of tomorrow,” he added, as he made an announcement he knew was guaranteed to make headlines and steal at least some attention from the midterms.
I know it’s grim to think we might all have to suffer through two years of Trump-the-candidate (and that’s not even figuring in the fact that he might win), but there is a silver lining to this horror show. Namely, there’s a decent chance that Trump throwing his hat into the ring will divide the Republican party and, if we’re lucky, cause them to eat their own. Right now, you see, the top unofficial 2024 Republican contender is Florida governor Ron DeSantis, whom Trump is extremely annoyed with. Trump helped DeSantis go from relative obscurity to rightwing darling when he endorsed him back in 2018. Since then, however, DeSantis hasn’t been kissing the ring enough. He’s gone from a protege to a potential threat – one that Trump is very keen on neutralising. We know that Trump is serious about taking down DeSantis because he’s reached for strategy No 1 in his “How to Be a Political Genius” handbook: come up with a devastating nickname for your opponent. On Saturday Trump unveiled his new moniker for the Florida governor: “Ron DeSanctimonious”. Not bad, but it feels a little try-hard. Probably because it is, in fact, extremely try-hard. According to the New York Times: “Mr Trump has been privately testing derisive nicknames for Mr DeSantis with his friends and advisers, including the put-down he used on Saturday.” I know that we should all be worried about the death of democracy and all that but I just love the idea of Trump convening a little writers’ room where everyone workshops nicknames for his nemeses.
Speaking of strategies, the Democrats, I reckon, ought to be weaponising Trump’s insecurities as best they can. Democrats should be getting operatives to call up Trump and say: “Hey, did you hear what DeSanctimonious said about you?” Then they should be calling DeSantis up and saying: “Hey, did you hear what Trump said about you?” Then they should sit back and watch as two of the most popular – and most awful – Republicans tear each other apart. Forget Nixon’s “madman theory”: behold Mahdawi’s “middle-school politics theory”.
• Arwa Mahdawi is a Guardian columnist
