At the end of the day, the Donald said it was all about him, and he wasn't wrong.
But he still isn't happy. The world will go on without Donald Trump.
The cast of eight also-rans engaged in the first Republican presidential debate in Milwaukee Wednesday night cast a slim, pale shadow across the stage compared to the no-show former President Donald Trump – even as they backed his vice president, Mike Pence, for honoring his oath of office and refusing to tip the election to Donald Trump. "He asked me to put him ahead of the Constitution," Pence said. And he wouldn't do it.
How do you "boo" that? Some did.
Still, Nikki Haley said the GOP cannot win with Trump as a candidate. "He's the most disliked politician in America," she said. That didn't stop most of the candidates who said they'd support Trump if he was the candidate.
It was all about the dark times in America. Ron DeSantis said only he can get it done. Vivek Ramaswamy said it wasn't "Morning in America" and we're in dark times. Of course, he wants to hand Ukraine over to Russia, and Haley ate him up for that. Pence just wanted to get a government as good as the people, while Doug Burgum wants us to embrace small-town America. They all sounded small town.
But give them a break. After all, they haven't been charged in four different jurisdictions on 91 felony charges. Trump has an edge over his nearest GOP competitors. He's the leader of a cult. And, with the weight of the world resting on his slight, demure shoulders, placed there by his own ineptitude, Donald Trump still commands fealty from millions who, according to a recent poll, say they trust him before they trust their own family.
People say they don't understand this cult-like mentality, but I've seen it before. I saw it with the Branch Davidians outside of Waco, Texas, in Mount Carmel. Trump is just another David Koresh. He found people in the dark, lonely and in the minority for their extremist views. They felt shunned. Trump took them, embraced them, showered them in a false light of attention, and made them feel important as he showed them they weren't alone. They found each other, and Trump took them for their money and souls to pursue his narcissistic agenda while making them feel best about their darkest nature.
What does the average die-hard Trump fan gain by their devotion? A false sense of righteousness. Trump hears them. Trump understands them. The mistake the cult makes is believing Trump cares anything about them.
The question is how did we get here? As a suburban kid in the '70s I related as much to "Good Times" as I did "One Day at a Time." Now our divisions seem too extreme, and our politicians, praying upon the differences, feed into and benefit from our fears and prejudices.
"They're not coming after me, they're coming after you," is heard far more often than, "We must always consider that we shall be as a city upon a hill — the eyes of all people are upon us."
Donald Trump certainly knows the eyes of all people are upon him. Well, he at least clings to that belief with a fevered tenacity. He wants the eyes on him. So even though he didn't show up at the debate, and his campaign was banned from being in the Spin Room after the fact, he sent his surrogates out to preach his gospel on the same television news shows he often accuses of being "fake news."
What we got on CBS and other networks was Trump's propaganda minister Jason Miller who proceeded to insult President Biden and Trump's GOP competitors while simultaneously praising Donald Trump as the savior of humanity. You know, a regular Wednesday night in Trumpland. Miller couldn't act like an adult, and CBS anchor Major Garrett finally admonished Miller after he accused President Biden of only being awake four hours a day.
Meanwhile, after Wednesday night it is apparent that Donald Trump is in danger of losing control of the GOP he largely built. The eight also-rans mimicked Trump on a variety of issues and sounded more sane than Trump doing so.
That is until the candidates were asked specifically about Trump. Chris Christie, as expected, went after Trump. "Someone has got to stop normalizing this conduct," he said. "The conduct is beneath the office of the president of the United States."
Either way, the Donald's grift remains the same. "President Trump has already won this evening's debate because everything is going to be about him," Trump Campaign Senior Advisor Chris LaCivita said. "In fact, tonight's Republican undercard event really shouldn't even be called a debate, but rather an audition to be a part of President Trump's team in his second term."
Former GOP presidential candidate Joe Walsh agreed with Trump. "Debate? What debate?" he posted on X, formerly Twitter. "We all know who the nominee is going to be. Everybody up on that stage tonight knows who the nominee is going to be. Everybody up on that stage tonight surrendered to him. Long ago. Sure, privately they all hope for a jail cell or a heart attack for him. But up on that stage tonight they'll praise him, bow to him, & defend him. Because they know he's the cult leader. And they fear the cult. And they know, barring a jail cell or a heart attack, he's the nominee."
For his part, Trump may see himself as a modern-day Winston Churchill, if he only knew who that was and how he might take some of Churchill's money. "For my part, I consider that it will be found much better by all parties to leave the past to history, especially as I propose to write that history myself," Churchill said.
Trump's mental wet dream includes tailoring the past, present and future to suit his every monetary, legislative, judicial and other personal want or need. Since he doesn't have the stature of Churchill and would struggle in a tic-tac-toe game with a grade-schooler (and that's giving him the benefit of the doubt) Donald Trump certainly has no more a chance of writing his own history than Churchill had. Churchill failed to do it. Trump can expect far less.
However, Trump also believes that the only thing worse than being mentioned with menace is not being mentioned at all. That's probably what bothered him most about Wednesday night. He wanted to own his competition in person. The fact is Donald Trump is singularly adept at securing every bit of negative public relations available and converting it to fuel with which to run for office. He wouldn't care what was said about him, as long as something was said about him.
Anyone who covered Trump for four years in the White House knew five minutes after getting there that was Trump's MO. Still, we seemed too slow to understand this as we have been giving Trump the oxygen he wants for years now by talking about him and feeding his media addiction.
Like the gathering crowd around a craps table when the degenerate gambler is on a roll, we've been there watching Donny, partly in revulsion and partly in awe.
And that underscores a reality that the Republicans cannot confront. Donald Trump has given safe haven to the crazies and most extreme of Americans. He's found millions of them who have found safety in numbers, who've constructed a tyranny of the minority and will support Trump come hell or high water.
In the end, they may mean nothing. That is their fear. That is why they rage at the dying of the Trump light.
Donald Trump is headed for a reckoning. As much as he wants to scream in the court of public opinion like the other eight candidates, as much as he could dominate them, and as much as he did dominate the narrative even though he wasn't there, Donald Trump cannot outrun this reckoning in a court of law. He is facing a world of hurt, and Wednesday night was the first of many likely no-shows by the leading candidate — and that absence can only make the heartfelt grow fondless and can only help others find an audience.
Wednesday night proved that though most of the candidates — especially DeSantis — have the appeal of day-old roadkill, someone on that stage could fill Trump's clown shoes, and ultimately someone will.
Though many still drink the Donald Trump Kool-Aid, the pitcher is running dry. The Republicans had a spirited debate Wednesday night and Trump's no-show only hurt him; the debate underscored Donald Trump's fading appeal. He may still be the front-runner, and Joe Walsh may be right, but I do not think so.
Because of his tremendous legal problems, Trump is a compromised candidate who cannot dare show up much in public for fear of shooting off his mouth and risking further self-incrimination. He wasn't in the public eye Wednesday and we all know how much that kills him.
He knows every minute you're not in front of the camera, you risk becoming irrelevant. People learn to forget you.
That has to hurt Donald Trump as much as the possibility of facing at least the next five years of his life in prison.
