If Trump Falls in the Forest And No One is Around…

On November 28, 2022, I wrote a piece critical of Trump making the same old mistakes, this time with his staff letting Kanye and Fuentes into the room to meet with him. It was another unforced error coming on the heels of an election cycle where Trump deserved some of the blame for pushing bad candidates who wound up costing the GOP.

Given three straight Trump related election losses and all the extra soap opera drama, Republicans, do you really want to put up with this crap and hope he eeks out a win in 2024, or do you maybe want to consider someone fresh and new who has a history already of beating back a hostile press and the left? Such people do exist.

The reaction? Here’s the subscriber graph during that period. The red arrow is when the piece dropped.

There are clearly some who will never move on from Trump and take criticisms of him personally. The comments here are sometimes littered with defenses of him and criticism of me, and I frequently get “well, you’re NeverTrump” emails from people who clearly weren’t paying attention in 2020.

By the way, you freebie subscribers can click here and reverse that trend:

Regardless of some, there are other data to add to this.

We now have the USA Today and the Wall Street Journal polling — both, I would note, were pretty reliable in 2022. Those outlets and their pollsters suggest most Republicans are ready to move on from Trump. From USA Today:

By 2-1, GOP and GOP-leaning voters now say they want Trump's policies but a different standard-bearer to carry them. While 31% want the former president to run, 61% prefer some other Republican nominee who would continue the policies Trump has pursued.

Over the past two years, and really after the midterms, callers to my radio show have also begun to move on.

The consensus is that people want Trump policies, but they are not sure he is the best standard bearer moving forward.

People genuinely do appreciate what President Trump did for the country. They appreciate his fight. They appreciate his judicial picks. They appreciate his robust defense of the United States worldwide and his tough stance with China, Iran, and others.

But people are increasingly inclined to think leaving the country in the hands of eighty-year-olds is not the best policy moving forward.

On top of that, a few weeks ago, Trump’s announcement for his re-election bid fell flat. Now, he’s engaged in Truth Social posts trying to advertise upcoming secret announcements to get more attention. He could go on TV any night of the week to get more exposure. He is, after all, the former President. He could go on Hannity’s show if he wanted, get a ton of eyeballs, and follow up on talk radio. But he is not.

In March 2016, the New York Times reported Donald Trump had gotten $2 billion worth of free media. CBS News’s president said Trump may be bad for America but was good for CBS. Morning Joe featured Trump. CNN breathlessly covered Trump Force One plane landings as if they were the President.

Over the course of the campaign, he has earned close to $2 billion worth of media attention, about twice the all-in price of the most expensive presidential campaigns in history. It is also twice the estimated $746 million that Hillary Clinton, the next best at earning media, took in. Senator Bernie Sanders has earned more media than any of the Republicans except Mr. Trump.

Donald Trump is, in large part, a creature of and creation of the media. He used that $2 billion of free exposure to capture the hearts and minds of many a voter. What if that all starts to go away? What if he is left to internet videos on Truth Social because Fox News won’t have him on and CNN won’t obsess about him?

We cannot discount how much the massive media exposure of 2016 really helped Trump capture the GOP nomination with the lowest percentage of the vote ever cast for a party nominee. That mattered.

And it will matter if it stops. When a tree falls in the forest, and no one is around, I’m sure it does make a sound. But no one is there to hear or see it. Same with Trump. That provides us an opportunity, instead, to hear and see the future.

The future for the GOP is really exciting. The candidates we can choose from are incredible. Though the loudest voices out there are NeverTrump and OnlyTrump, most people are moving on.

The media is going to elevate the loud voices of NeverTrump and OnlyTrump. To stay relevant, any good candidate will be defined as the second coming of Trump by NeverTrump, and a weak-kneed establishment sell-out hack by OnlyTrump. Both need Trump to stay relevant.

The upside for the GOP and the nation is that neither do. The Republican Party has a very deep bench of talent. While the midterms were not what we wanted. The future is bright.