Trump: The Big Loser? – ‘Hot Mic’ With Nidhi Razdan

Hi, this is Hot Mic and I’m Nidhi Razdan.

Donald Trump has just announced that he will seek another chance to run for president of the United States in the next election in 2024. But will he be the Republican candidate this time? For a variety of reasons, this may not quite turn out the way Trump had hoped. Republicans seem poised for a degree of Trump fatigue. The party has underperformed in recent US midterm polls, losing the Senate to Democrats. And they appear to be holding a slim majority in the House of Commons. It was a far cry from the red wave that Republicans had predicted, and in fact, it has become the best expression for the party of an incumbent president in decades. The biggest loser is Donald Trump. Most of the candidates he supported lost the election. Many of these are conspiracy theorists or voter deniers. Those who claim that Joe Biden’s victory in 2020 is a fraud, a claim Trump has tried to make since losing to Biden back then.

So, for example, in Pennsylvania, Democrat John Fetterman beat Republican Mehmet Oz to oust a Senate seat while Josh Shapiro, Democrat, won the reunification race. before the Republican candidate. In Arizona, Kari Lake and Blake Masters – both following Trump’s tactics – lost to their Democratic counterparts in the gubernatorial and Senate elections, respectively. Even if a candidate endorsed by Trump wins, it’s a far worse margin. Like in Ohio, Republican J.D. Vance won the Senate, but won 53% of the vote to keep that state’s Senate seat for the Grand Old Party. However, other Republican candidates for statewide offices won about 60% of the vote. More and more. Now, that has many in the Republican Party questioning whether extravagant conspiracy theories and extremist views will cost them the midterm elections, and therefore whether Trump will as an advocate for leadership positions. And another factor is a new face in the Republican Party, who is seen as less right-wing than Ron DeSantis, who has just won re-election by a landslide as governor of Florida and is now the the new rising star of the Republican Party.

Even the right-wing media seem to have abandoned Trump. The New York Post, one of his biggest supporters of the past, declared the Florida governor the FUTURE on the front page. Then there was a Fox News article reporting that Trump, as they say, went viral throughout the media, describing the former president as tonight’s biggest loser. Now, Trump knows that DeSantis is the biggest threat he faces today on his way to the White House, which is why he mocks him as “Ron DeSanctimonious” and even “I think if he ran away, he could hurt himself a lot. bad. I think the establishment will not like it. It won’t be good for the party.” And then he went on to threaten that he would reveal “things” about DeSantis. “That wouldn’t be very flattering,” as he said.

Now, just before Trump’s presidential campaign announcement, there was also a series of surveys conducted by a conservative group that showed that in a head-to-head confrontation with Ron DeSantis, Trump is leading by a large margin. among Republican voters in key states like Iowa and New Hampshire. These are the two states that actually vote early in the Republican nomination process. DeSantis is also leading Trump by 26 points in Florida and 20 points in Georgia. Now, all of this makes it clear that Trump is not very popular with Republican voters at the moment. And that DeSantis is leading in any head-to-head competition.

This time, Trump will also not enter the race with an empty stance. Already a one-term president, he will be judged on his past record and his role in the January 6th Capitol riots. He is also facing some very serious legal issues, including a criminal investigation into election interference in the state of Georgia, a civil fraud case targeting his business empire in the US. New York, a defamation lawsuit also involves sexual assault allegations and also investigates his role in the Capitol Hill attack. Also, the handling of classified documents after his post-presidency. However, not all Republican midterm failures are Trump’s fault. According to surveys, the Supreme Court’s ruling on abortion also played a big role. But it is also clear that Trump’s path to the White House this time is much more thorny.