Trump Has Not Sealed Up Anything

F or sheer drama in the Politics section, nothing is better than Donald Trump. Yes, as soon as the FBI searched Mar-a-Lago, all the news interest about Ron DeSantis seemed to evaporate instantly. Yes, almost the entire conservative ecosystem immediately shifted into its own “Democracy is Dying” melodrama. Yes, even many Trump-shy Republicans started to speculate that a bit of overreach by the Biden admin would backfire and renew the bond between Trump and Republicans. And yes, Trump is a gift to the media hungry for clicks, ready outrage. Everyone in the White House press corps and on cable news is anxious to sign their second or third deal for a book in lurid red, white, and black colors. On the night of the search, former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee said on Hannity, “I hope that right around Christmas, Donald Trump, after these midterms, he announces he will run for president, and we rally around him, and say he is the candidate.”

So is that it? Trump by acclamation?

No. Not quite.

It’s true that populist leaders like Donald Trump do forge unique bonds with their supporters, bonds that transcend merely transactional politics. That is why you hear pro-Trump commentators saying that this wasn’t just an attack on Trump, but on all Americans who support him. And Trump showed that he has the game mastered when he turned around and explained that he now understands how innocent people can plead the Fifth.

But Trump cannot play the victim card all the way to the White House. There is a double-edged nature to his complaints about the 2020 election, or about legal troubles that he is in now. Supporters may instantly sympathize with Trump and intuitively understand why he is undergoing these trials. But Trump needs to show himself triumphing over them to be a credible leader.

Trump will also need to re-create the magic that propelled him in 2016. His supporters anticipated and greatly enjoyed delivering his election as a shock to all of polite Washington, a shock that not only humiliated Democrats, but also humbled many Republicans, too. Trump will have to find a way to make a sequel even more exciting than last time. Part of his 2016 appeal was his willingness to tell truths that Washington would not accept: that America was getting little for the war on terror. Trump needs to re-create the iconoclastic thrill of supporting him, the empowering sense that he is an instrument for crushing the establishment in both parties.

Trump’s first term also will have inevitably disappointed some of the people who projected their hopes onto him. He had promised to “change” once in office and be less outrageous. He didn’t, and many suburban women voters punished him in 2018 and 2020. He promised to fulfill the long-nursed fantasy among some Republicans and many populists to put a businessman at the top of Washington. The economy was good until the pandemic started, but Trump frequently seemed like a boss who had lost control of his underlings. A real boss wouldn’t have let a subordinate department like the FBI soak up so much of his energy.

Finally, Trump needs to be what he was in 2015 and 2016; he needs to run on policies that people like. In his first run, Trump promised to build a wall and revive American manufacturing. He promised to confront China. The fact that the Biden administration is building some parts of the wall and passed the CHIPs act, hoping to kick-start a semiconductor industry in America as a hedge against Chinese adventurism or blockades of Taiwan, is a testament to how successful Trump was at raising the salience of these issues.

But he needs to do it again. DeSantis has shown a keen eye in joining battles that conservatives already feel engaged in — with woke teachers or corporations. But the Trump who won the presidency in 2016 had a talent for feeling out the secret hurts and aspirations of the electorate available to Republicans, especially their wounded pride in their communities.