Politico: Trump Gears Up For War With “His Own Party”

The last four years were exhausting.

In retrospect, it is obvious that a lot of mistakes were made. Hopefully, the 2020 election and the aftermath exposed most of those flaws and we can learn something from the experience and move forward again. It feels like we were stuck for four years and lost the momentum we had in 2016. I sense that things have changed though with Neoliberal Joe in the White House.

Politico:

“There’s no longer a chief of staff to screen his calls and he keeps no predictable working hours. So an unspoken rule has governed Donald Trump’s calendar since he left Washington last month: To sit down with the former president, you must belong to his posh Palm Beach club or know how to contact him directly.

But even that won’t always do it. For weeks now, Trump has rejected meetings with everyone from former South Carolina governor and 2024 hopeful Nikki Haley to House and Senate GOP candidates vying for his ear — preferring to spend his days leisurely calling friends, binging cable news, golfing with a rotating cast of partners and basking in standing ovations whenever he arrives for dinner on Mar-a-Lago’s outdoor patio. One person close to the ex-president said he’s become “unreachable” to anyone outside his limited circle of loyal aides, longtime friends and die-hard political allies. …

The planning for Trump’s coming revenge tour comes as other top Republicans try to cajole him into working with the party’s apparatus ahead of next year’s midterm elections, rather than recruiting rival candidates whose bids could complicate primaries and cost the GOP critical seats. Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) is expected to meet with Trump over the weekend to discuss his upcoming plans, including the former president’s desire to push for voter reforms at a time when the topic of election integrity has created a major split among elected Republicans. …”

The last four years weren’t entirely Donald Trump’s fault.

When Donald Trump won the 2016 election as an insurgent candidate, he didn’t have many allies to work with in Washington, DC. The Trump administration was staffed by Never Trump establishment conservatives. The Trump Cabinet was filled with literal snakes in the grass. The federal courts were full of people that previous Republican and Democratic presidents had appointed over the years. The Republican Congress in particular was full of people who were unsympathetic to the Trump agenda.