Donald Trump’s triumphant rally in Texas on Saturday capped a head-spinning week in which the presumptive 2024 Republican nominee delivered a sucker punch to the jaws of defeat, leaving adversaries and rivals sprawled on the canvas wondering what the hell just happened.
To anyone who has been listening to Trump’s words and observing his actions over the past seven years, this should come as no surprise.
His heroes include George Patton, the American general most feared by the German high command because of his fearlessness and unpredictability. Trump has mocked our present military leadership because they have “forgotten how to win” and brags that he “knows better than the generals” how to achieve victory.
Trump is a master at keeping enemies off balance. He shows great restraint when the intemperate hot heads clamor for war. But he strikes like a cobra, without warning, against genuine threats.
When Iran shot down an American drone worth $130 million, Trump let the generals draw up retaliatory attack plans and then, to the consternation of war hawks like John Bolton, called off the missile strikes because it was, after all, only a piece of equipment and killing human beings would not be a “proportionate” response. But when Iran launched an attack that killed an American contractor six months later, Trump stunned the world by assassinating Iran’s chief architect of terror, General Qasem Soleimani, via drone strike.
In the mostly non-lethal arena of U.S. politics, Trump has the same penchant for fighting unconventionally.
Consider the search warrant executed at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago in August. The feds timed their search for classified documents to occur during the seasonal closing of Trump’s luxury club and residence during the peak summer Florida heat. Trump was out of town. FBI agents could serve their papers and quietly go about their business, as the public reaction would be uncertain. That was their game plan.
Then Trump got word that agents had served their search warrant. He immediately went on Truth Social and blasted out a statement: "My beautiful home, Mar-A-Lago in Palm Beach, Florida, is currently under siege, raided, and occupied by a large group of FBI agents. They even broke into my safe!"
Social media caught fire with news of the search. Mainstream media outlets reported the breaking news as the “raid” on Mar-a-Lago just as Trump characterized it. It took a few hours before they corrected course and clarified, per the FBI and DOJ, that it was not a “raid” but a “search” pursuant to a warrant. But the damage was done. The feds took a big black eye and Trump won an important victory in the court of public opinion.
And he ran up the score by reporting details, such as how the FBI riffled through Melania’s dresser drawers and left his 16 year-old son Baron’s room messier than they found it.
Trump is like the 1985 Chicago Bears. You can draw up an exquisite game plan against him and rehearse it all week long. But on game day, there he is, like Richard Dent, blowing up the play in the backfield, forcing a fumble and running it in for a defensive score. And he’s definitely spiking the ball in your face to let you know just how stupid it was that you even tried to run that play against him.
Trump is the Monster of the Beltway. He is willing to take risks and he’s playing for keeps.
This brings us to the recent Trump jail-break blitz against the effort by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg to indict and arrest him on the eve of his kick-off campaign rally in Waco, Texas. The players on the Democrat side of the football planned to neutralize Trump by painting him as a criminal in the public mind and a liability to the Republican Party in 2024.
So what did Trump do? He launched a pre-emptive attack on Saturday March 18, issuing a statement that the Manhattan D.A. planned to arrest him on Tuesday March 21. Then he put out the word that he would submit to criminal processing like any other defendant despite facing meritless charges driven by politics. This set MAGA nation on fire and caused even some centrists to question the wisdom of criminalizing politics in this way. Comedian Chris Rock warned that Democrats would be making a big mistake if they arrested Trump. It would only drive up his popularity, Rock said.
But the best part of the whole affair for Trump was the collateral damage. Vivek Ramaswamy took to the airwaves to implore all Republican 2024 candidates to stand up against the weaponization of the justice system, but Ron DeSantis stayed silent too long. As governor of Florida, DeSantis has the authority to fight Trump’s extradition to New York on criminal charges, so everyone waited eagerly to see what he would say about the matter. And DeSantis blew it, spectacularly.
If Alvin Bragg was the running back who got blown up in the backfield and fumbled the ball, DeSantis was the hapless quarterback turned defender who grasped at the galloping defensive end, only to get stiff-armed to the ground and have the ball spiked on his head.
DeSantis should have said that, as governor of Florida, he would not tolerate the victimization of Trump. He would instead step up to be his protector and defender. And he should have gone even further to say he would do this whether or not Trump wanted it because Trump is a Florida resident and it is the governor’s duty to protect and defend all Floridians, especially those vulnerable to miscarriages of justice. This would no doubt have enraged Trump. He is the ultimate alpha male who would never tolerate someone else assuming the role of his protector.
But it is too late. DeSantis chose a different course, most likely guided by advisors who would be happy to see Trump in handcuffs. DeSantis said he would not get involved in the Trump case. And he had a little fun at Trump’s expense by adding that he didn’t know anything about affairs with porn stars because that wasn’t something he had experience with. It was good for a laugh, but DeSantis paid a heavy political price for not fully engaging with perhaps the most important issue to the Deplorables — the weaponization of their own government against them, with a corresponding derogation of constitutional rights.
The “fog of war” created by Trump’s pre-emptive strike against his impending indictment led to a volley of attacks back and forth between Trump loyalists and DeSantis supporters. The DeSantis faction accused Trump of foul play by repeatedly violating the “Reagan rule” against attacking fellow Republicans. They cheered the Florida governor’s decision to finally hit back at Trump after the former president repeatedly hurled insults at DeSantis, accusing his rival of running a shadow campaign against him through surrogates. In sum and substance, the DeSantis supporters were accusing Trump of not playing fair, not following the rules.
But this is exactly Trump’s appeal to the working class people at the heart of the MAGA movement. They are sick and tired of playing by unofficial rules of engagement articulated by an elite class that now wantonly violates black letter law in its persecution of political opponents.
The Deplorables got Trump elected in 2016 because they wanted a fighter. They are up against a deeply corrupt system in which the Congress, the courts, the federal agencies, the law firms, the Fortune 500 companies and the universities seem to have been overtaken by left-wing interests hostile to traditional American values. This is even more apparent now than when Trump first ran seven years ago.
The deck is stacked against the MAGA movement. They are not looking for a “fair fight” governed by rules of etiquette written by the Establishment. They are tired of “beautiful losers” like Mitt Romney who “play the game the way it’s supposed to be played” and give gracious concession speeches.
The Deplorables want someone who is willing to wage unconventional, asymmetric warfare. It is the only way to win with so many powerful institutions aligned against them. And Trump is the only political figure on the Right who has shown the aptitude and willingness to engage in this type of political fight.