About That Trump Town Hall...

Image courtesy of CNN

I gave it a day. 

I gave it a day for the Republican Party to digest what happened Wednesday night during CNN’s “Trump Town Hall,” aired before a live audience of Republicans and Republican-leaning voters. (Don’t get me started on CNN’s irresponsible and cynical play for ratings.) I waited for the party to respond to the extreme statements by their current front runner. After all, here was the chance for other candidates to distinguish themselves and really take him on, to show that the GOP really isn’t a cesspool of Trump acolytes and sycophants.

I’m still waiting.

In many ways, the hour-long circus went about as expected, with Trump steamrolling moderator Kaitlin Collins, repeating demonstrably false claims, and soaking in the adoration of the hand-picked GOP base while turning his worst character traits and horrific actions into political assets. The crowd laughed when Trump joked about his sexual battery of E. Jean Carroll, and they cheered when he called Collins a “nasty woman.”

In short, Trump hasn’t changed one bit, and neither have his most ardent supporters. If anything, they are emboldened and hungrier than ever for his return.

The crickets from the GOP highlight how badly broken the party is because of Trump. Before we get to that, let’s review a few highlights—or perhaps low points is the better word—from Wednesday night.

Grievance, denial, extremism…and some legal peril

If anything “good” came out of Wednesday night, it was Trump giving Democrats a lot of sound bytes while underscoring that his central message is fundamentally negative, aggressive and dangerous. As I’ve noted in the past, this is utterly exhausting for most voters and an increasingly non-winning strategy the longer it goes on.

Trump managed to claim January 6 was “a beautiful day” and that he would “most likely” pardon a “large portion” of those convicted for their attack on the Capitol, insisting that they were there with “love in their heart.” He also ominously would not say if he would accept the results of the 2024 election.

On foreign policy, he refused to say whether he actually wanted Ukraine to win the war, dissembling with statements like, “I don’t think in terms of winning and losing,” but rather “in terms of getting it settled so we stop killing all those people.” No matter that it is actually Russia doing the invading and the killing.

He argued in favor of defaulting on the national debt, despite universal warnings of economic catastrophe. With respect to not lifting the debt ceiling, he argued, “You might as well do it now because you’ll do it later, we have to save this country. This country is dying.”

On abortion, a driving factor in the midterm losses for the GOP that could prove decisive in 2024, Trump also bragged that he was the one who got rid of Roe v. Wade, calling its overturning a “great victory.” Trump noted, “For 50 years this thing has been going on,” referring to abortions protections under Roe. “I was able to do it and I was very honored to do it.” 

Trump’s lawyers also probably felt their guts tightening when the subject of his mishandling of top secret and other classified documents came up. Those attorneys have spent considerable time and effort laying out the notion that classified documents might have gotten to Mar-a-Lago by accident, perhaps via an uncareful staffer. But on Wednesday, Trump again claimed he had “every right” to take them from the White House. And when asked if he showed classified documents to others, he hedged. “Not really… I would have the right to,” and then adding, “not that I can think of.” Prosecutors took note.

Trump put the GOP in a bind, again

Setting aside the utter insanity of the above (and much more that he said in that one hour), Trump’s MAGA extremism is not only once again on full display, it places all of the other Republican candidates, and more broadly the entire party, in a very awkward place.

In each of these areas, GOP leaders will have to stake out a position that is either contrary to their party’s leader (which will rapidly lose them votes among the base) or in agreement or even to the right of him (which will lose them support among the general population). And they can’t keep hedging forever, because then they wind up sounding like they really don’t have any spine or principles.

Take abortion, the ultimate wedge issue now for the GOP. The Dobbs decision was supposed to end the federal question and send the matter back to the several states. But the red states have been so extreme in their abortion bans that some Republicans, like Sen. Lindsey Graham, began to panic. Since last year, Graham has been pushing a national abortion ban at 15 weeks, so the GOP is back to talking about federal-level regulation despite Dobbs.

After Wednesday night’s performance, a question for every GOP candidate should be, “Do you agree with Donald Trump that overturning Roe v. Wade was a great victory?” A strong majority of Americans, even in the red states, still want Roe’s protections. But the GOP’s primary voters—the ones who will nominate the person who runs against Joe Biden—vastly agree with Trump. This is a very big problem for the GOP.

On January 6, the GOP also remains highly vulnerable. In the 2022 midterms, Trump insisted on endorsing election denialists, and that led to stunning losses in all the important battleground states. The American people demonstrated that they want candidates who actually concede when they lose. They fundamentally understand that democracy doesn’t work otherwise. But on Wednesday, Trump doubled down, suggested that he would throw the 2024 election into chaos, and even praised those who violently attacked the Capitol. 

Every GOP candidate should now be asked, “Would you pardon the January 6 rioters if president?” and “Do you believe the 2020 election was stolen?” The GOP base will insist upon “yes” answers to both, but the wider electorate wants to hear an emphatic “no.” Again, a very big problem.

Predictably, we have heard mostly silence from the GOP. This was particularly telling on the question of Trump’s sexual abuse following the E. Jean Carroll verdict, where none of GOP hopefuls said anything about it, at least without being cornered. Those forced to speak largely defended Trump or deflected the question. Mike Pence, for example, called any focus on the sexual abuse verdict a “distraction” from issues like the economy and crime. And when pressed if he felt comfortable with a president who had been found liable for sexual abuse, he said that “in my four and a half years serving alongside the president I never heard or witnessed behavior of that nature.”

That isn’t how someone who wants to win over women voters should respond. The answer should be easy and principled: No one whom a unanimous federal jury has found to be a sexual abuser should be anywhere near the White House. But the GOP can’t say it, because it’s Trump.

In the 2018 midterms, Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation by the GOP-controlled Senate, even after he was credibly accused of sexual assault, motivated large numbers of women voters to the polls, particularly in key suburban districts. That helped swing the House to the Democrats. If we add abortion and Trump’s now proven sexual abuse to the mix, the GOP stands to lose women voters even more dramatically in 2024.

The truly insane thing is, the GOP knows this. Every GOP hopeful understands this. They see the math. They know where the voters are on this. But they are stuck, and they are cowards. If they weren’t, they would say the following:

The 2020 election wasn’t stolen.

Sexual abusers shouldn’t be president.

Ukraine should win the war with Russia.

Trump is a sociopath.

See how easy that is? Just somehow not for the GOP.