Cookie dismantled the former president’s “messy” weekend speech at the Conservative Political Action Conference, in which he tried to paint himself as the “savior of American rights.” In a Monday column, conservative writers rightly attacked Trump that he was “responsible for severe Republican losses in the last three national elections.”
Democrats destroyed Republicans in the 2018 election when Trump became president. He lost the race for re-election in 2020. And in 2022, when many Trump-backed Republicans ran for primary office, Democrats did better than expected.
Trump’s claim at CPAC that the GOP was “run by weirdos, neocons, open-borders zealots, and idiots” before he seized control “wasn’t a direct comment,” Cooke said.
Instead, it’s part of Trump’s pattern of slamming national Republicans like former House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) and former President Ronald Reagan “as examples of what’s historically wrong with the GOP.”
“As far as I can see, the argument here seems to be that if, in addition to all the solid conservatives who support a given candidate, that candidate also has more politically moderate fans, he must, ipso facto, be a fraud,” Cooke wrote. “The one . . . Wow, that’s a bit backwards, isn’t it?”
Trump is now running for the Republican presidential nomination in 2024 despite having been impeached twice and defeated in 2020. He already has his first major challenge – former ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley – and is expected to face several others, including Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis.