The Sharks are Circling Donald Trump

The sharks are circling Donald Trump, but unlike the normal scenario in which all the sharks are democrat operatives, DNC shills, or left-wing media, the sharks threatening Trump now are entirely of his own making. Frankly, if Trump’s political career is to go down in flames it will be better for the country if his demise is self-inflicted, but as a two-time Trump voter, I certainly hope that he avoids making a fatal mistake by jumping a shark that was never intending to attack. The warning in the phrase “jump the shark” is explicit. The Urban Dictionary defines it thusly: “The beginning of the end. Something is said to have “jumped the shark” when it has reached its peak and begun a downhill slide to mediocrity or oblivion.” If Trump remains on his current path, he will inevitably experience this fate.

Trump has been praised as an unmatched campaigner and his massive crowds were the envy of every candidate, Democrat or Republican. While Democrats dismissed them as sideshows, they were clearly whistling past the proverbial graveyard in 2016, and their Presidential hopes ended up there. Then in 2020, Trump barnstormed the nation drawing even more massive crowds, but lost in a controversial election that saw Biden sequester himself in his basement for most of the campaign. When Biden did venture out to campaign, he had trouble drawing two dozen people, but Biden ended up with more votes than Barack Obama got in his elections. The party line is that the reason for that was anti-Trump sentiment. Vast numbers of Americans suspected, and still suspect, voter fraud, a corrupt press, feckless Republicans, legal chicanery and widespread incompetence for Trump’s defeat. Trump himself suspects all of those factors are in play, and that seems to be driving a lot his current decisions.

During his successful run for President, Trump galvanized his supporters by focusing on the fact that the government was a burden on average Americans and presented himself as solution to that. He was going to slash government regulation, end our involvement in foreign wars, reduce taxes, cut spending 1% per year for 8 years, encourage manufacturing jobs to return to America, stop illegal immigration; and make America energy independent. He delivered on most of those goals, and that is why his base still loves him. However, it is important to note than NONE of those goals was about Trump. All of them were about helping ordinary Americans and taxpayers.

Unfortunately, Trump’s focus seems to have changed. Instead of being focused on advocating policies that will help average Americans, Trump seems obsessed with getting revenge on his opponents (real or imagined) for enabling his loss in 2020. His approach in his campaigns was all about America ands helping Americans. Now his campaign is all about Trump. That is a terrible mistake. Trump’s base was never about him or his personality except in the service of the goals he was espousing. If Trump used the exact same style in a campaign espousing open borders and unlimited abortion, his base would still drop him like a bag of dirt. Trump seems to think that his voters share his rage over how he was treated during the 2020 election. They do not. The care about it only because it means that all kinds of conservative or non-leftists candidates can be shut out of elections by the Deep State. Their calculus is that if they can get Trump into office, Trump will fix the election fraud issue, problem solved. They do not care if Trump gets his vengeance, and THAT is the shark waiting in the political pool for Trump to make his fateful leap. If Trump continues to act from rage and vengeance seeking, he will lose his base.

How is he acting with rage? By attacking Republicans who have never attacked him, Trump looks angry and self-obsessed. He looks vengeful every time he references January 6^th and the “stolen election”. When he blasts Fox News and the New York Post as no better than CNN when most of his base gets their news from Fox and the NY Post, they begin to doubt their loyalty to him, not to Fox and the NY Post. Trump needs to level his attacks on liberal Democrats over their policies. If he does attack them for besmirching and trying to impeach him, and for harassing him and his family and friends, he needs to couch it as a defense of American liberty for all citizens, not a get even move to prove that he won a grudge match with his enemies. When he insults Ron DeSantis and accuses him of being “disloyal” (when did anyone sign a loyalty oath to Trump?), Trump is showing the exact arrogance that his true enemies have been trying to accuse him of having. Democrat leaders LOVE it when Trump attacks Republicans, harps on the election 24/7, obsesses over legal attacks on himself and his business, and generally sounds like a self-absorbed billionaire with a giant chip on his shoulder.

America is facing huge problems, and many of them are directly traceable to the Democrat party and their racist, sexist, anti-American policies and attitudes. If Trump wants a chance to continue his efforts to solve some of those problems, he needs to get back to the campaign focus he had in 2016 and 2020. His campaign needs to hammer this theme 24/7: it is all about making America better for all Americans. If he mentions his own wars with the government, it needs to be in the context of letting voters know that they should never have to worry about being treated like that by their own government, and that Trump is the man to reduce the power an scope of government to ensure no American has to go thru what Trump himself has experienced. Trump should be about competence, integrity, and accountability in government not personal revenge on that government. The former message is patriotic, oriented on the average voter, and inspirational. The latter focus is petty, self-absorbed, and frankly, boring.

So, the shark of political oblivion is swimming and enticing Trump to make that jump by leveling one insult, one accusation, one unfounded attack too many, thereby initiating the unstoppable slide to failure. One hopes that Trump will see the desire in his crowds for something more than angry hatred of the government who he feels shafted him. One hopes that he will feel the difference in the energy in his crowds, and turn back to his earlier approach. Unfortunately, Trump’s latest blast against DeSantis for being “disloyal” because DeSantis might run for President looks an awful lot like a test run up the ramp to the jump. The shark is getting hungry.

Ned Claybrook

20 Feb 2023

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