Just amazing that no one is willing to hit Trump on his biggest vulnerability. He's a losing loser that spreads his losing to the whole party.

all it means is that everything Dems/liberals like and stand for is going to destroy our country and must be stopped. They are just lumping them all under one banner now.

This is exactly what he will do. He knows he will NEVER lose his base, the mental gymnastics they will go through to convince themselves he said something but meant something else is astonishing.

So what we will see is him take the opposite stance of the over the top nonsensical things the GOP have trotted out in their endless culture war to appease moderates and independents.

It just may work.

So I just texted with my brother in law. He is super high up with JPM. Reports directly to Jamie Dimon. Bloomberg monthly did an article about him. Google his name and tons of shit comes up. He knows Dimon like almost no one else.

My BIL absolutely thinks he should run.

My BILs exact words

One of the biggest electoral losers in history. Never won the popular vote, lost the house, lost the senate, one of the worst, if not the worst, records for an administration in front of the SC and other federal courts. How many bankruptcies?

This is the guy the GOP attached their wagon to and continue to let him try to carry them to more losses.

He looks a lot like a Romney Republican. I just don't see a old white banker with a bad history with POC can come close to challenging Biden.

A good Biden challenger has to some how appeal to the moderate wing without losing the black or youth vote. Jon Stewart was a good example, though not one likely to want to run.

So my BIL just wrote me, he asked Dimon who said he would love the job but doesn't want to go through the campaign.

They'll counter that he won every election and it was just rigged. Other candidates can't bring it up because they'll lose that demographic that is into QAnon and election conspiracies.

The Dimon stuff makes no sense. Bloomberg tried to do the centrist schtick and put a ton of money behind it and got nowhere. I don't see how someone who is even more tied into the financial world and was part of the great recession would fare better.

When asked to name something about Trump that I liked--really liked, not just a backhanded fake complement--I would say Operation Warp Speed and the First Step Act. Those were really good things that the Trump White House led on and did.

So, of course, DeSantis is picking both of those as areas for attack.

Trump is a great winner is no way to run a campaign.

Yes, but as I recall the MAGAts were angry that their leader didn't get more credit for expediting the vaccine that most of them refused to take, for a virus they said was a hoax.

Running anti-vax may help in the primary, although I'm skeptical, but it definitely will hurt in the general. Even just anti-covid vax is going to be an anchor.

Well, they were skeptical of it because it came out so quickly because it was fast tracked and half the work had already been done when researching a potential common cold vaccine.

I did like it when Trump stood up on the primary debate stage and told the audience that George W Bush didn't keep us safe on 9/11. Cuz you know, thousands of people died.

I'd pay for PPV to have seen this.


A legit 3rd party with any hope of succeeding would need to start now, in order to have a 50-state ground game, including getting on the ballots in states. Given those deadlines, dropping out of, or losing, a primary is too late to get on enough ballots, even with infinite resources.

So, I agree. If he loses the primary, he might run "3rd party" out of spite, and it's likely his true believers (or grifters) might get him on the ballot in a few states, and if any of those states are swingy enough, it would be plenty to give the election to Biden.


If I had been on the board yesterday when this came up this would have been my guess. He's already in charge of JPM. POTUS is probably a lateral move with a lot of downside.

Yeah, except....

Definitely playing footsie with running.

Taking our country back from Joe Biden does not start with congratulating North Korea’s murderous dictator. pic.twitter.com/XDJP6B2qFO

— Brian Kemp (@BrianKempGA) June 3, 2023

What a miserable sack of shit, to call out a former President's love affair with a murdering bastard.

Jack Dorsey just endorsed RDK, Jr. if anyone needed more proof that dude is crazy.

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This is so incredibly dishonest, teenage girls aren’t killing themselves because of girls sports. These people don’t care about teenage girls, except if they can use them to beat up trans kids. https://t.co/2w0SpHBo8i

— Molly Jong-fast (@MollyJongFast) June 5, 2023

More the merrier at this stage. But he should fire his advisors.

I don't see how Pence stands a chance. He is/was too close to Trump. His performance during the election was good but not enough to redeem him for the other 3.5 years of "guilt by association".

He'll be asked some critical & tricky questions about his 4 years with Trump. And I'm sure Trump will have extra special things to say about him. Why put yourself through that now? I'd tell him to find something else to do (and make money).

The last thing the GOP needs is more candidates. I suspect they all think trumps legal woes will catch up to him and they will be the one who gets the scraps. That’s fine but if it looks like he’s going to get the nomination they need to all coalesce around one candidate. If we repeat 2016 he coasts to the nomination and they have to know he has little chance of winning the general.

There's no easier way to make money than raising money from right-wing millionaires.

I do think there is money to be made both in the campaign and the speaker circuit after. A couple are also just trying to get on the ticket with Trump.

I still say Pence's best chance to become President if he had from Jan 6 on had turned into the best witness to Trump's crimes, and not fought against subpoena's/Jan 6 commission. Get the Christian nationalism part of MAGA to his side, and make Trump look like he was the Anti-Christ. Christians love to forgive sins after all.



Instead we got a book and no real condemnation of Trump other than Jan 6. Still going after the "woke" parts of America-now he has no chance.

I don't see how that would get any part of MAGA to his side. It would have ensured that they would hate him forever. I think it's a terrible idea for him to be run, but from a purely personal political point of view, signing on to Trump was an in for a penny, in for a pound sort of deal. There's no going back after a certain point.

I know you're being partly sarcastic, but I'm all for forgiveness. I aspire to be like the Amish group some years back that openly forgave the culprit shortly after a brutal murder happened to someone in their community by an outsider. But there's a difference between forgiveness and voting for someone to be President.

Trump has done this all on his own and they still love him like a savior. Like he's the second coming, you might even say.

Pence is what he always was: an empty suit.

And I'm pretty sure most all the Trump supporters already hold him in such low regard that he had no chance to attract them. Hell, Trump is no better than my #2 choice and there's no chance I'd have wasted the energy to vote for someone as incapable and useless as Pence.

One important question is what percentage of the new Republican base is devoted to Trump in that manner.

We're all familiar by now with the Twitterizing of the media. Most stories now are about reactions. Reporters sit in their bedrooms and trawl the twitterverse for the most extreme commentary, then those reactions become the story.

The intent is to manufacture clicks out of nothing. No investment in reporting. The result is an industry that makes its money from the division of America. I think Alinksy's rules apply quite well to the media these days.

So when we see a story about the "other" side, whichever side, it's usually an example of Twitterizing. By no means representative of the majority of the people. The vast majority of Democrats do not dress up in drag and molest children. The vast majority of Republicans do not wish to return to a time when women and black people had no rights.

It's my hope that we have some items here that don't devolve into that, but I get accused of "bothsiderism" when I say that, so I try not to say that too much.

Primaries are designed by parties to protect those in power. Unfortunately for the Republicans, the apple cart was turned over in 2016 because Trump figured out how to beat the system. He tapped into voter frustration with the system. We talk about outsiders and populism all the time, but it almost never comes together like that. We get outsiders who remain at 2%. We get populists who simply repeat the party line. Perot is the only other person who even came close in my lifetime and he didn't have much interest in joining either party. He ended up being the guy who ended the Reagan run by splitting the Republicans more thoroughly than the Democrats. They never quite recovered.

Trump simply took a party (strangely enough, the party he didn't register with for much of his politically active life) and made it his own. He has no overriding political philosophy. He has governed... oddly. Sometimes he defers to the Republican core (his relatively new position on abortion rights being the most notable) and sometimes he doesn't. Maybe that appeals to a lot of people. His greatest political talent seems to be in understanding how to get voters interested in him - positively or negatively. He seems to benefit from both.

The numbers suggest one person would have a tough time beating him. One person divided ten ways... impossible. How people like Pence don't see this is a mystery. I guess in order to seek a major public office one must have a blind spot when it comes to not seeing the bigger picture. In order to beat Trump, someone has to inspire people, not slowly build a political machine that roams the Iowa countryside.

And talk about a Pence weakness, yikes. He's a perfect example of starving dogs, fresh meat, etc.

I was just coming to ask if these candidates have to return any leftover donations once their campaign fails.

Sununu is out. I was intrigued by his candidacy, but he certainly fails the "inspire lots of people" test.

This decision is perhaps the best indication of his qualification for the job he'll never have.

"The vast majority of Republicans do not wish to return to a time when women and black people had no rights."
Just talking with the Trump flag flyers that I deal with every day, I think Twitter might underrepresent how badly they want just that.

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There are a few options, including return the money (which no one does).

Most form a "Leadership PAC". They have almost no regulation and can just be used as a personal slush fund.

They can return it all because the new play is cry "RIGGED!" and fundraise off of that.

Here is the calculus of the RFK jr. run. If he isn't enough of a fly in the ointment, the "No Labels" party will also help the chaos.

1. @RobertKennedyJr is running for the Democratic nomination, but his biggest supporters are all Far Right Republicans like Steve Bannon and Tucker Carlson. The reasons why helps explain the MAGA plan to win in '24 and beyond.https://t.co/VtYUvuUbcL

— Dan Pfeiffer (@danpfeiffer) June 6, 2023

Chris Christie is in again. Not sure why, except to annoy Trump.

Doug Burgum is also in. North Dakota governor. Tech business background. Intriguing, but the whoest of the "whos". This type never passes the inspire test. I doubt he even gets a nickname from Trump.

Personally, I'd love to see someone like this become inspiring. I just don't think it will happen any time soon. We revere our geriatric slogan muppets.

We see with Asa Hutchinson what the RNC pledge is going to do. All of these candidates are, in essence, swearing loyalty to Trump when he wins the nomination.

How does Christie deal with a pledge that promises he'll support Trump?

Mike Pence Launches Presidential Bid With Scathing Condemnation Of Donald Trump



“President Trump endangered my family and everyone at the Capitol on that day. But it is important for the American people to know that he also demanded that I choose between him and our Constitution. Now, voters will face the same choice,” Pence said. “I chose the Constitution, and I always will.”


Rats are jumping ship, for whatever that is worth.

That's a solid statement. Never expected it of him.

Wants to be DeSantis' AG. His job is to just attack Trump in a way that DeSantis can't. Kind of the same role he played for Trump in attacking Rubio.

But if the R's really, in their hearts, believed that, they would have removed his sugar daddy from office and let him take over.

https://twitter.com/acyn/status/1666...Znv52YZTh9J2dg

if Pence cannot say that Trump should be indicted if he committed a crime, then what is Pence doing running?

Even better, Pence said he would support the GOP nominee.

You can spot the moment that the 3 remaining brain cells in his head start kicking around. What a disastrous response.

He was legit caught off guard by the question. Who are his advisors? How do you not know that’s coming?

It was a great question. You spend a minute talking about restoring law and order and then later on talk about how law and order shouldn't matter if you're an elite.

Most candidates know how to deflect that stuff but Pence genuinely seems like a simpleton.

I don't think your campaign is going well if you rush out immediately to defend another candidate that was just indicted.

It's particularly ridiculous for Pence to do so, since he's not winning over any of the people he thinks he's courting by not outright going after Trump. You can't play both sides when one side hates your guts.