Donald Trump attempts delusional pivot as his future falls apart

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Ever since the Capitol attack, polling has consistently made clear that Donald Trump has no remaining future in politics. But after two years of media hype about Trump’s imaginary future, it took a historically poor Republican midterm cycle for the public to finally figure out that Trump is toxically unpopular and has no future.

Trump bottomed out on New Years Eve when he announced a media availability, only to give a “televised” speech that wasn’t actually aired by anyone. Now that Trump is realizing that his barely-existent 2024 campaign isn’t going to bring him any attention, he’s attempting a pivot that’s rather bizarre, even for him.

We all vaguely recall that during the course of the 2016 election, Trump had to make four or five attempts at stating the official Republican Party position on abortion. At one point he was talking about putting women in prison and such. It was obvious that Trump had never held any sort of anti-abortion viewpoint in his life, and he was simply trying to figure out how to tell right wing voters what they wanted to hear.

So it’s particularly surreal that Trump is now insisting the Republican Party did poorly in the midterms because its anti-abortion position was too extreme. No, really. Trump is now insisting over on his failed social network that exceptions should be made for rape, incest, and health reasons.

It’s not clear what Trump thinks he’s doing here. This position won’t get him any new votes that he didn’t already have. All it’ll do is cost him support among evangelicals and right wing extremists. If Trump were trying to trade those votes for a potentially greater number of votes on the other side of the issue, he’d need to come out as pro-choice. But he’s not doing that, because after having just spent four years as an anti-choice President, he knows he can’t suddenly flip his position entirely and be taken seriously by anyone on any side.

Of course none of this really matters when you consider that Donald Trump is really only “running” for President as a way to try to raise money and keep himself relevant ahead of his criminal indictment. You can change up your positions on the issues as much as you like, if you’re not really going to be in the 2024 race anyway, right?

But none of this is working for Trump. His ability to dictate how the media covers him, which used to be his forte, has now evaporated. And he’s reduced to selling trading cards of himself, presumably because his campaign donations aren’t what he’d been hoping. So sure, why not change his position on abortion at this point? He’s bottoming out and he hasn’t even been indicted yet. He’s at such a dead end, he doesn’t have much left to lose by trying this bizarre pivot. Of course he doesn’t have anything to gain either. He’s just flailing around, and telling himself that these kinds of desperate moves mean he’s taking charge. Good luck with that.

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