Donald Trump cuts and runs

Even though he announced his 2024 “campaign” last year, Donald Trump has only been doing the bare minimum to try to keep up the appearance that he’s actually running for anything. His public appearances have been rare. His mainstream media interviews have been even more rare. He never did return to Twitter. It’s all been sort of a joke. The question has been why.

Is Trump’s health so poor that he can’t really go out there and act like a candidate? Is he so senile that his babysitters have been keeping him from public view as much as possible? Is Trump simply unwilling to do more than the bare minimum, given that his 2024 “campaign” is nothing more than an attempt at raising funds to pay for his legal fees? All of the above?

I’ve also been fond of pointing out that it’s completely impractical for a defendant who’s awaiting a criminal trial to also function as a political candidate. If you’re going on criminal trial, your life as you know it is on the line. Your time and focus are going to get gobbled up by working on your defense, and dealing with endless pretrial hearings and motions.

In Trump’s case you can multiply those difficulties by four, given that he’s a defendant awaiting four separate criminal trials, if you count the charges that are coming this week in Georgia. Trump is already whining endlessly on social media about how he won’t be able to find the time to campaign because of his trials. For once Trump is right: it’s just not a realistic thing to try to run for President while also trying to run away from a prison sentence.

If you’ve been waiting for concrete examples of Trump not being able to function as a candidate due to his legal troubles, look no further than the reports this weekend that he spent barely an hour at the Iowa State Fair. This is the kind of event where candidates go to try to win over one Iowa caucus voter at a time. The more time you spend at the fair shaking hands and talking to people, the better you can expect to do in Iowa Caucus voting.

This isn’t a guy who’s trying to win an election. If he were, he’d have been at the fair all day, shaking every hand he could. But according to the Des Moines Register, Trump did the bare minimum and then went home. In fairness, if you were busy trying to juggle three impending criminal trials, and you knew you were 48 hours from your fourth criminal indictment, you probably wouldn’t spend a full day shaking hands at the fair either. But that’s the point: you cannot function as a candidate while your entire life is being gobbled up by the criminal justice system. No one could ever pull that off. And Trump doesn’t have unique magical powers in that regard.

For that matter Donald Trump is probably less equipped to navigate this than you or I might be. Trump was already mailing it in, making few appearances, and doing the bare minimum as a political candidate even before he started getting indicted. He already lacks the stamina, the cognitive function, and/or the willingness to go through the full motions of acting like a candidate. Now he has to deal with his life being all about impending criminal trials on top of it.