National Review senior writer Charles C.W. Cooke expressed puzzlement at Donald Trump’s attacks on his Republican rivals.
Cookie dismantled the former president’s “chaotic” weekend speech at the Conservative Political Action Conference, during which he tried to paint himself as “the savior of the American right.” In a column Monday, the conservative writer hit Trump with the truth that he’s “been responsible for grievous Republican losses in the last three national elections.”
Democrats crushed Republicans in the 2018 elections while Trump was president. He lost his race for reelection in 2020. And in 2022, when numerous Trump-backed Republicans were up for major offices, Democrats performed far better than expected.
Trump’s claim at CPAC that the GOP was “ruled by freaks, neocons, open-border zealots, and fools” before he seized control was “not an offhand comment,” noted Cooke.
Instead, it was part of a pattern of Trump slamming national Republicans like former House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) and former President Ronald Reagan “as examples of what has historically been wrong with the GOP.”
“As far as I can see, the argument here seems to be that if, in addition to all of the solid conservatives who are backing a given candidate, that candidate also has fans who are more politically moderate, he must, ipso facto, be a fraud,” Cooke wrote. “Which . . . well, which is completely backwards, isn’t it?”
Trump is currently running for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination in spite of being impeached twice and defeated in 2020. He already has his first major challenger ― former ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley ― and is expected to face multiple others, including Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis.