2022.04.27 特朗普就是失败者

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POLITICS
Just Call Trump a Loser
His record is clear. Some nervy Republican challenger should say so.

By Mark Leibovich
Illustration of a hand making the letter "L" in front of Trump's face.
Getty; The Atlantic
APRIL 27, 2022, 6 AM ET
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Let’s assume Donald Trump runs again for president in 2024. Yes, I know, caveats, caveats. Republicans say it’s too early to discuss ’24. A lot can change between now and then. Maybe Trump won’t actually run. Maybe he’s just teasing the possibility to milk the attention. Apparently, he likes attention.

But if Trump does decide to inflict himself on another race, he will enter as the clear Republican favorite, enjoying a presumption of invincibility inside the GOP. This has engendered a belief that anyone who challenges Trump must tread lightly, or end up like the roadkill that his primary opponents became in 2016.


That notion is outdated.

Trump’s bizarre and enduring hold over his party has made it verboten for many Republicans to even utter publicly the unpleasant fact of his defeat—something they will readily acknowledge in private. I caught up recently with several Trump-opposing Republican strategists and former associates of the president who argued this restraint should end. The best way for a Republican to depose Trump in 2024, they said, will be to call Trump a loser, as early and as brutally as possible—and keep pointing out the absurdity of treating a one-term, twice-impeached, 75-year-old former president like a kingmaker and heir apparent. In other words, don’t worry about hurting Special Boy’s feelings.

Read: Trump soft-launches his 2024 campaign

“Why on earth would we hitch our wagons again to a crybaby sore loser who lost the popular vote twice, lost the House, lost the Senate, and lost the White House, and so on?” said Barbara Comstock, a longtime political consultant and former Republican congresswoman from Virginia. “For Republicans, whether they embrace the Big Lie or not, Trump is vulnerable to having the stench of disaster on him.”


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Trump’s wasn’t an ordinary election defeat, either. Some nervy Republican challenger needs to remind everyone how rare it is for an incumbent president to lose reelection, and also that Trump was perhaps the most graceless loser and insufferable whiner in presidential history—the first outgoing commander in chief in 152 years to skip his successor’s swearing-in. And that he dragged a lot of Republicans down with him. As Comstock hinted, Trump was the first president since Herbert Hoover to preside over his party’s loss of the House, Senate, and White House in a single term. Said nervy Republican challenger could even (just for fun) remind the former president that he once called the person he lost to “the worst presidential candidate in the history of presidential politics.”

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“So what does that make you, sir? At least Jimmy Carter lost to, you know, Ronald Reagan.”

This is a devastating point of attack against Trump. He knows it, too, which is why he has taken such pains to loser-proof himself and scrub his MAGA universe of any doubt that he was in fact reelected “in a landslide.” Don’t let him get away with that, the cabinet of critics urged. Abandon all deference, and don’t forget to troll the troller.

“It is erroneous to think there’s a benefit to being the adult in the room against Donald Trump,” said Michael Cohen, the former president’s fixer turned antagonist, who clearly knows him and all of his trigger points.

“There’s a way of going after Trump that I would call intelligent mockery,” continued Cohen, who pleaded guilty in 2018 to federal charges for lying to Congress on behalf of his former client and paying hush money to Trump’s porn-actor paramour, Stormy Daniels. “If you can make your criticism personal to him, he will become flustered. And when he gets flustered, his level of stupidity rises and then morphs into complete idiocy.”

If it was true in 2016 that other Republicans couldn’t touch Trump, it’s not necessarily so now, given the win-loss record he has since accumulated.


“The problem with 2016 is that people waited ’til they were at their politically weakest point before they started pounding Trump,” said Tim Miller, a former top campaign aide to Jeb Bush who now writes for The Bulwark. “Could that have worked for Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz if they started in September? I don’t know, but it helps not to be on your deathbed.”

Miller and others point out that Trump’s defeats in office go well beyond the loss of just his job. Despite Trump’s repeated claims of “promises made, promises kept,” most of his big-ticket promises from 2016 never came to fruition.

The attack riff practically writes itself: “Remember how Trump kept saying how easy it would be to balance the federal budget (‘very quickly’), repeal Obamacare and replace it (‘with something terrific’), and sign a massive infrastructure bill? None of those things actually happened, except the infrastructure bill—which was signed by Joe Biden.”

Trump’s “big, beautiful wall” along the southern border? Only about 80 miles of new barrier were built where no structure was in place previously. Trump mostly presided over repairs and enhancements to the existing wall. And Mexico paid for none of it.


Another inconvenient data point for Trump is that he left office with a 34 percent approval rating, the worst of his presidency. The average throughout his term—41 percent—was four points lower than that of any other president in Gallup’s history of polling. (President Biden’s approval numbers haven’t exactly been gangbusters either—stuck in the low 40s since the fall.) “Voters can be practical,” Miller said. “They want to win, and they need to be reminded that you can’t win with a big fat loser.”

We’re already seeing contours of some early strategies for running against Trump. Florida Governor Ron DeSantis is mostly ignoring the former president while establishing his own cachet of lib-owning, base-arousing, culture-splitting bona fides. Former Vice President Mike Pence is pursuing a loyal-deputy and next-man-up course, despite his refusal to go along with Trump’s January 6 caper, which rendered him dead to his old boss and sentenced to hanging by Trump’s “Stop the steal” brigades.

Read: The complicated truth about Trump 2024

Both of these are Trump-adjacent approaches predicated on keeping the faith with “the base” while asserting that, in many ways, Trump was still a great president. Essentially, DeSantis and Pence are positioning themselves as more competent and disciplined versions of Trump, without the baggage.

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I doubt that this Trump-but-different tactic would work, especially with Trump himself in the race. Plus, why waste so much good material? A “He’s a loser” strategy would be way more direct and satisfying, and would have the added benefit of driving Trump nuts.

Who could make this work? Perhaps a popular Republican governor such as Maryland’s Larry Hogan or New Hampshire’s Chris Sununu, neither of whom has much use for Trump. “You know, he’s probably going to be the next president,” Sununu said of Trump earlier this month in a comedic speech at Washington’s annual Gridiron Club dinner. “Nah, I’m just kidding; he’s fucking crazy.”

The line killed, according to Comstock, who was at the dinner. It underscored how effective humor—or ridicule—can be in the airing of unspoken and commonly understood truths. “This will be an important weapon for some Republicans to use against Trump at some point,” Comstock told me.

Chris Christie, the former New Jersey governor, also could serve as a useful nuisance against Trump. Christie used to brag in Trenton that he knew how to deal with bullies: “You can either sidle up to them, or you can punch them in the face. I like to punch them in the face.”


Christie dropped out of the 2016 presidential race after New Hampshire and promptly sidled up to Trump, where he remained for the better part of four years before reaching his end with Trump late in his term. The final indignity occurred when Christie attended the September 2020 super-spreader reception at the White House for the Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett, after which the president, the first lady, and several guests, including Christie, tested positive for COVID-19. Trump was nice enough to call and check in on Christie when he was laid up in a New Jersey ICU. “Are you going to say you got this from me?” Trump asked, according to Christie. “It was one of the few laughs I had in the hospital,” Christie told me later of Trump’s gesture of deep concern. “I got off the phone, and I just shook my head. Like, this guy will never change.”

Christie is probably doomed to being dismissed as both a Trump traitor (by MAGA world) and a Trump doormat (by anti-Trumpers), but he could still make for an effective pugilistic foil. He has been a vocal proponent of Republicans moving on from 2020—which Trump of course has taken note of, and not in a nice way. The former president put out a statement saying that no one wanted to hear from a guy like Christie, “who left New Jersey with a less than 9 percent approval rating.”

In fact, Christie’s approval numbers in New Jersey bottomed out at about 13 percent, but that’s beside the point. The main point was how Christie came back at Trump. “When I ran for reelection in 2013, I got 60 percent of the vote,” Christie told Axios on HBO. “When he ran for reelection, he lost to Joe Biden.”

That could bear repeating.

Mark Leibovich is a staff writer at The Atlantic.



政治
称特朗普为失败者
他的记录很清楚。一些神经质的共和党挑战者应该这样说。

作者：马克-莱博维奇
在特朗普的脸前，一只手在做字母 "L "的插图。
Getty; The Atlantic
2022年4月27日，美国东部时间上午6点
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让我们假设唐纳德-特朗普在2024年再次竞选总统。是的，我知道，告诫，告诫。共和党人说现在讨论24年还为时过早。从现在到那时，很多事情都可能发生变化。也许特朗普不会真的参选。也许他只是在挑逗这种可能性，以挤出注意力。显然，他喜欢关注。

但是，如果特朗普真的决定在另一场比赛中施展拳脚，他将作为共和党的明显宠儿参选，在共和党内部享有一种不可战胜的假设。这就产生了一种信念，即任何挑战特朗普的人都必须轻装上阵，否则就会像他的初选对手在2016年成为路人甲一样的下场。


这种观念已经过时了。

特朗普对他的政党的诡异而持久的控制，使许多共和党人甚至不敢公开说出他失败的令人不快的事实--他们在私下里很乐意承认这一点。我最近采访了几位反对特朗普的共和党战略家和总统的前助手，他们认为这种克制应该结束。他们说，共和党人在2024年废黜特朗普的最佳方式是尽可能早地、粗暴地称特朗普为失败者，并不断指出把一个只做了一届、两次被弹劾、75岁的前总统当作国王和继承人的荒谬性。换句话说，不要担心伤害特殊男孩的感情。

阅读。特朗普软启动他的2024年竞选活动

"我们究竟为什么要把我们的马车再次搭在一个哭哭啼啼的失败者身上呢？"长期担任政治顾问的弗吉尼亚州前共和党女议员芭芭拉-康斯托克(Barbara Comstock)说，"他两次失去了大众投票权，失去了众议院，失去了参议院，又失去了白宫，等等。"对于共和党人来说，无论他们是否接受大谎言，特朗普都很容易被灾难的臭味所影响。"


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特朗普的失败也不是一次普通的选举失败。一些神经质的共和党挑战者需要提醒大家，现任总统失去连任是多么罕见，而且特朗普也许是总统史上最没有风度的失败者和难以忍受的抱怨者--152年来的第一位离任总司令跳过了他的继任者的宣誓就职仪式。而且，他还把很多共和党人拖下水。正如康斯托克所暗示的那样，特朗普是自胡佛以来第一位在一个任期内主持其政党失去众议院、参议院和白宫的总统。说紧张的共和党挑战者甚至可以（只是为了好玩）提醒这位前总统，他曾称他输给的人是 "总统政治史上最糟糕的总统候选人"。

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"那你是什么意思，先生？至少吉米-卡特输给了，你知道，罗纳德-里根。"

这是对特朗普的一个毁灭性的攻击点。他也知道这一点，这就是为什么他不遗余力地证明自己是失败者，并洗刷他的MAGA宇宙的任何疑问，他实际上是 "以压倒性优势 "重新当选的。批评者内阁敦促说，不要让他得逞。放弃所有的敬意，不要忘了嘲弄嘲弄他的人。

"认为作为房间里的成年人反对唐纳德-特朗普有好处是错误的，"迈克尔-科恩说，这位前总统的撮合者变成了反对者，他显然了解他和他所有的触发点。

"有一种追击特朗普的方式，我称之为智能嘲弄，"科恩继续说，他在2018年承认了代表他的前客户向国会撒谎并向特朗普的色情演员姘头斯托米-丹尼尔斯支付封口费的联邦指控。"如果你能让你的批评针对他，他就会变得心慌意乱。而当他变得心慌意乱时，他的愚蠢程度就会上升，然后演变成完全的白痴。"

如果说在2016年，其他共和党人碰不到特朗普是真的，那么现在就不一定了，因为他后来积累的胜负记录。


"2016年的问题是，人们等到他们在政治上最弱的时候才开始抨击特朗普，"杰布-布什(Jeb Bush)的前高级竞选助手、现在为The Bulwark撰稿的蒂姆-米勒(Tim Miller)说。"如果马可-卢比奥和特德-克鲁兹在9月开始，这对他们来说会起作用吗？我不知道，但不在你的死亡线上是有帮助的。"

米勒和其他人指出，特朗普在任期内的失败远不止是失去了工作。尽管特朗普一再声称 "做出了承诺，履行了承诺"，但他在2016年做出的大部分大项目承诺都没有实现。

攻击的内容几乎是自己写的。"还记得特朗普一直说平衡联邦预算（"非常快"）、废除奥巴马医保并取而代之（"用了不起的东西"）以及签署大规模基础设施法案有多容易吗？这些事情实际上都没有发生，除了基础设施法案--它是由乔-拜登签署的。"

特朗普在南部边境的 "巨大而美丽的墙"？只有大约80英里的新屏障是在以前没有结构的地方建造的。特朗普主要主持了对现有隔离墙的维修和加固工作。而墨西哥没有支付任何费用。


对特朗普来说，另一个不方便的数据是，他离任时的支持率为34%，是他总统任期内最差的一次。在他的整个任期内，平均支持率为41%，比盖洛普历史上任何一位总统的支持率都低4个百分点。(拜登总统的支持率也不是很高，自秋季以来一直停留在40分以下）。"选民可以很实际，"米勒说。"他们想赢，他们需要被提醒，你不可能和一个大的失败者一起赢。"

我们已经看到了一些与特朗普竞选的早期策略的轮廓。佛罗里达州州长罗恩-德桑蒂斯(Ron DeSantis)大多无视前总统，同时建立了自己的自由派、激进派、文化分裂派的名声。前副总统迈克-彭斯(Mike Pence)正在追求一个忠诚的副手和下一个人的路线，尽管他拒绝配合特朗普1月6日的行动，这使他对他的老上司死心塌地，并被特朗普的 "停止偷窃 "大队判处绞刑。

阅读。关于特朗普2024年的复杂真相

这两种都是与特朗普相近的做法，其前提是保持对 "基地 "的信心，同时断言在许多方面，特朗普仍然是一位伟大的总统。从本质上讲，德桑蒂斯和彭斯将自己定位为更有能力和纪律的特朗普，没有包袱。

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我怀疑这种特朗普但不一样的策略是否会奏效，尤其是在特朗普本人参加竞选的情况下。另外，为什么要浪费这么多好材料？一个 "他是个失败者 "的策略会更直接、更令人满意，而且会有让特朗普发疯的额外好处。

谁能让这一策略奏效？也许是一位受欢迎的共和党州长，如马里兰州的拉里-霍根或新罕布什尔州的克里斯-苏努努，他们对特朗普都没有什么用。"你知道，他可能会成为下一任总统，"苏努努本月早些时候在华盛顿的年度Gridiron Club晚宴上发表喜剧性演讲时谈到了特朗普。"不，我只是在开玩笑；他是他妈的疯子。"

据当时参加晚宴的康斯托克说，这句话杀伤力很大。它强调了幽默--或者说调侃--在宣扬未说出口的和普遍理解的真理方面是多么有效。"这将是一些共和党人在某些时候用来对付特朗普的重要武器，"康斯托克告诉我。

前新泽西州州长克里斯-克里斯蒂(Chris Christie)也可以作为反对特朗普的一个有用的讨厌鬼。克里斯蒂曾经在特伦顿吹嘘，他知道如何对付恶霸。"你可以向他们靠拢，或者你可以打他们的脸。我喜欢打他们的脸。"


克里斯蒂在新罕布什尔州之后退出了2016年的总统竞选，并迅速向特朗普靠拢，他在那里呆了四年之久，直到任期后期与特朗普走到尽头。最后的屈辱发生在克里斯蒂出席2020年9月在白宫为最高法院提名人艾米-科尼-巴雷特举行的超级传播者招待会上，之后，总统、第一夫人和包括克里斯蒂在内的几位客人的COVID-19检测结果呈阳性。当克里斯蒂躺在新泽西州的一个重症监护室里时，特朗普很好地打电话询问他的情况。"你打算说你是从我这里得到这个的吗？" 据克里斯蒂说，特朗普问道。"这是我在医院里为数不多的笑声之一，"克里斯蒂后来告诉我，特朗普的姿态是深切关注。"我挂了电话，我只是摇了摇头。就像，这家伙永远不会改变。"

克里斯蒂可能注定要被斥为特朗普的叛徒（由MAGA世界）和特朗普的门徒（由反特朗普的人），但他仍然可以成为一个有效的搏斗陪衬。他一直是共和党人从2020年开始行动的积极支持者--特朗普当然注意到了这一点，而且不是以一种好的方式。这位前总统发表声明说，没有人想听像克里斯蒂这样的人说话，"他离开新泽西时的支持率还不到9%"。

事实上，克里斯蒂在新泽西州的支持率最低为13%左右，但这不是重点。重点是克里斯蒂如何回击特朗普。"当我在2013年竞选连任时，我得到了60%的选票，"克里斯蒂在HBO告诉Axios。"当他竞选连任时，他输给了乔-拜登。"

这可能值得重复。

马克-莱博维奇是《大西洋月刊》的一名工作人员。