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With Joe Biden slipping through the polls, the media gravitates towards more coverage – and attacks – targeting Donald Trump and other Republicans eyeing the White House.
The current president’s slippage – with 38% approval in a new Quinnipiac poll – is making political journalists wonder, perhaps prematurely, if he’s heading for term-for-term status. Or maybe they’re just bored of covering up Hill’s endless machinations where nothing ever seems to be done.
There’s a giant shadow on the cover, and that’s how January 6 will affect Republicans – Trump especially, but also Mike Pence, who is quietly exploring a possible 2024 candidacy.
The former president is now openly using the media word for Capitol violence and trying to redefine it.
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“The insurgency took place on November 3,” he told the podcast hosted by John Solomon, former Fox News contributor and reporter for The Hill. “It was the insurgency: when they rigged the elections. The great insurrection, the real insurrection.”
Now it turns out the former vice president is trying to play down the events of January 6 – despite his life in danger the day he refused to try to block the Electoral College results.
“I know the media want to distract from the failed Biden administration agenda by focusing on a January day,” Pence told Sean Hannity. “They want to use this someday to try to demean the character and intentions of 74 million Americans.”
Which brings me to a few observations.
No one is using the horrific events on Capitol Hill to blame the substantial part of the country that voted for Trump, only those who committed the crimes.
The heartbreaking violence did not last for a day in January, nor did 9/11 a day in September. And no one knows that better than Pence, who had to be evacuated by the Secret Service with his family as noose-wielding protesters shouted for him to be hanged.
The 2020 election was not “the real insurgency,” as Bill Barr’s Justice Department, dozens of lawsuits, and even a partisan audit in Arizona found no hard evidence of significant fraud.
And yet, a majority of Republicans believe Trump is claiming a rigged election – which helps him rally his loyalists, but creates a dilemma for potential rivals.
Look, the press rather likes to focus on the Capitol Riot, an obviously negative story for the de facto GOP leader, and current developments make that easy. Several former Trump aides are resisting the January 6 House committee subpoenas due on Thursday. The Senate Judiciary Committee released an interim report that detailed how senior Justice Department officials and even the White House lawyer threatened to resign if Trump dumps the acting attorney general for resisting his election-related pressures . And that creates a dilemma for those who worked for him.
FILE – In this November 24, 2020 file photo, President Donald Trump speaks in the press conference room as Vice President Mike Pence listens in Washington. (Associated press)
As the Washington Post points out, “To a contingent of staunch Trump supporters, Pence is a renegade – the coward who betrayed the former president when he refused to reject free and fair election results.” But his allies “say Pence’s reputation was greatly enhanced by the position he took on January 6 – what they describe as a moment of courage and leadership when it mattered most.”
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It looks like a pretty narrow path to navigate.
Another 2024 contender Nikki Haley faces a similar tightrope walk. After the riot on Capitol Hill, the former U.N. ambassador said that Trump “was on a path he shouldn’t have taken and we shouldn’t have taken him. … I don’t never thought it would fly away like that “.
More recently, however, Haley said, “We need him in the Republican Party. I don’t want us to go back to the pre-Trump era.”
New York magazine uses such examples to claim that any party member who does not fight Trump is part of the problem:
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“Republicans want to believe that they can smooth their way to power without being complicit in their designs. But Trump’s Republican Party is an authoritarian project. As of yet, there is no form of Republican politics compatible with it. democracy.”
It’s an absurd line of attack that describes everyone on this side of Liz Cheney as bad. Most Republican candidates obviously want to avoid ticking off Trump voters, but stop before embracing the stolen election narrative.
The problem is that their leader, hammering the drum on a daily basis, does not make it easy for them.
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