Source: National Review
by Charles CW Cooke
“By word and by deed, Trump and his team have made it clear that they intend to cast Trump’s return as an inevitability and thereby to clear the field of his strongest challengers before some of them even declare. Which is all well and good, but that … well, that takes two to be effective, doesn’t it? Anyone can pronounce himself inevitable. The important question is whether the audience believes him when he says it. … to treat Donald Trump’s nomination as a foregone conclusion is to ignore the substantial evidence to the contrary, to reject the very notion of political persuasion, and to conceive of the game as Trump does: as nothing more than a contest of belligerence.” (05/16/23)