The Daily - Is Trump's Nomination Now Inevitable?

Episode Date: May 22, 2023

Voters in the 2022 midterms seemed to send a clear message — a rejection of Trumpism and extremism. And yet it appears increasingly likely that he will win the Republican nomination for the 2024 presidential election. Astead W. Herndon, a national political correspondent for The Times and the host of the politics podcast The Run-Up, explains what has shifted in Republican politics so that Mr. Trump’s nomination could start to seem almost inevitable.Guest: Astead W. Herndon, a national political correspondent for The New York Times.Background reading: To some Republicans and Democrats, the charges brought against Mr. Trump in New York appeared flimsy and less consequential than many had hoped. To others, the case had the potential to reverberate politically.In a phone call with top donors, Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida privately argued that Mr. Trump couldn’t win in the general election. Mr. DeSantis is expected to officially enter the presidential race next week.For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily. Transcripts of each episode will be made available by the next workday.

Hey, it's Michael. If you listen to podcasts, which we know you do because you're here, you know that the biggest challenge is finding great stuff to listen to. The Times wants to make that a lot easier. We're launching an audio app, NYT Audio, a single place where you can find the shows you already know and love, like The Daily, This American Life, Serial, The Run-Up, and discover a bunch of new

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This is The Daily. Today, as Governor Ron DeSantis is expected to enter the 2024 Republican presidential race this week, he's polling well below the leading candidate, former President Donald Trump. It's a very different picture than just a few months ago, when midterm voters embraced DeSantis and his brand of cultural conservatism while overwhelmingly rejecting extremism and Trump. My colleague, Astead Herndon, host of our politics podcast, The Run-Up, has been reporting on how we got from there to here when Trump's nomination has started to feel almost inevitable. It's Monday, May 22nd.

It's nice to see you in person. It's nice to see you too. Last we were in this room was the midterm election night. That's right. That was almost a year ago? Definitely not a year ago. I think actually someone is helpfully telling me that it was only six months ago. Yeah, yeah, definitely. Well, let's go back to that moment. I mean, the last time you were on the show, right after the midterm elections, I distinctly remember you saying that while the

result of that midterm election was a clear rejection of Donald Trump by general election voters, that didn't mean that Trumpism was over. And the question that you posed heading into the next election, the 2024 presidential cycle, was what's the Republican Party going to do with a disappointing set of results and with the person who ushered in those disappointing results, Donald Trump? Yeah. I mean, I look back at that night and there was that feeling that Donald Trump had been diminished by the electorate. You had congressional leaders and conservative media asking an open question

about whether Donald Trump was still the kind of leader of the party because the Republican results were so far from their expectations, I think there was a natural political question to say, is this thing over? Is this the time then when folks turn the page on Trump? But at the same time, I felt like I couldn't ignore my own reporting, which is that Trumpism is so deeply ingrained in the Republican Party that even something like the midterm results, it's not inherently clear that that's enough for it to be cut out. So I kind of set off to understand what the midterms impact on Trump's power was. And are we now looking at a Republican Party where he is still the overwhelmingly dominant political figure? Or are we looking at a Republican Party where post-midterms,

the ground was really open for a new leader to emerge? Right. And there's one person in particular, I remember very clearly in that moment, that people are starting to look to as somebody who could take advantage of this weaker Trump.

Yeah, totally. We're talking Ron DeSantis, right? We are, we are. I mean, yeah. I mean, Governor Ron DeSantis, right? We are. I mean, yeah. I mean, Governor Ron DeSantis, because he had a good midterms night, was hoisted into the position of Donald Trump alternative almost immediately. And for a Republican Party where some folks have been looking for a way to turn the page for a long time, he really embodied a lot of those hopes. Right. And of course, things have changed a tremendous amount since then. So let's understand

instead how we got to this moment where things seem kind of flipped on their head from that place you just described. So tell us where you start your reporting and why. Well, we were thinking about how to kind of untangle this question. Where are the places in the Republican Party that the leadership and the decision makers would be wrestling with both the reality of Trump's power and the reality of his drag on the party's ability to win. And what emerged for us was the RNC winter meeting in January in Dana Point, California. This is a gathering of Republican insiders, the folks who actually make the decisions about how to set up the primary process. And this was their first party gathering since the midterm elections.

Right. The embers are still smoldering. The embers are still smoldering. And what we found when we got there was a universal recognition of the party's disappointing results. No one was in confusion that the red wave was promised, that the conditions were there, and that they failed to seize on it. Right. So when you arrive, this is a party that knows it's losing. And in theory, this is going to be the place, this RNC meeting, where party officials start to scheme about how they're going to win again and whether that requires ditching Donald

Trump. Exactly. It was the unspoken elephant in every room that Donald Trump was part of the reason that Republicans had had such losses. And for different spaces of the party, they were having much different reactions to that information. Can you just say your name and where you live? John Fredericks. I am the Godzilla of truth in America. You can follow me at JF Radio Show. The first person I meet at that winter meeting was a man named John Fredericks. He's a big kind of Trump-embodied radio host in Virginia. And he was hosting a forum at that RNC event that was

meant to really put pressure on the Republican insiders, saying, hey, the kind of Trump base is still here. And I think really importantly, we are not embarrassed by those results. When we went to them, they had a clear explanation for why Republicans didn't do as well as they did. Which is what? If you want to blame Trump, don't vote for him in the upcoming primaries. That's your choice. You can do that if you think he's the reason. Right?

I happen to not think he is. But she is the chairman of the Republican National Committee. They thought the establishment side of Republicans, I'm talking the party apparatus, the RNC, including its chair, Ronna McDaniel, and the kind of Senate coffers of money that come out of D.C., they felt that they had not adequately supported the Trump candidates in the midterm election. I guess a question I have is, how are those five elections her fault, but they're not Donald Trump's fault? Why does she get blamed for those elections? She's the chairman of the RNC. She's done nothing on ballot harvesting. She hasn't done anything in any of the critical areas. That people like Carrie Lake or Hershel Walker or Blake Masters would have all done better

if the Republican Party had united around them. It's just one big ring of consultants paying each other for this, that, TVS, etc. And so they're all making money. And other than that, you had party leadership calling them bad candidates publicly, and more importantly, not giving them the data and money that could have been at their disposal. And so they really blamed the mechanics of the Republican Party for not adequately rallying around the Trump candidates. And that was the reason this group said they lost. So to the degree that Frederick's is a proxy for the Trump base, the base is not seeing Trump or the issues he cared about, like election denialism, as what costs the party these midterm elections.

It's the Republican Party that's responsible for that. Absolutely. It is an argument that is very convenient for them because it does not require them to blame Trump or require them to blame the messages that those candidates gave, but it allows them to continue a proxy war that's been happening in the Republican Party for a long time where the Trump base really sees its role

as overtaking the Republican establishment. And they were really clearly expressing that. We're trying to take over the Republican Party because what it represents right now is the Mitt Romney elites, right? We go to the infield of NASCAR and grill hot dogs and Mitt Romney goes to the box of the owner of the Jets, right? That's the disconnect. and Mitt Romney goes to the box of the owner of the Jets, right? That's the disconnect. And eventually we're going to take over the Republican Party as a vehicle, right? As a vehicle for our movement.

When I talked to Fredericks, he said that Donald Trump had gotten so many people involved in the party on a base level that the top levels of Republican leadership needed to defer to them, but didn't. And that they were the ones living in the past and not really dealing with the reality, which is that Trumpism is the party and therefore requires being supported as the party's dominant message. That's what they felt was the disconnect that led to the midterms losses, was a Republican establishment that was not willing to go all in on Trump, not that Trump and those messages had caused the losses. But there's another really important thing that Fredericks told me at that event. People have changed.

And it was that this is a different type of Trump grassroots in 2023 than it was in 2022. The movement has eclipsed all of its current leaders. That's what you're not... It's eclipsed them all. This is not defined anymore by its leaders. That's the most important thing to realize. And the movement itself is becoming the it. And that's because the Trump base, as he says,

sees itself as bigger and more distinct from Donald Trump as a campaign and candidate than they did before. And I think this is an important point to understand is that for a long time, we've kind of thought of this as a clear causational relationship, that Donald Trump and his campaign says a message and that millions of these voters follow that kind of robotically respond. Robotically respond to that message that he is dictating the political priorities of this base. But when I talked to Fredericks at the RNC event, he said that a couple of things have changed.

One is that there have been some policy breaks between the Trump base and Donald Trump as a candidate. One of the things that came up at the RNC was that Donald Trump embraced the vaccines. And that's something this base did not like. Trump was too progressive on vaccines and COVID. Yes, too pro-vaccine. Not everyone's understanding of the situation.

And among that group, Donald Trump was too pro-vaccine and too pro-COVID mandates while in office. And so I think if you want to think of it as like a kind of Frankenstein figure, the vaccine is a moment where they realize they get sentience, you know, that they realize that there's something maybe different than the person who made them. That's one break from him as a kind of political figure. The other break that was really important was they were mentioning the speaker fight in the house and how when Kevin McCarthy was seeking to get the gavel for the Republican majority in the House. Remember, Donald Trump endorsed him early, but it was a GOP base that was led by Matt Gaetz, Lauren Boebert, Fox figures like Tucker Carlson at the time, who really went over the recommendation of Trump to maintain distance from McCarthy and get more concessions out of them.

And when I was asking them about this, they said that this was another moment that became clear to them that they are acting in their own America first priorities. That yes, that overlaps with Donald Trump, but they're not scared to go past Donald Trump. They're not scared to push Trump as a candidate in campaign and that the speaker fight was a proof of that. Right. And it seems like what you're describing is a moment where,

and this is very intriguing, to Trump's grassroots base, this movement he's created, he is starting to seem a little bit like the establishment, right? Yes, absolutely. I think this is, again, really critical nuance of Trump, this version versus Trump previous versions. He's not been president for four years. There's a lot of relationships that are mixed in with the GOP leadership and establishment. These are all

these little instances that created a distance between Donald Trump's grassroots base and Donald Trump as a candidate and political figure. And when we were at the RNC talking to folks in the crowd, there was a real openness to seeing other candidates. One person who we talked to, I remember saying, I'm for anyone who's America first. They were seeing those priorities as really their political guiding light, not following the specific personality of Donald Trump. That's an important distinction, I think, to understand where this race started off as. You have a significant portion of Republicans who want a kind of America first message,

but that can be distinct from wanting Donald Trump. And that's part of the reason DeSantis was showing a lot of real early promise in those post midterm stages. Okay, so at this moment, we have the grassroots unchastened by the midterm results, emboldened even by them, not blaming Trump for them. But we also have this group of voters saying we're kind of bigger than Trump and potentially being open to an alternative like DeSantis. So what's the significance of this when it comes to understanding how the party is going to handle Donald Trump going forward? Right. An important thing to remember about the type of people who go to the RNC winter meeting, the delegates that represent the Republican Party,

is that they're thinking about what's best for the GOP at large. And when you talk to these people, they say they have this really difficult task to navigate, which is the reality that 30 to 35 percent of the party is unshakably with Donald Trump. And they also have the reality that that is not enough people to win. A general election. That is not enough people to win a general election. And more so than that,

that the priorities of that 30 to 35 percent might be opposed to the type of people that they need to win a general election. And so when you talk to people about moving on from Donald Trump, they would hit you with a kind of gut check. How you doing?

I'm Stan. Hey, Henry Barber, nice to meet you. I'm thinking about a man we talked to whose name is Henry Barber. The son of Governor Haley Barber. The nephew of Governor Haley Barber. It's a big family. Big family. Oddly enough, I ended up becoming an RNC member in 05. So a pretty long time,

since the middle of the George W. administration. That's so many different versions of the Republican Party. How have you kind of maintained RNC credibility throughout all of those changes? Well, we have all kinds of incredible members on the RNC. I'm more of a political hack. I'm real driven by one goal for the RNC. And that's winning elections. It's the only statistic that matters.

And he was someone who was really seen as a trusted figure about how does the party win elections going forward. And when we posed this question to him saying, how do you deal with the reality that the Trump base might be losing you elections? He says very clearly that being anti-Trump is a non-starter for Republicans. Anybody who has a plan and the foundation of it is anti-Trump has got not a clue. Because that is a path to losing. I know we need Donald Trump to be part of this, part of our success. He's recognizing the reality that Donald Trump to be part of this, part of our success.

He's recognizing the reality that Donald Trump has so changed the issues that most Republican voters prioritize, that there's no version of winning, particularly in a primary and even in a general election, that doesn't energize and activate that core base of people. But at the same time, that same group of people has caused the party to drift away from the type of issues that motivate swing voters, that motivate the people in the middle who really rejected them in the last midterm elections. I think if you look at the 22 cycle, I think there's a lesson for the 24 cycle. Our candidates who were focused on the future, who were focused on public policy, did much, much better in the 22 cycle than the candidates who were stuck in the past, and particularly those who were just talking about 2020. circle, need to energize and activate the base, while at the same time making sure that they aren't pushed in directions that pull them further away from swing voters and cause them to lose.

To win, Barber says, you need both, not either or. And so I want to have that Reagan-esque leader who we nominate in 2024, who brings us together, who independents flock to, who moderate Democrats go, I'm voting for that guy because I want the opportunity that this guy or gal are offering. If that leader comes through the primary, they will fall in line. Yeah. And the reality is, look at 2016. That's what happened with Donald Trump. The party followed behind him, and I think the press wonders, well, y'all are never going to get rid of Donald Trump, you're never going to move on. Well, we're not trying to get rid of Donald Trump. But all we know is we have to move forward together if we want to win.

You know, Trump can be part of this 24 victory, whether he's the nominee or not. We need Donald Trump. We need the people who love Donald Trump. We need him to be part of the solution if we're going to win, because if we don't come together, I can assure you we're going to have Joe Biden for four more years, and America ain't going to like that. So rather than trying to find a way forward after these midterm losses without Trump, rather than putting their fingers on the scale, maybe a little bit signaling it's time for someone new, someone like DeSantis. The party's message in January is we want Trump

and Trump supporters to come with us on this forward-looking journey. And we want everyone else as well. The question, of course, is how on earth do you do that? Because the components of that are very contradictory. Absolutely. It was all vibes and no specifics. But instead, we're still left with this really intriguing situation that I want you to resolve for us, which is that this grassroots base, it's still got a kind of wary relationship to Trump himself, which you described earlier. Suddenly, this grassroots base is feeling like

they don't need to do exactly what Trump says. So how does that factor into this moment? When we were talking to Trump supporters, even at the RNC, while they weren't publicly expressing any problems with Trump and were blaming the kind of Republican establishment for the losses, they were privately telling us that they do believe that the version of Donald Trump that came out of the 2020 race and came into the 2022 midterms was much more focused on his own personal grievances and settling the score of his own election loss

rather than what I think they would often refer to in shorthand as kind of 2016 version of Donald Trump, which was certainly grievance-driven, but representing a kind of larger community, right? Right. He was aggrieved on behalf of them. He was aggrieved on behalf of the little guy, right? Right. And whatever you think that is, right? Not just him.

Right, not just him. It was a manufacturing grievance. It was America first in economic sense. It was the wall grievance. It was the wall grievance. It was all of that. But he was a vessel for a larger, unseen, quote unquote, forgotten American. Right. They felt that that message had gotten kind of lost from 2020 to 2022, where it became about Donald Trump and his own election loss. him and how they wanted to see him shift heading into 2024. What we were hearing in that kind of January period was they wanted to hear him back to being refocused on their grievances, not his own. And so that was the kind of mandate we were hearing from Trump supporters in that early period. Walking past like a table full of hats. We've got, let's go, Brandon, Trump won. Table full of hats. We've got, let's go, Brandon.

Trump won. And we really see this, like, explicitly in early March when we go to CPAC. Make America Florida. Don't New York my Florida. The conservative political action conference, the big grassroots gathering of right-wing activists that happens outside of Washington, D.C. Oh, the right stuff. This is a dating app for conservatives. Nice.

I'm sure it is popping this weekend. And this is traditionally a bellwether of where the energy on the presidential race is. What are your guys' names? Amanda. Jeannie Sylvia. When we got there and talked to voters, they were expressing similar things to what we heard at the RNC winter meeting. 100% he needs to, we all know, yes, focus more on like what he's going to do in the future and how he's going to make the country great again.

That they were looking to see if Donald Trump had moved past his personal grievances. What do you hope he talks about? The economy. And when we were asking what did they want, that was really clear at the conference, too. Close the border. I mean, and then also to get rid of this whole Russia and Ukraine war. That's just dumb. This would have never happened under him. A clear expression that the country is being rested by liberal elites. There's only two genders. And I don't like the drag shows are bringing their kids to. That's not right. That's being threatened by progressive social movements

like Black Lives Matter or the growth of trans rights. I think it's disgusting, actually. And it's hurting our kids and now the future. And so all of those became very clearly identifiable priorities for this group that they were seeking the candidate to reflect. And so when you got to Trump's speech, which was the last thing to happen at that conference, the question I had going into the speech is, would this be a candidate that reflects those priorities? Would this be a

candidate that understands that there is a gap, a weakness, a distance between him and the base he's so associated with? And would he reflect what they were asking him to do, which was close that gap? Thank you very much, and I'm thrilled to be back at CPAC with thousands of great and true American patriots, and that's what you are. And I think when we heard that speech... For seven years, you and I have been engaged in an epic struggle to rescue our country from the people who hate it and want to absolutely destroy it. It was a box checking one by one of those priorities. I will revoke every Biden policy promoting the chemical castration and sexual

mutilization. You heard Donald Trump go through the type of cultural grievances they were concerned about. We will teach our values and promote our history and our traditions to our children. We will, in other words, be proud of our country again. Make clear

he was the champion of their expression of America first. We'll be stopping the slide into costly and never-ending wars. We've got to stop it. Can't keep spending. And when you hear those things in the context of the conference, I think it has a different resonance. In 2016, I declared, I am your voice.

Today, I add, I am your warrior. I am your justice. And for those who have been wronged and betrayed, I am your warrior. I am your justice. And for those who have been wronged and betrayed, I am your retribution. I am your retribution. Let's take the I am your retribution line that got such national attention from that speech. In isolation, you hear a candidate promising to use the powers of the federal government to attack their opponents. But when you're in that context, you hear a little more than that. What do you hear?

You hear him saying that those grievances you reflect, I understand and I will prioritize when given power. So it's not just a scattershot expression from him. It is a specific response to a base that was calling for him to be their vessel. That's what they wanted from Donald Trump. And that's what they heard at CPAC. And we will make America great again. Again. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. So when we think about the journey we've been on that starts at the RNC with the grassroots saying that they have some concerns about Trump, they have some low-level wariness, this is a big milestone moment in that journey because Trump is saying back to them, I've heard you,

I've heard your wariness, I've heard some of your concerns. And he's saying, my grievances are your grievances once again. I can adjust. I can be this thing you need me to be. And he seems like he's doing that pretty successfully. Right, exactly. It's that time of year again, Jim, the poll that gets it all started. And this bond between candidate and base is most clearly expressed in the straw poll that comes out of CPAC. This is a kind of tradition that happens at this conference where they informally ask the attendees who they would want their presidential nominee to be. And Trump was always the favorite to win this straw poll. But this year, the numbers kind of speak for themselves.

You saw him really clobber DeSantis. 62 to 20 over Ron DeSantis. President Trump gets 62%, so... And it's not as if the people there hated Ron DeSantis. The people we talked to who were at CPAC frankly thought Ron DeSantis was a great governor, that they thought understood their grievances. But they felt that that did not add up to a reason to ditch Donald Trump. And I think even more importantly, that really doesn't add up for a reason to ditch Donald Trump when Donald Trump is reflecting their priorities and doing so at that conference.

and doing so at that conference. And so, whereas I think after the midterms, there was even a question of just, okay, what is the starting point for Trump's support? I think already by early March, that curiosity was already feeling like it was starting to shift. That even if someone assumed that the midterms would be kind of fatal for Trump,

it was not. We'll be right back. I said, we just talked about this idea that the Trump base, 30, 35% of the Republican electorate, has now been re-solidified behind Trump. And that seems very much at odds with the idea that has now become conventional wisdom that Trump is looking more or less inevitable to be re-nominated as a Republican presidential candidate because that actually leaves a huge percentage of the Republican electorate still up for grabs. Yeah, and I think it's because we have to understand these numbers in a more specific way.

When you have 30 to 35% of the Trump base, of course that leaves 65, maybe 70% of people who we would categorize in that construction as anti-Trump. When you look under the hood, that 65,70% dislikes Trump for very different reasons. They can include moderates who think that he is a kind of scary political figure from an ideological perspective. They include people who dislike him from a kind of personality-driven perspective and

have no problem with how far to the right he is. And so the reasons they are anti-Trump are sometimes in conflict. And so the challenge for someone who is trying to put together a coalition of those people is how do you cobble together a big enough percentage while at the same time uniting them under one banner and under one candidate? In your reporting, how have you seen this challenge of a Republican candidate trying to cobble together these disparate elements of the anti-Trump coalition? How have you kind of seen that play out? I think this is where Ron DeSantis is a really helpful figure to look at, because he is someone who has done the most explicit appeals to all sides of the Republican Party. We have maintained law and order.

We have respected our taxpayers and we reject woke ideology. He has tried to appeal to the MAGA base. Florida is where woke goes to die. He has tried to appeal to moderates. Governing is not about building a brand or talking on social media and virtue signaling. It's ultimately about winning and about producing results. By saying that he would not bring the drama that the Trump presidency brought. What goes into paying hush money to a porn star to secure silence over

some type of alleged affair. I just I can't speak to that. The problem is that's much easier said in the abstract than in the specifics. When you look at things like, for example, should the Republican nominee be supportive of more aid to Ukraine? That's something that really splits those group of people. And you saw this really challenge Ron DeSantis. He put out a statement saying he did not feel Ukraine should be a strategic priority. And that got real blowback from the donor class, from candidates like Mike Pence and Nikki Haley, and specifically because they know that that's at odds with the

type of voters on one side of the ledger that he needs to get. That's the challenge of the coalition building. You end up pissing off one side or the other or creating openings for your opponents to seize on. It is why Donald Trump remains a frontrunner, even with a minority of support. It's because his 30 to 35 percent of people are ideologically homogenous and unified around his message. Right. Because someone like Juan DeSantis, it looks so easy on paper, get 36% of the Republican base, but you're saying that's so much harder to do in reality because of an issue like Ukraine,

which looks like it might get you X percent, but then it pisses off Y percent. So maybe actually that just canceled itself out. Right, exactly. But what about DeSantis' anti-woke campaign? It's kind of the signature of the DeSantis' anti-woke campaign? It's kind of the signature of the DeSantis emerging candidacy. And that really did look like a very savvy place to focus.

It's not Ukraine. Yeah. It's something that many Republicans polling suggest can get behind. Yeah, absolutely. And this is the reason why Ron DeSantis is not one of the also-rans in this race. Because he has found an issue that gets a lot of Republicans on board, and because he has distinguished himself from the other candidates as being someone who will follow through on said priority.

And so when Ron DeSantis lands on his anti-wokeness campaign, he is speaking the language of this Republican Party. They are seeking a candidate that speaks in grievance, that speaks in retribution, that's willing to use the federal government to prioritize those goals. And what DeSantis' campaign does is place himself in that language. And so that is the good part for Ron DeSantis. Yeah. Okay, what's the bad part? Is that that is not a message that's in conflict with Donald Trump. Right?

It's kind of an echo. Yeah. It's the language of the party. But it's become the language of the party because Donald Trump has partially made it so. So if you're a voter whose biggest priority is grievance, right, is the way to make that most true in your next Republican nominee voting for the guy who's going to attack Disney? Or is the biggest sense of retribution bringing Donald Trump back? Right? Because ultimately, Trumpism and DeSantisism

can coexist. Well, they're just two slightly different forms of cultural conservatism and grievance, but they're not so different that a Trump-based grassroots person is going to look over at DeSantis and say, yeah, I need to ditch Trump for that. Right, exactly. And so do some Republicans see the flaw of DeSantis is that he's just trying to defeat Trump by running on the issues that Trump himself brought to the fore? Yeah, and this is what you have seen in reporting coming from, you know, DeSantis' donors and other people who have kind of made the argument

that he has lost his kind of electability argument to say that I would win and Trump would lose because he's playing in Donald Trump's sandbox. Okay, but what about a candidate running for the Republican voters that don't like Trumpism and that, as a result, is a candidate not playing in Trump's sandbox. Are you saying that

cultural grievances now run so deep within the Republican Party that there isn't a lane for that kind of candidate who wants to focus on issues like the economy and diplomacy, not trans rights? That's exactly what I'm saying. I'm saying literally not enough Republicans exist who prioritize those type of issues for someone to run exclusively in that lane and win the nomination. The party has changed in such a way that the type of people you would need to make that candidate to nominee,

they've become independents. Some of them have become Democrats. They've left the party. There's just not enough of them. And so there's question that keeps getting asked over and over about when do Republicans turn the page on Donald Trump? It is a useless question. You want it banned. I want it banned. There is no universe where that happens, even if he loses. He can lose. And whoever that is, if it's Ron DeSantis or someone else,

would have to bring Trumpism along. But I said, don't we have to consider the possibility that Trumpism might have to go on without Trump because of the legal situation that he now finds himself in? We haven't talked about it that much in this episode, but he's been indicted in New York over the hush money payment investigation. We know that the district attorney in Georgia is talking about potentially indicting Trump by the end of the summer. There's a possibility Trump goes to jail in either of these cases. all of this. And doesn't it mean that this is not just a theoretical question of Trump and Trumpism needing to separate? Like a court and a judge might make it happen pretty soon. Yeah, absolutely. I think we definitely need to think about that possibility because it's the largest live ball that's still left in the race. To your point, we have the very real possibility

that Donald Trump could be criminally convicted as these indictments roll down. And at the same time, it's really created a political problem for the race, for the other candidates who are not named Donald Trump. Trump faced would do the work for them, would cause him to lose support among Republicans, would make him too bloody and bruised to be a viable presidential candidate. But what we saw after the New York criminal indictment came down was that Donald Trump was raising more money, was that some level of voters were coming back to him after he was attacked, that it fed into his narrative of victimhood and the idea that the federal government was trying to use its powers to shut him down. And so the assumption that it would fall off support from Trump just hasn't become true. And I think that's particularly

important for the two main candidates in this race. For Ron DeSantis, there's a subtle premise to his campaign that if Trump were to not be there, say, because of these legal challenges or because of a conviction, that DeSantis is the natural next step for where his supporters go. But the Trump campaign thinks the exact opposite effect is going to happen, that as more of these indictments come down, it becomes harder to remove Donald Trump because more and more Republicans will rally around him. It's two different ideas and assumptions about how the legal problems and indictments can scramble the race. And they're all based on just best guesses. Because we're in such uncharted territory,

we really have no idea how this is going to play out. So DeSantis' position here is really interesting. He might be running against Trump directly. And he's also positioning himself for the possibility of running in place of Trump, in which case, he has to be respectful of Trump, respectful enough so that he can stand there and operate as his political heir. It's a legitimately difficult tightrope. I mean, we should not underplay that. And when you talk to Trump supporters, you see why. You'll ask them about Ron DeSantis,

and they will say largely positive things about him, that he's kind of their number two, if we could think kind of ranked choice voting style. But they will also say that if someone becomes anti-Trump, or if Ron DeSantis positions himself as someone who's making what they would believe is kind of like liberal arguments against Trump, that would make him an enemy, not an ally in the kind of overall war of Trump politics. And so if you're Ron DeSantis, your kind of dream version of the race is one where you are naturally handed the baton to the Trump coalition. But the reality has been that core support has stuck with Donald Trump. And to me, this adds up to a really important point, because what we're really talking about

here is what are the terms in which this presidential race will be run on? I think for a lot of people, the last time they were plugged into politics was the night of midterm elections, where they saw a country send a unified message to both parties. To reject extremism on the Republican side, to make clear that issues like election denial and conspiracy were a step too far, to really ask the political system to turn the page on Trumpism. the page on Trumpism. And I think for a lot of people, there is a uncomfortable reality that is about to hit them, that that system is set to ignore that message. And we are set to deal with another year and a half on the same kind of terms of Trump and Trumpism, no matter who the Republican nominee is, because that is so entrenched now. That's so at the core of all of our national politics. And I think the big gulf

between what people said they wanted in the midterms and what people are about to get in this presidential race is going to drive home that disconnect really clearly. Well, Sted, thank you very much. Thank you. Well, Ested, thank you very much. Thank you. You can hear all of Ested's reporting on the 2024 presidential campaign on The Times podcast, The Run-Up.

We'll be right back. Here's what else you need to know today. Over the weekend, Russia appeared to effectively win control of the Ukrainian city of Bakhmut, the scene of the deadliest battle in the 15-month war. the scene of the deadliest battle in the 15-month war. If Russian troops can hold the eastern city, it would mark Russia's most successful battlefield advance since last summer. On Sunday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said that no matter what happens to the city, quote, there is nothing of Bakhmut left

after months of fierce fighting there. Meanwhile, in response to the newest round of U.S. sanctions against Russia, Russian President Vladimir Putin has sanctioned Americans who are perceived as enemies of Donald Trump. The latest evidence that Russia favors Trump over President Biden in

the next U.S. election. Among the 500 people that Russia sanctioned were Letitia James, the state attorney general of New York who has investigated and sued Trump, Brad Raffensperger, the secretary of state of Georgia, who rebuffed Trump's effort to reverse the result of the 2020 election, and Lieutenant Michael Byrd, the U.S. Capitol Police officer who shot a pro-Trump rioter on January 6th. Today's episode was produced by Luke Vanderplug, Michael Simon Johnson, Claire Tennis-Gitter, Carlos Prieto, and Caitlin O'Keefe.

It was edited by Rachel Quester, Lisa Tobin, and Anita Bonagio, contains original music from Marion Lozano and Dan Powell, and was engineered by Chris Wood. Our theme music is by Jim Brunberg and Ben Landvirk of Wonderly. Our theme music is by Jim Brunberg and Ben Landsberg of Wunderli. And just a reminder, all this week, you're going to see our new show, The Headlines, right here on The Daily Feed. We made it for you. Hope you like it. To find it, go to nytimes.com slash audio app. That's it for The Daily.

I'm Michael Bilboro. See you tomorrow.