Donald Trump Will Never Change

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8 Min Read
Former President Donald Trump holds a copy of The Washington Post as he speaks in the East Room of the White House one day after the Senate acquitted him of two articles of impeachment, February 6, 2020 in Washington, DC. Drew Angerer | Getty Images

It was right at 9 p.m. eastern time, when I heard Kellyanne Conway on Fox News previewing Donald Trump’s victory speech in the New Hampshire primary, that I knew we were in for it. She said, “I think Trump will be gracious, he’s been incredibly gracious to Ron DeSantis,” and at that moment the thought simply appeared in my brain as if there was no other possible answer: “Okay, so now he’s going to come out vomiting bile all over the front row.” Why? Because I’ve lived too long and seen too much when it comes to Trump: He’s the world’s greatest rug-puller, subverting expectations like Rian Johnson on a spree. He lives to sandbag those who attempt to speak for him in advance by blurting out some intemperate and highly public nonsense — and usually almost immediately, because when you orbit Trump’s professional or political sphere, karma usually gets you instantly. He is a chaos agent.

Minutes later I was proven correct as Trump, forever calling audibles only in his own head, went out and delivered what was a victory speech in name only and, more accurately, a protracted fulmination about the audacity of Nikki Haley, who dares to persist in her campaign against him. (Sample: “Who the hell was the imposter that went up on the stage before and, like, claimed a victory? She did very poorly, actually.”) It was a completely unfocused rant that said nothing about Biden or the 2024 election but focused exclusively on Haley’s refusal to drop out. Trump talked trash about her outfit (!) and then later hinted darkly that she would be under investigation if she ever overtook him. It was so tonally inappropriate and bizarre that only someone with Trump’s long history of similar speeches could have made it feel predictable — imagine a 20-minute-long hip-hop diss track during which Trump hands the mic off to DJ Vivvy Viv midway through for “one minute or less” of crowd-hyping. (Folks, it was a weird scene.)

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It was hard to say who came away worse: Trump (who, after all, started from the position of having no discernible shame and few virtues left to lose) or poor South Carolina senator Tim Scott. After having terminated his own unimpressive campaign a month ago, Scott recently endorsed Trump over Haley, the governor who had appointed him to South Carolina’s open senate seat a decade ago. Some affect to be deeply offended by this, but for me it is just a predictable tacking to Trumpian political winds, however objectively cowardly. Trump is not going to forgive those who didn’t endorse him in a timely fashion, so you can choose your career or your political loyalty to a transparently lost cause. (Are you at all surprised that the vast majority of professional politicians choose option A?)

But, of course, Donald Trump is also going to humiliate you every chance he can get once you’ve bent the knee to him. So, enraged as he was at Haley’s defiance and her preempting of his speech, he attacked her and gelded Scott simultaneously in a two-for-one deal. After positioning Scott onstage prominently behind him and inviting him to speak briefly (sending a clear message that “South Carolina is not up for grabs” — fair enough, as far as political theatrics go), he then riffed on how hilarious it was that Scott had betrayed Haley. “Did you ever think that she actually appointed you, Tim? And think of it — you’re the senator from her state, and you endorsed me! You must really hate her.” Scott’s response to this was to nervously laugh and say, “I just love you!”

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It was an utterly humiliating moment for Scott, who had the spotlight shone on his abandonment of his onetime ally and was forced into the role of laughing, smiling bootlicker in order to change the subject. And it’s nothing new for Trump. Rather, it’s the sort of public dominance ritual he notoriously seeks to engage in with all in his circle. He has no allies, only servile retainers. (Trump’s fanatics, especially the Extremely Online ones, notice this well and openly thrill to it; suburban women amenable to voting Republican, on the other hand, react to it like arsenic. Which is the larger voting demographic?)

What comes across the most in Trump’s churlish speech — and get used to this style, you’ll be hearing more of it during the general election from him and his online minions — is his personal outrage over Haley’s refusal to drop out. He is angry about what it represents: An entire segment of the Republican Party is now, during his third go-round, fundamentally unreconcilable to him. There aren’t enough votes out there for him to survive the loss of the slice of the GOP electorate that Haley’s vote share represents — a minority now, for sure, but a determinative one. And yet he cannot control his worst instincts, for outbursts like these are the worst possible way to win them over. They will not merely fall in line once threatened with four more years of Joe Biden and/or Kamala Harris. Negative polarization only goes so far.

We are all agreed — empirical evidence suggests that the current Republican primary electorate is in love with Trump and cannot be made to stop loving him. But here is the reverse of the medal: You can never make those in your own coalition who hate Trump love him, either, and as last night’s victory speech demonstrated, demands for a completely unreciprocated loyalty will fall on the pitilessly deaf ears of those he has already repelled. He cannot win them. Because Trump forever remains, undisguisably, who he is.

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Jeffrey Blehar is a National Review writer living in Chicago. He is also the co-host of National Review’s Political Beats podcast, which explores the great music of the modern era with guests from the political world happy to find something non-political to talk about.

 

 

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