By Davis Carlton
Donald Trump’s recent federal indictment has only made him more favorable – nay, even beloved – among likely Republican voters. There is a very real possibility that Trump could defeat Joe Biden in a 2024 grudge match. I’d like to indulge in some political speculation about how things might possibly go down. I believe that the leftist establishment might be willing to concede the 2024 election to Donald Trump for strategic purposes. Before I make my case, I want to be clear that this is my speculation about what might happen. I make no hard and fast predictions about what absolutely will happen.
The nature of contemporary politics goes over the head of most everyone, including – and especially – most Christians. There are some who believe that Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign was entirely a farce intended to lure unsuspecting populist conservatives into his camp while he collaborated with the leftist establishment. Proponents of this perspective highlight Trump’s checkered past as well as his more libertarian and liberal positions on social issues like abortion and homosexuality. I think that understanding is reasonable, but can also be overly simplistic.
I think that Donald Trump was shrewd enough to understand the underlying populist sentiment among the disaffected working class and saw the opportunity to capture a key demographic. Trump’s populist rhetoric managed to propel him to victory in 2016. I believe that this genuinely upset many on the Left who wanted to bury any populist sentiment into oblivion. Donald Trump did himself no favors by dropping virtually all of the populist talking points that worked for him in 2016 during the 2020 election, but the election was also stolen by means of ballot harvesting and in some cases outright fraud. That being said, I think that the deep state might be willing to concede the 2024 election to Donald Trump, and there are two main reasons for this.
The first reason is that the re-election of Donald Trump would cull the herd. I don’t believe that those in the deep state who are actually in charge want Donald Trump back in office, but a Donald Trump victory would be able to convince many that the system isn’t as broken as it actually is and would go a long way in restoring their faith in the political process. Many baby boomer conservatives aren’t particularly red-pilled on just how rotten and irredeemable the system is, and would interpret a Donald Trump victory as the opportunity to restore order to a system that is broken but not destroyed. Add to this number those who inexplicably still believe the Q Anon narrative that Trump is covertly operating behind the scenes to take down the deep state and initiate mass arrests of elite pedophiles. A Donald Trump election in 2024 would signal to those who still cling to the Q Anon narrative that they were right all along to “trust the plan” and that “the storm” has finally come.
The second reason is that the Left needs a good enemy to serve as the focal point of their hatred and as a means of distracting their base from just how bad of a job they have done under Joe Biden. What better man for the job than Donald Trump? I’ve found that virtually everyone on the left and within the officially approved conservative movement despises Donald Trump to the point where their own personal problems can practically be blamed on Trump. This very well may be the reason that the ruling class is so keen on prosecuting Trump on bogus charges when polls indicate that this is actually making Trump more popular with likely Republican voters. If Donald Trump wins the Republican nomination or even the presidency this puts liberals in the position of labeling mainstream Republican voters looking for an alternative to Biden as extremists who support a criminal proponent of insurrection and high treason. Millions upon millions of people will believe them in spite of the opposite actually being true. This demonstrates how good the Left is at crafting a narrative.
Donald Trump serves the role of Emmanuel Goldstein from George Orwell’s dystopian novel, 1984. Goldstein is the fictional creation of the state who presents Goldstein’s visage for public revilement during an event referred to as “two minute hate.” As an aside, it’s humorous that Orwell thought that Emmanuel Goldstein was a realistic name for a political dissident fighting against state tyranny, but I digress.
A second presidential term of office for Donald Trump will be used by the Democratic Party and establishment Republicans as a means to discredit Trump’s civic nationalist policies, tame as they are in reality. The Democratic Party would also be able to capitalize on a Trump election by reminding their base about how Trump-appointed justices to the Supreme Court reversed Roe v. Wade. Democrats were successful at galvanizing pro-abortion fervor into high voter turnout in 2022 and if Trump actually manages to get back into office they can make use of this strategy again in 2026 and 2028.
None of this is to say that I think that Donald Trump is consciously working with the Democratic Party or that the deep state actually wants another term of Donald Trump in office. I think that the left has been successful at winning elections because they are politically savvy and could potentially see this as a chance for a temporary strategic withdrawal if Trump were to win back the presidency in 2024. The Biden administration has been a total train wreck. Incompetence has marked virtually everything that the current regime does. Joe Biden clearly has advanced dementia, and somehow still manages to have a vice president who is less articulate than him! That’s what you get with affirmative action. The left might be willing to take a step back in 2024 if they believe that it positions them to take more steps forward in future political contests.
The response from traditionalist Christians, patriots, and ethno-nationalists should be to use Trump’s candidacy and potential presidency to expose the sham that is democracy in the 21st century. The messaging should be that the political system currently in place is irreparably broken and no one will fix it. The swamp won’t get drained by voting harder. I wish that Trump was half as menacing as he is portrayed by legacy media, but he isn’t. If Trump were a serious threat to the system as it is presently constituted he would be given the Epstein treatment. Trump is and always was controlled opposition. The best hope that the Right has is that the deep state will overplay its hand and causes Trump to suffer political martyrdom. If Trump is defeated in the 2024 general election by obvious political persecution and fraud, this could galvanize many on the Right to finally understand that our problems today sadly do not have easy political solutions. Whatever ends up happening it is imperative for Christians to remember that God is still in control, and that He continues to mock the foolish plans of those who oppose Him and His Anointed.