The run-up to the US presidential election is longer and weirder than ever. Shortly before Marjorie Taylor Greene announced that Joe Biden’s impeachment would go ahead, reports surfaced about who President Trump will choose as the running mate for the election that will take place in a year and a half. Remarkably, those two issues have in common that both deal with the possibility that, for the first time in its history, the United States could have a female head of state in the near future!
VP-choice
The two speculations about Trump’s VP choice that I studied (by a Jill Colvin, March 16, 2023 and this on by a Benjamin Wallace-Wells in October ’22 have two things in common: they strongly reject Trump and the analysis is – as a result thereof – really exceptionally weak.
And I’m not referring to the fact that they don’t pay any attention to what they think is already established fact that the running mate will undoubtedly be a woman or if it were to be a man, he would be black. After all, a main component of the false criticism of Trump was and is that he is a sexist racist. And that’s not weak, that’s just evil.
No, I’m referring to the way they discount the chances of Kari Lake becoming his running mate. They both write that she lost elections (for governor of Arizona) and whines about electoral fraud. They argue that choosing Lake would make less sense for Trump because he would want to prevent voters from seeing him too much as “the guy who lost the election.” Especially against the declining and therefore colorless Joe Biden.
That’s just stupid.
Logical choice
Kari Lake is the logical choice.
It’s 100% theoretical, but now imagine Trump himself would have changed his mind about the election fraud and that now, according to him, Biden won the 2020 elections fairly. Even then, it would be absurd to assume that Donald Trump would not want to be reminded too much of the 2020 elections. After all, this will not only be the central theme in the approach of his opponents: for himself too, losing those elections including the link with the deep state will be a main theme.
That mixture of hate and contempt from this kind of media regarding Lake is understandable. However, the almost boundless hatred of conservatives will once again doom the Democrats and their henchmen in traditional media.
Projection
These people do not primarily assume that President Trump is incompetent, but just as deceitful or even more deceitful than themselves. Since Sigmund Freud psychologists and psychiatrists have called this phenomenon ‘projection’, but knowledge of this had existed for much longer in all kinds of folk wisdom.
Trump’s fiercest opponents can be found among people who are bothered by the fact that he “rubbed against enterprising Democrats” for a long time and therefore knows the ropes. For Kari Lake, she too was further removed from outspoken conservative views in the past. No misunderstanding: ‘conservative‘ has been the opposite of a swear word for me for several decades now.
I glanced (rather cursorily) at those other female Trump candidate VPs. Kari Lake does very well on photoos and on television. Compared to Lake someone like Kim Reynolds, a Republican governor who is a conservative much longer, looks like a colorless wimp.
Third Party?
Certainly: there are fierce opponents of Trump among the Republicans. But more and/or fiercer opponents than Biden has among ex-or almost ex-Democrats? Not really!
I am thinking in particular of Kennedy junior and Tulsi Gabbard. Imagine those two working together and forming a third ‘party’ in 2024?!
They would undoubtedly draw potential Trump/Republican voters as well. But more than potential Biden voters? Mind you: the leadership of the DNC even seems to be aiming for the re-candidacy of this Biden-puppet as the Democratic candidate without significant debate.
Previously, rather successful third parties participated in presidential elections in America. In 1992, Ross Perot attracted a lot of votes. By the way, Perot was quite similar to Trump: I quote wikipedia about Colonel Simons:
In late 1978, Simons was contacted by Texas businessman Ross Perot, who requested his direction and leadership to help free two employees of Electronic Data Systems who had been arrested shortly before the Iranian Revolution. Simons organized a rescue mission and ultimately freed the two men from the Iranian prison. All involved returned safely to the United States. The rescue operation was described in On Wings of Eagles (1983) written by British author Ken Follett.
Three months after the rescue mission, while on vacation in Vail, Colorado, Simons suffered a heart attack. He was transported to Dallas, Texas by a private jet chartered by Perot. He died one month later of persistent heart failure at the age of 60.
Those last sentences!
Perot received a whopping 19.7 million votes for an 18.9% share of the popular vote. He didn’t get a single electoral vote. However, such a thing will not happen to a politician ‘by birth’ like Robert Kennedy junior!
Meanwhile in The Netherlands
I come back to the impeachment of Joe Biden because of another special coincidence, seen from the Dutch perspective. Nowhere in the world have so many people been aware of the involvement of Joe and Hunter Biden in the very large-scale corruption in Ukraine for so long as in The Netherlands.
In 2016, a ‘consultative referendum’ was held on an association agreement between our country and Ukraine, even then one of the most corrupt countries in the world * ).
The people of the Netherlands said NO to that government proposal in that referendum. In response to that result, Mark Rutte – who was already prime minister of the Netherlands at the time – violated the referendum law by neither respecting nor rejecting that result: explicitly mentioned as the only possibilities in that law. Another reaction to the result was to remove that advisory referendum from the law …
One of the reasons so many millions of Dutch people voted against the government proposal was the awareness of the contribution from The Netherlands (and the European Union) to fueling polarization in Ukraine: in 2014!
The above image is a still from youtube video with Dutch MP Van Baalen and the infamous Belgian Europhile Guy Verhofstadt.
If you’re still in doubt about Kari Lake, check out this call from her to Tucker Carlson:
*) PS: the wikipedia lemma about the referendum is clearly written by supporters of the Dutch government, but still informative.
PPS: Was I wrong about Kamela Harris ?