Should Trump Take a Break if He Doesn't Prevail?

Should Trump Take a Break if He Doesn’t Prevail?

In this wait-and-see post-Christmas interim, with Georgia and the Senate hanging in the balance, it is challenging to prognosticate about what lies directly ahead. Trump-supporting conservative media has exhausted conditional phrasing about whether or not the president will overturn what he and many reporters on the Right are convinced was a rigged, bogus election. The big “ifs” have become a dyspeptic lexicon, obligatory insertions whenever talking about what has happened: “if” Biden is inaugurated, “if” Donald Trump does not succeed, “if” the legislative effort is circumvented, “if” somehow Trump pulls off the political reversal of this or any century. For all other media, it’s President-elect Biden.

Today we proceed from the assumption that Trump will not prevail. It is a catastrophic outcome for the nation, yes, but worthy of discussion. Should Trump take a break if he can’t deprive Joe Biden of the Oval Office? We’re not talking long-term here. We’re talking about what President Trump should do in the immediate aftermath of unsuccessfully fighting for his second term.

A perusal of the comment section of a recent PJ Media report yielded a reader suggestion that Trump should go “radio silence” until the run-up to the 2022 midterms. The key reason for doing so, opined the commenter, would be to starve-out the national liberal media that has benefitted from his dependable and all-encompassing newsworthiness.

Go to Mar-a-Lago and live a life that is normal within the context of Trump family normalcy: golf, relaxation, and the kind of retail non-governmental business that is likely to seem positively benign after a beleaguered four years in office. Do not reprise Celebrity Apprentice.

Give them nothing. Make them dig for neutered nuggets of bland Trump news, and invent ever more unhinged conspiracy theories to assuage their hate. Force them to continually reinvent platitudinal hosannas for Biden’s suit, and crown snake-in-the-grass Kamala Harris as warrior-princess, reborn in every stultifying news cycle.

It was Trump’s campaign and presidency that rescued the liberal cables from the status of moribund, airport-background effluvia. Solidly backing Trump, at least until the late-stage run-up and election night, Fox News attained and held unsurpassed ratings hegemony.

Game Plan: Biden

Take it all away. No tweets, no pronouncements. Sit tight and wait until things heat up again in April 2022. At that point, survey the lay of the land. Start reminding voters about your kept promises. Fire up some rallies. Start putting the kind of major hurt only Trump can deliver against what is likely to be a radical agenda coughed-up by Biden and his retrograde tax-and-spend, globalist, foreign interventionist, big government administration.

Until then, let the national media founder. What kind of numbers will tune in to watch a Trump hater like Don Lemon, stripped of his evil orange father-figure and forced to lap at the meager offerings of a man who once called African American men “predators?” Who will breathlessly stand by to hear Rachel Maddow’s continued denigration of a president who turned back the globalist tide, brought American jobs and prosperity home, helped craft a groundbreaking Mid-East peace, and renewed in the hearts of his countrymen and women national pride and hope for an America-First future?

Let Lemon, Maddow, Cooper, and the rest of their ilk stew over an inert cauldron of lies, ideological lizard entrails, and the vestiges of hate still festering in their souls.

If the GOP retains the Senate, it would be easier for Trump to take a hiatus. He would rely then upon Trump-aligned senators and representatives to hold the line against Harris/Biden and Pelosi’s diminished House. If the Democrats manage, by hook or by crook, to take Georgia, it would be more difficult for Trump to step back knowing that with Demoocrats’ unlimited power the damage done to the republic might be irreparable. On the other hand, with all power in leftist hands, what really can Trump do in the immediate aftermath? Yes, his position and influence are considerable. Should he expend precious energies against such a triumvirate of power?

Might it be better to recharge, starve the cables, and wait until a real chance for retribution and rectification looms?

No doubt many readers are thinking that the PJ Media commenter’s R&R suggestion–and this entire piece–is moot.

Once risen to the highest office in the land, it will be impossible for a man like Donald Trump to walk it back and move decisively into a private life. Especially in light of the fact that he, a vast majority of Republicans, and a significant third of voters overall believe the election was stolen from him.

On the day after Biden’s inauguration, Trump will initiate plans to storm the barricades by any means necessary. There’s talk he might launch his own political cable channel. He will be even freer than before to articulate his vision, and support office-seekers he believes will implement the policies which bolster that vision. This is the more likely scenario. America will have Trump to lead it, and the national media will still have him to kick around.

But consider this.

What if Trump announces his 2024 candidacy on the day Joe Biden and Kamala Harris take office and then goes under the radar until a few months before the 2022 midterm? Is a period of rest, relaxation, and renewal, then a hard charge on the threshold of the next national election indicated?

Or should Trump fight on, indefatigably, starting on 1/21/21, for the nation for which he left nothing on the field?

Mark Ellis is Associate Editor at the Northwest Connection, Portland, Oregon’s only conservative web/print publication. He is the author of A Death on the Horizon, a finalist in the 14^th annual National Indie Excellence Awards in the category of General Fiction. Follow Mark on Twitter.