The Morning Briefing: Laser-Focused Trump FINALLY Ready to Debate...Meghan Markle

AP Photo/Seth Wenig

Top O’ the Briefing

Happy Thursday, dear Kruiser Morning Briefing friends. Dertencio knew that his days as a gondolier were numbered when he discovered the unbridled joy of competitive clam shucking.

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A lot of former President Donald Trump’s most ardent devotees are already irritated with me for my Tuesday column, and I’m not going to be getting any lunch invitations from them after today.

The 2023 version of Donald Trump perplexes me. Yeah, I know he’s under a lot of pressure from the commie Democrat witch hunt that’s perverting the legal system to interfere with the 2024 election and keep him off the ballot. That is taken into consideration every time he does something that I find to be tedious or nonsensical and given weight as a mitigating factor.

What’s bothering me now — and I’ve written about this a lot — is that the Donald Trump running around this year is not the same guy I would have walked through fire to vote for just three short years ago. Heck, I was probably still in firewalk mode at the end of last year when he first announced his 2024 run. After the midterm disaster, I wrote that the Republicans who were blaming Trump for the failed candidates needed to knock it off.

In the first week of this year, I wrote a column saying that I was all-in if Trump promised a scorched-earth second term, so it’s not as if I’m wandering in from Trump-Hating Squish Land.

Rather than lay out his vision for that scorched-earth, Swamp-draining term, Trump has offered “DeSanctimonious,” a nickname so limp it needs Viagra to give it any oomph. There has also been a seemingly endless stream of Truth Social screeds going after any Republican who hasn’t yet sworn loyalty to him via an endorsement.

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Inspiring, it isn’t.

Now that the GOP primary debates have begun, Trump has already skipped one and is being coy about whether he’ll deign to behave like a candidate who wants to earn a vote (h/t Stephen Green).

Again, tedious.

Well, kids, it looks like the once and possibly future president of the United States is warming up to the idea of debating, which Matt wrote about yesterday:

In the midst of an ongoing Republican presidential primary, Donald Trump is so far refusing to debate his fellow opponents. But he is apparently willing to debate Meghan Markle.

Markle was an actress of minor celebrity who became famous by marrying into the royal family, and then she went on to become the most famous Karen in the country. Why exactly does that mean she is, in Trump’s estimation, worth his time to debate?

And debate what, exactly?

“I didn’t like the way she dealt with the queen,” Trump said during an interview with conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt Wednesday.

“I’d love to debate her,” he said. “I would love it. I disagree so much with what they’re doing.”

At long last, a firm stance on a burning issue important to American voters: The late British queen didn’t get along with her granddaughter-in-law.

Seriously, if Trump wasn’t known for being a legendary teetotaler, I’d swear he was drunk all the time now. This may have just been a flippant aside in this interview, but it was a really dumb one, and it shows a lack of focus, which I would have never faulted Trump for before.

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I know that the most devout among the Trump faithful think this is the same man who shocked the world in 2016 and was wronged in 2020. I don’t see it. I blame his time on Truth Social for a lot of it.

Candidate Trump in 2016 was brilliant on social media. Throughout the campaign, I said that political science programs would one day be teaching entire classes on how he completely changed the game. What he was doing on Twitter was brilliant, and he was made sharper by mixing it up in the presence of so many haters. He’s now surrounded by a sycophantic horde on Truth Social (STILL A STUPID NAME!), and I think it’s dulled his edge.

Once more, with feeling: I will vote for him if he is the nominee.

I’d just prefer to vote for the same guy that I did last time.

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