Dear Friend,

Four years ago, the Republican Party nominated the grand wizard of the birther movement as its presidential candidate. Writing for The New Republic, Jonathan V. Last described Trump’s success as “a hostile takeover of the GOP because he alone understood what Republican voters wanted. They wanted the spirit that had animated his birtherism gambit: a politics devoted not to policies and ideologies, but to grievances and combativeness.”

As difficult as it is to unseat an elected president, after the decisive victory of Joe Biden, a “rational political party would see the Trump presidency as a mistake and attempt to pivot away from it as quickly as possible,” Last wrote. But it won’t, “because as much as party elites might want to jettison Trump, neither Donald Trump nor the base of Republican voters will let them.”

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Johnathan V. Last predicts that “Donald Trump will be the first former president not to retire, more or less, from political life since Teddy Roosevelt. He will not repair to Mar-a-Lago, watch Shark Week, and get to work on his memoirs. He has neither the financial nor psychological ability to do so. Instead, Trump will tweet. He will call in to the cable shows.”

Last believes that four years from now, “another group of eager senators and governors will get crushed while seeking the Republican presidential nomination. Maybe they will lose to Donald Trump himself. Maybe to Don Jr. Perhaps to a glib cable TV host.”

The best way to follow this ongoing saga is to read Jonathan V. Last and the best investigative reporters, opinion writers, and cultural critics in America. 

Subscribe to The New Republic today.

Sincerely,

Kerrie Gillis, publisher

Read Jonathan V. Last’s The Republican Party Is Dead. It’s the Trump Cult Now.