Nicolle Wallace opened her show on Thursday with a discussion of Jonathan Karl’s new book, “Tired of Winning: Donald Trump and the end of the Grand Old Party.” She described it as revealing the “dramatic collision of efforts to hold the ex-president accountable for his alleged crimes and misdeeds and a candidate who has no hesitation stoking the fires of right-wing extremism and sees winning the presidency as the only way to get out of his legal troubles.”
“The Trump Davidians” quote came when Karl asked Steve Bannon why Trump held his first 2024 presidential campaign rally in Waco, Texas instead of a more obvious place to kick off a campaign, like Iowa or New Hampshire. Bannon’s response, “We’re the Trump Davidians,” spoke volumes about how far Trump wants his followers to go to keep himself out of jail. You can bet your MAGA hat that Trump will never put his own flabby butt on the line.
“It’s all part of a ‘campaign of vengeance and martyrdom’” Wallace continued, quoting Karl. Trump “will continue to talk about what is at stake in the election in apocalyptic terms [such as] ‘The final battle,’ knowing how high the stakes are for him personally. He can win and retake the White House or he can lose and go to prison.”
On January 6, Trump was fine with an enraged crowd storming the Capitol, trying to overturn the presidential election results and chanting “Hang Mike Pence!” That was because he couldn’t deal with losing the election. Now Trump is facing 91 felonies, plus the New York fraud trial that threatens his entire business. There’s probably no bottom to what he’d like his followers to do for him to keep his orange face out of jail or to keep the New York civil case from destroying his business.