Old Florida man melts down at diner
Ultimate Loser Donald Trump went far off his prepared remarks at an RNC fundraiser on Saturday, spewing obscenities and attacking members of his own party while continuing to complain about the 2020 election having been stolen from him.
The twice impeached Trump quickly cast aside his prepared remarks and continued with the Big Lie swearing and telling everyone about the stolen election,” according to one such attendee. The 2020 election, of course, was not stolen from Trump, and President Joe Biden decisively beat the GOP incumbent in both the Electoral College and popular vote counts. Trump’s anti-democratic blitz following Election Day and the lies he and much of the mainstream GOP spread about the election culminated in the deadly Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol, which Trump is now accused in court papers of inciting.
The source noted that the ex-president dinged his former VP Mike Pence for not fighting harder to subvert American democracy to keep Trump in power, but in particular went after Republican Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell. This source did not immediately respond to questions about specific phrasing but, according to New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman, Trump alleged that “a real leader" would not have bowed to the outcome and certification of Biden’s 2020 victory. Another source familiar with the event told The Daily Beast the former president trashed McConnell as a “dumb son of a bitch” in a non-scripted portion of his Saturday night address to GOP donors.
The same former president who last month sent the R.N.C. a cease-and-desist letter demanding they stop using his likeness to raise money on Saturday evening served as the party’s fund-raising headliner.
And according to Washington Post journalist Josh Dawsey, Trump also made time to vent pet grievances about “Oprah Winfrey and Barack Hussein Obama,” and to accuse Dr. Anthony Fauci of being “so full of crap.”
In the prepared text for Trump’s retreat address, the former president was set to talk to his adoring crowd about “ridiculous woke corporations,” Biden’s supposedly “AMERICA LAST” policy agenda, and “critical race theory,” among other topics. The speech marked yet another instance of the Ultimate Loser basking in his continued position as the dominant leader in the party (despite the GOP’s Huge loss of the House, Senate, and White House on his watch), and endeavoring to sustain his grip on the conservative movement and Republican circles of power and influence. “Saturday’s speech will be welcomed words to the Republican donors visiting Mar-a-Lago to hear directly from President Trump,” Jason Miller, senior racist adviser to Trump, predicted in a statement sent to The Daily Beast earlier in the day. “Palm Beach is the new political power center, and President Trump is the Republican Party’s best messenger.”
Late in his remarks, Trump praised the crowd that attended his rally on Jan. 6, admiring how large it was, the attendee said. Trump added that he wasn’t “talking about the people that went to the Capitol,” though that is where the Capital insurrectionists came from.
For party officials, the goal is keeping the energy that has propelled Mr. Trump to success inside the Republican tent while not entirely allowing the former president to dominate it. Ronna McDaniel, the R.N.C. chairwoman whom Mr. Trump supported for a second term, has vowed to remain neutral in a potential 2024 primary should Mr. Trump run again.
“It is a difficult balancing act,” said Bill Palatucci, a Republican National Committeeman from New Jersey who has been critical of Mr. Trump. Some donors are hoping to quickly move past Mr. Trump.
“It is very important the Republican Party puts Donald Trump as far into the past as possible,” said William Oberndorf, an investor in California who has given millions to G.O.P. candidates but said he would now only give to Republican lawmakers who voted to impeach Mr. Trump.
During Mr. Trump’s White House tenure, his political campaign, the R.N.C. and his allies spent millions of dollars at Trump businesses, including his hotel in Washington near the White House and a resort property in Miami, where yet another pro-Trump group also held a conference this week.
Still, the Trump branding of official Republican events had alienated what was once the Republican establishment.
“This is all about the Trump circle of grift,” said former Representative Barbara Comstock of Virginia, who is close to another high-profile Republican — and a frequent target of Mr. Trump’s — who was also notably absent: Representative Liz Cheney of Wyoming.
Ms. Comstock said that the Republicans keeping their distance were wise to “build their own coalitions” and “not get sucked into Trumpism, which has a limited and short-term appeal with demographics dying in this country.”
Henry Barbour, an influential R.N.C. member from Mississippi, said that the party was still in a transitional phase since Mr. Trump’s loss.
“When you lose the White House, you kind of figure it’s going to take a little bit of healing, and I think probably first quarter has hopefully got us moving on a better path,” Mr. Barbour said. Mr. Trump, he said, is a “big force in the party, but the party is bigger than any one candidate including Donald Trump.”
With Mr. Trump’s priorities differing from those of other party leaders, the tension remains palpable. On Friday, the super PAC for Senate Republicans, which is aligned with Mr. McConnell, announced its backing of Senator Lisa Murkowski, Republican of Alaska, who infuriated Mr. Trump by voting to impeach him. (Some Trump 2020 advisers are working for Ms. Murkowski’s Republican challenger, Kelly Tshibaka.)
Last month, Mr. McConnell privately boasted of the super PAC’s fund-raising in a meeting with Senate Republicans, bragging that it had raised more than Mr. Trump’s super PAC had in 2020. He even distributed a card to hammer home the point: “In three cycles: nearly $1 billion,” the card said. Below that were Mr. Trump’s super PAC statistics: “Trump: $148+ million,” referring to the group America First.
But the Republican small donor base remains very much enamored with Mr. Trump.
“He’ll still be the most significant figure in the party in November 2022,” predicted Al Cardenas, a former chairman of the Florida Republican Party and former chairman of the American Conservative Union. “Everybody has a shelf life and Donald Trump has lost a bit of his shelf life.”