'Saps and weaklings': Journalist recalls what Trump told him about Republicans

For the third U.S. presidential election in a row, Donald Trump is the Republican Party nominee — though it’s actually his fourth presidential campaign. In 2000, Trump briefly ran for president with the Reform Party, but he grew disenchanted and dropped out of the race in February of that year.

It wasn't until the 2016 election that Trump achieved real prominence in U.S. politics — and he has dominated the GOP ever since.

The Atlantic's Mark Leibovich discusses that dominance in a think piece published Monday, delving into how Trump pulled it off.

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Leibovich recalls a conversation with Trump in 2015, when he launched his first presidential campaign as a Republican. Trump, according to Leibovich, said he was used to dealing with "brutal, vicious killers" — which was his view of people in real estate and gambling.

The journalist recalls, "In contrast, he told me, politicians are saps and weaklings." And Trump boasted to Leibovich, "I will roll over them."

Trump, according to Leibovich, understood the mentality of Republican politicians — and former critics like Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) and Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) flip-flopped, becoming staunch defenders.

"I'd thought that maybe 2024 would be the year the GOP finally began some semblance of a post-Trump future," Leibovich explains. "At the very least, new voices of resistance had to finally assert themselves.

“ … Yet the speed with which Trump has settled back into easy dominance of his party has been both remarkable and entirely foreseeable — foreseen, in fact, by Trump himself."

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Leibovich continued, "Because if there's been one recurring lesson of the Trump-era GOP, it's this: Never underestimate the durability of a demagogue with a captive base, a desperate will to keep going, and — perhaps most of all — a feeble and terrified opposition of spineless ciphers."

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Read Mark Leibovich's full essay for The Atlantic at this link (subscription required).