There’s one move he could take that would genuinely surprise people, and might help him win the election.
In tonight’s speech accepting his third consecutive Republican nomination at the age of 78 after more than 40 years in the public eye, it will be hard for Donald Trump to say something new. But there’s one move he could take that would genuinely surprise people, and might help him win the election: pledge not to take retribution against his political enemies.
It would leave his critics flabbergasted, precisely because they are incapable of doing the same thing.
We have heard from a number of sources around the former president that he is a changed man after his shooting on Saturday. On the one hand, an experience like that really can deeply affect people. On the other hand, Trump is an extremely known quantity; he has shown over and over again that he is capable of rising to the occasion of being presidential, but not of staying that way. I don’t really believe people can change — even when they find the Lord and turn things around in a way that they could not on their own, they often become just a better or mirror-image version of the same person.
The same sources say that Trump has thrown out the prior draft of his speech and is working on a new theme more in line with how he feels after surviving an assassin’s bullet. Let’s assume for the sake of argument that he actually wants to convey this to voters. What would he say? How could he surprise listeners?
He would forswear retribution and pledge an administration that turns the page on political prosecutions. He would offer, even, to pardon Joe and/or Hunter Biden. He would tell the country that he has seen how lawfare drags us all down, and vow to end it. He would say that there are charges his lawyers could bring, and people he could jail, but he sees now how much bitterness that brings and how it distracts from solving the nation’s problems.
Consider the pros and cons of this. Andy McCarthy made the case the other day that this was something Biden could do, if he wished to become after Trump’s shooting the unifying figure that he ran to be in 2020. Of course, with his reelection campaign hinging on branding Trump a felon, he can’t afford to try. But Trump being the bigger man, magnanimously taking the high road? That would be playing against type. In the pro-wrestling terms that Trump (a WWE Hall of Famer) would grasp instinctually, this would be the mirror image of Hulk Hogan’s legendary heel turn: the ultimate conflict-generating tough guy laying down his guns against his domestic enemies, pledging to fight them no more if they will make peace.
It wouldn’t make peace, of course: That’s not how American politics works. Democrats will be driven even madder if Trump wins again, and they’ll go madder the bigger he wins. Think of Nixon’s second term. Moreover, there is something to be said for the notion that only a taste of their own medicine will cure Democrats of this addiction.
But it would be compelling theater. If you’re looking for Trump to do something really headline-grabbing tonight, this is the move to watch for.