I don’t know why Will Hurd is running for president of the United States, neither do you, and neither, I suspect, does Will Hurd, unless it really just is some combination of boredom and vanity. But I could not help but notice that, this past Friday, he was booed in Iowa for saying that Donald Trump was running for election to stay out of prison. As NR’s Brittany Bernstein writes:
A crowd of Iowa Republicans booed GOP presidential candidate Will Hurd on Friday when he suggested former president Donald Trump is only running for the White House “to stay out of prison.”
“One of the things we need in our elected leaders: To tell the truth, even if it’s not popular,” Hurd said at the Iowa GOP’s Lincoln Dinner.
“Donald Trump is not running for president to make America great again. Donald Trump is not even running to represent the people that voted for him in 2016 and in 2020, Donald Trump is running for president to stay out of prison,” the former Texas congressman said to boos from attendees.
“I know, the truth is hard,” Hurd told the crowd. “But if we elect Donald Trump we are willingly giving Joe Biden four more years in the White House.”
Will Hurd will neither win the Republican nomination for the presidency of the United States nor even make it to a major debate stage, but it must be pointed out: He is not necessarily wrong here. This is a subject much discussed by conservatives who pay attention both to legal issues and campaign money matters: Trump’s fundraising has been disproportionately directed into the PAC that funds his various legal defenses, and the amount it spends on him is only going to rise as his federal cases proceed further. It absolutely can be said with merit that Trump is running, if not to stay out of prison per se, then at the very least to fund all of his various legal defenses.
Hurd was correct about his final quoted observation as well, but then again that point has been made often enough on these pages that it barely needs repeating. Joe Biden is a terrible president running a corrupt administration as well as being senescent and of dubious moral character. Should the Republicans nominate Donald Trump, currently dragging around multiple indictments (one of which at least is desperately serious) with more potentially to come, then they will get the resultant loss they nakedly courted aforethought. So while it surely cannot be the case that Will Hurd is “in it to win it” in terms of the 2024 GOP primary race, I will at least give him credit for saying something obvious in exactly the way it needed to be said.