Miami Mayor Francis Suarez is scheduled to speak at the Reagan library next week to “share his vision for America,” a key step that has preceded the bids of Mike Pence, Asa Hutchinson, Nimrata “Nikki” Haley, and Chris Christie’s presidential campaigns so far, Florida Politics reports.
We get the whole “the sharks smell blood in the water” thing these days, they were circling even before the orange whale was harpooned on Thursday, betting that the actual contents of the indictment are so bad that Trump is crippled politically and that what’s going to come out isn’t already priced in with Republican primary voters. There’s a chance that Trump will be stuck with home confinement pretrial and (obviously) wouldn’t be able to campaign in New Hampshire and Iowa, but that’s likely slim considering he wasn’t actually arrested on Thursday. If the feds were going to keep him in some kind of custody they probably would’ve done it already.
Meaning the it’s likely the “This indictment so bad and he’s so fucked” angle is going to have to do the heavy lifting, probably gradually over time, helped with more indictments, that convince a large enough window of Trump hardcores to realize he’s not going to beat Biden and abandon him for practicality’s sake. Donald will still have a rock-solid floor of probably somewhere around 30 or 35 percent of the GOP primary electorate who will not under any circumstances at all vote for another candidate, leaving Ron DeSantis or Tim Scott only two thirds of the base with which to scrap together pluralities. Trump can win a state by one vote and capture all of the delegates thanks to some Latino Republican deciding last minute he wanted to go with Suarez instead of DeSantis.
Which is to say stay the fuck out and away from this if getting a Republican president elected is more important than a pointless vanity project. We already know which one Suarez is picking.