Matt Walsh:
First thing: Donald Trump will never be president. This fact may come as a relief to millions of people, including Trump himself, who, according to his own employees, never actually wanted to win. His campaign has been a publicity stunt that, much to Trump’s surprise, many people took seriously. This is how utterly foolish Trump’s fans are: They’re being duped by a guy who didn’t even want to dupe them.
It’s obvious that Trump has no desire to perform the duties of the presidency. He can hardly bring himself to perform the duties of a presidential candidate. Trump likes being in front of cameras and adoring crowds, but the hard, quiet, serious work of governing has no appeal to him whatsoever. This is why his whole business career consists mainly of him putting his name on things. He doesn’t want to build or manage or do anything behind the scenes. He just wants the flashing lights and the neon signs. This also explains his various failed marriages.
But whatever Trump wants or doesn’t want, the real issue is what the people want. And the people have made it clear they don’t want him. Yes, he may well win the GOP nomination on the strength of his 30-35 percent of the Republican electorate. That is a feat largely made possible by a lethal combination of voter idiocy and the suffocating ego of certain candidates (:::cough::: John Kasich :::cough:::) who stayed in the race despite serving no practical purpose other than to divide the vote.
But his 35 percent won’t get him the White House. It won’t get him close. One thing this primary season has proved is that Trump’s people are fiercely, blindly, obsessively, romantically attached to him, but his people are his people. They’ve been set in place since he first swept them off their feet with his tiny hands back in June. They have not awoken from his spell, but nobody else has fallen under it. He has not able to engender the same kind of Branch Davidian-style loyalty beyond his allotted 35 percent.
Every poll I’ve seen since the start of the campaign has Trump losing by wide margins to Hillary. His unfavorable ratings are historically high. As in, no candidate in American political history, outside of his fan David Duke, has managed to plunge the depths of his unpopularity. His unfavorable ratings with women are even more abysmal. Women despise Trump to the tune of about 70 percent, making him less popular among the fairer sex than back hair and death metal. Women hate the guy, plain and simple. As do most Americans.
He’s also intensely unpopular among minorities and millennials, with about 80 percent of the people in my generation saying they will not vote for him. Finally, Trump is passionately opposed by the ideological base of his own party. According to exit polls, anywhere between 30 to 40 percent of Republicans would stay home or vote third party should Trump win the nomination.
Yes, Trump won big in some states, but the general will be a different animal. In New York, where he won by 35 points, his vote totals were 250 thousand fewer than the guy who lost the Democratic primary. They were only half as many as Clinton’s. So this idea that Trump can put New York into play? Utter nonsense. Not supported by a shred of evidence.
All right then. Can Trump win the presidency without women, without minorities, without young people, without his home state, and without 30 to 40 percent of his own party? Are there enough reality TV superfans, alt-right Twitter trolls and elderly O’Reilly viewers to form a winning coalition? Are there 60 million of them? And will they all show up?
The answer is no, no and no. Also, just to be clear: no. Definitely not. Absolutely not. One hundred percent not.
About the only way Trump could win is if Hillary finds herself behind bars sometime between now and November. But that would require an Obama Justice Department to prosecute a Democratic presidential candidate a few months before an election. I know the Obamas and the Clintons hate each other, but I still don’t see Obama handing the White House to Trump. Besides, Trump is so ridiculously unpopular that Hillary, who is also ridiculously unpopular, could beat him from prison.
And that’s one of the many great shames of this whole awful election season. The Democrats are about to serve up one of the weakest, most vulnerable, most baggage-laden, most corrupt, most despised, most viscerally off-putting candidates in American history, and how will the Republicans respond? By rummaging through the sewers and extracting the one single person in the country who could manage to be even weaker, more vulnerable, more baggage-laden, more corrupt, more despised and more viscerally off-putting. It’s been a race to the bottom, and Republicans are winning.
That’s the first thing.
The second thing is this, and I’m speaking directly to Trump fans now: When Hillary wins the White House, it will be your fault. It will especially be the fault of his media lickspittles like Sean Hannity, but it will be the fault of his primary voters as well. You will have chosen to put a universally detested buffoon against Hillary, and the ugly results of that decision will fall on you. Whatever happens during Queen Hillary’s reign of terror, you will have yourselves to thank for it. You should get up every morning, turn on the news, catch up on the latest scandal or tyranny Hillary has visited upon us, and then go to the bathroom, look in the mirror, and say, “Thanks, genius.”
Because it’s your fault.
Now, let me tell you who will not be to blame: Those of us who, for reasons both moral and logical, cannot and will not vote for Trump in the general election. I’ve heard this argument over and over again. Trump fans say the Never Trump crowd will be responsible for “giving us Hillary” or that we’re effectively “voting for Hillary” if we don’t vote for Trump. But it doesn’t work that way.
You don’t get to foist this contemptible clown on us and then blame us when he loses. We’ve been telling you for months “we will not vote for Trump, period, end of story.” Millions of other Americans – including almost every woman, minority, and young person in the country – have said the same. Millions and millions of people have said, “If you do this, he will lose because we won’t vote for him.” Yet you think you can ignore these fair warnings and send this cartoonish megalomaniac barreling into the general election, and absolve yourselves of the blame?
Nope. Sorry. This is on you, Trump fans. This is all on you. I wash my hands of it.
I’m not choosing Hillary when I refuse to vote for Trump in the general election. You’re choosing Hillary when you vote for Trump in the primary. You’re choosing someone who cannot win, will not win, and who the vast majority of the electorate has sworn off categorically.
It doesn’t matter if you think Trump should win. I don’t care if you’re sure Trump will make America great again, cure cancer, invent a delicious sugar free ice cream and vanquish Godzilla. Whatever good you mistakenly believe Trump will do, the fact is that practically everyone in the country, with the exception of his 35 percent, have already told you they will not vote for him. You can cry about it. You can stomp your feet. You can hide under your bed and yell for Mommy. But what you can’t do is change the reality. And the reality is that Trump won’t win and can’t win.
If you charge forward out of devotion to Trump, you do so with the full knowledge that the person you’re nominating will lose to Hillary Clinton. And so whose fault is that? Ours, because we tried for months to get you people to knock it off and support someone who isn’t the worst Republican presidential candidate of all time, or yours, because you didn’t and the inevitable happened as a result?
We should also note the staggering hypocrisy of Trump fans insisting we vote for Trump, should he win the primary, “because you have to support the nominee.” These are the same people who’ve spent months telling us the GOP needs to be “burned down.” So the Republican Party ought to be demolished, but if Trump is its nominee, we should cancel the demolition plans and obsequiously bow to the party again? No, you can’t have it both ways, friend. You want the Republican Party reduced to rubble? Well, if Trump gets the nod, you’ll get your wish. And the rest of us will remember that it was your wish, not ours, and the next decade of Democrat rule will be on your shoulders.