Fahrenthold: ‘The second bite of the apple, Trump is not so great’

According to text messages that KIRO Radio’s Dave Ross receives, former President Donald Trump is still asking for money. But just how much power does he have, and how does he intend to use in the next three years?

“I think we’re in a really interesting moment of Trump’s political power because he’s raised a ton of money,” said David Fahrenthold, Pulitzer Prize winning reporter with the Washington Post. “But as my colleagues have reported, he hasn’t actually done that much with it. He certainly hasn’t contested any elections, which is what he said he was raising the money for. He hasn’t spent any of it on contesting the 2020 elections, mostly just sitting on it, using it to pay some personal expenses and expending a little bit of it on this race in Texas, where it’s a Republican versus Republican runoff.

“Trump has endorsed one,” Fahrenthold said about the Texas race. “A lot of people in Texas have endorsed the other. And I think people are seeing this perhaps as a test … if Trump’s candidate loses, it’s a little bit of test of whether he is the only kingmaker in the Republican Party.”

The other race that will serve as a test, the result of which won’t be seen until 2022, is the Texas race for attorney general.

“George P. Bush, the son of Jeb Bush, is a Texas statewide official, the Land Commissioner there. And he has run against Ken Paxton, who’s the sitting attorney general,” Fahrenthold explained. “… George. P Bush has sucked up to Trump for years and has sought Trump’s endorsement. Trump endorsed his opponent yesterday.”

“So we’ll see in 2022 whether the Bush name or the Trump name matters more in Texas, in the Republican circles at least,” he added.

As far as 2024, there have been polls of Trump versus Biden, Fahrenthold says.

“And Biden always wins, Biden wins by a lot,” he said, but adding that it’s hard to put a lot of stock in any presidential polls this many years out.

“Trump has always benefited in his life from novelty, or he does best when you’ve never really seen him work, when you’ve heard his reputation and you hear his promises, but you haven’t seen him work,” Fahrenthold said. “The second bite of the apple, Trump is not so great.”

“Think about his bankruptcy in New York real estate, his failures in Atlantic City, the third and fourth seasons of The Apprentice. He doesn’t do well in the second go-around,” Fahrenthold added. “And I think he’s going to run into that problem here if he tries to run again.”

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