Former President and 2024 Republican president candidate Donald Trump speaks at a campaign rally in Claremont, N.H., on Saturday.
Joseph Prezioso/AFP via Getty Images
A version of this piece originally appeared in the NPR Politics newsletter. Sign up for the newsletter here for early access and for more 2024 campaign coverage.
Vowing to “root out” and crush political critics, likening them to “vermin” and calling yourself a “proud election denier” is the kind of dehumanizing language usually reserved for dictators, tyrants and strongmen.
That’s exactly what former President Donald Trump did over the weekend, but you likely won’t hear anything about it from Trump’s rivals.
Not even the Top 2 who want to dethrone him and whom Trump has given diminutive nicknames — Ron “DeSanctimonious”https://www.npr.org/”DeSanctus” a.k.a. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, or “Birdbrain.” The latter is a fairly new one Trump is using for his former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley since her rise in the polls in recent weeks.
The Republican presidential candidates don’t strongly take on Trump about the 91 felony counts he faces for fear of awakening the hornet’s nest of vindictiveness that the Trump base can unleash. That leaves Trump free to say and do what he wants — no matter how extreme.
The GOP field is dwindling: South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott bowed out this week following Pence’s exit a week earlier. The next Republican debate stage, in less than a month in Alabama, will likely be even smaller.
While that may help the DeSantis and Haley stand out, the clock is ticking for them to start really making up ground.
That’s because Trump has a pretty big cushion. He has not just a 40-percentage point lead in national…
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