It’s Trump 2024 Versus a Never-Trump Cartel

The Witches Brew Behind the Curtain

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The 2024 Republican presidential primary is not a traditional contest among independent political entrepreneurs.  It is a chess match pitting Donald Trump against a deep-pocketed Never-Trump Cartel with vast media reach.

This Never-Trump Cartel is anchored by a Dark Money Koch Network, Big Pharma vax peddlers, and Democrat Wall Street billionaires who hedge their political bets by funding Republicans. This globalist troika is united in their love for open borders to import cheap labor and the offshoring of American factories and jobs to leverage the sweat shops and pollution havens of Asia.

The Never-Trump Cartel likewise includes corporate media conglomerates ranging from CNN and MSNBC to the RINO Right of Rupert Murdoch’s Fox News empire.  Rounding out the roster is a coterie of Silicon Valley venture capitalists and social media oligarchs, including Mark Zuckerbucks, who spent vast sums to defeat Trump in 2020 and the richest man in America who has offshored his largest Tesla factory to China, Twitter’s Elon Musk. 

This Never-Trump Cartel will provide much of the Republican Primary fundraising, polling, and strategy.  To understand its various gambits, consider two “favorite sons” contesting very early primaries. 

The shadow “non-candidate” New Hampshire Governor Chris Sununu in the bell weather second primary on January 30^th and South Carolina’s Senator Tim Scott in the fourth primary on February 24^th will use their home team advantages to try to blunt the “inevitability” of a Trump victory early on.

Scott has zero chance of winning the nomination but wants to maximize his chance of being picked for Vice President by either Trump or Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, leader of the Never-Trump Cartel pack.  As long as Scott drains votes from Trump, particularly early on in his home state, he will be lavished with cartel support.

South Carolina’s “favorite daughter,” former Governor Nikki Haley, is likewise auditioning for VEEP but knows Trump would never pick her.  She has simply bitten the Trump hand that fed her so many times. 

Haley’s slogan will be Trumpism without Trump.  Her primary mission is to peel away Republican women from Trump.  Ultimately, Haley hopes a strong showing in the primary may lead to VEEP redemption if Trump falters.

The Dark Knight Sununu harbors no such VEEP fantasy.  Throwing punches from the sidelines, Sununu’s singular purpose will be to take away the New Hampshire Primary punch bowl from Trump.   The cartel’s corporate media will provide him with a huge megaphone for his “anybody but Trump rants”; and he knows he need not formally be on the ballot to deprive Trump a big Granite State victory. 

ABC’s designated Trump Hitter Chris Christie is on a similar kamikaze mission.  This former New Jersey Governor is one of pack of former Trump Loyalists who switched sides after the November 2020 election, only to be rewarded with well-paid, Trump-bashing media gigs.  Others include Trump’s Acting Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney (CBS), Press Secretary Kayleigh McEneny (Fox), Fox Business host Larry Kudlow, and press aide Alyssa Farah (ABC). 

That Christie is willing to give up his high-profile ABC gig to enter a race he can’t possibly win is the real tell in the cartel’s Never-Trump con game.  This Pillsbury Doughboy of venom is the least popular of Republican candidates, with a rare “net negative” approval-disapproval rating.  If ABC takes Christie’s smoldering cinder of a political corpse back for the general election run after he does his wet work on Trump, that network is ethically bankrupt.

There will be no shortage of other sacrificial pawns.  Most prominent on the chessboard is former Vice President Mike Pence, a perennial Koch Network supplicant. 

Pence is the Et Tu Brute Shakespearian figure in the eyes of Trump’s MAGA base for his turncoat role on January 6.  His sole mission is to chip away at Trump’s Christian Right base by attempting to outflank Trump on the abortion issue -- never mind the damage this may do to any Republican candidate in the General Election forced to navigate the rocky feminist shoals of an over-turned Roe v. Wade.

The field will fill further – possibly with Wyoming’s former Congresswoman Liz Cheney.  Her blood feud with Trump over his open disdain for her father, former Vice President Dick Cheney, is palpable. Trump holds the neocon Dick Cheney directly – and rightly – responsible for his costly endless wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the blood and treasure lost to America.

If the Never-Trump Cartel pollsters think Liz can drain votes from Trump, she’ll be in the race faster then a lie from Adam Schiff’s mouth.  If Trump wins the nomination, Cheney may run as an Independent spoiler with full cartel backing. 

Here, we must remember that the Never-Trump Cartel cares not who wins the General Election.  Once Trump is out, the Uniparty wins either way.