Donald Trump returned to Washington, DC, for the first time since he skipped Joe Biden’s Inauguration Day ceremony and left town. He came to address the America First Policy Institute. Mike Pence was also in DC addressing the Young America’s Foundation an hour before Trump’s remarks. As anticipated, they offered competing visions for America — Pence energetically focusing on the future, and Trump focusing a lot on the past with dark predictions for the future.

In order of appearance…

According to Pence, there is a critical need to re-unify conservatives and to look forward, not obsess about what is behind us, as in the unfortunate 2020 election results. “Now some people may choose to focus on the past. But elections, elections are about the future. And I believe conservatives must focus on the future to win back America.” He noted that he “couldn’t be more proud of the record of the Trump-Pence administration.” Indeed, there were plenty of successes, the accounting of which Demos would like to obscure.

A few excerpts from his remarks: “I don’t know that our movement is that divided. I don’t know that the president and I differ on issues — we may differ on focus. … I truly do believe that elections are about the future. … American freedom is under attack. Big tech, big media, big government, even big business have locked arms to advance a pernicious woke agenda designed to control the American people and destroy the American dream. The ruling elites here in Washington and all across this country have never been more out of touch with the values of everyday Americans but more, never more intent on imposing their agenda on each and every one of us. Configuring the conservative movement to fulfill conservatism’s purpose and to save our nation from the left-wing tyranny, socialism and decline is critical.”

On the 2020 election, Pence said: “I had no right to overturn the election. The presidency belongs to the American people and the American people alone. And frankly, there is no idea more un-American than the notion that any one person could choose the American president.”

Pence hit back on the Demos’ cancerous assertion that our nation is besieged with “systemic racism” and what has now become “state-sanctioned racism,” insisting, “We need to purge our schools of critical race theory and restore patriotic education in every classroom in America.”

As for the upcoming midterms, Pence concluded: “When you see the aggressive liberalism of this administration and their allies in Congress, frankly 2022 may be the best chance we will ever have to build a lasting majority. … In 2022, the American people will decide whether their children and grandchildren will stand tall as citizens of the freest nation on earth, or whether they’ll be forced to live in the economic moral and spiritual decline with socialism.”

(You can view Pence’s full speech here.)

For his part, former President Trump rehashed his concerns about 2020 election fraud — which we covered in detail here. He rightly derided the “Russian collusion” delusion. He hit Nancy Pelosi’s histrionic so-called investigation into what she errantly brands an “Insurrection™,” now 18 months ago on January 6, 2021.

I am sure the Department of Justice timed its announcement of a criminal probe into Trump’s J6 actions to coincide with his return to DC.

On the election, in typical scorched-earth fashion, Trump attacked the most loyal members of his administration: “Mike Pence had a chance to be great. He had a chance to be, frankly, historic. But just like [former Attorney General] Bill Barr and the rest of these weak people, Mike — and I say it sadly because I like him — but Mike did not have the courage to act.”

On the completely debunked Russian collusion claims, he said: “A friend of mine said recently that I was the most persecuted person in the history of our country. I said he may very well be right.”

On Pelosi’s dog and pony show, he said: “Now we have the Jan. 6 ‘un-select’ committee of political hacks and thugs. These are the same people we’ve been dealing with for four years. We have the same people [who have investigated before], other than Cheney, who is the worst, and crying Adam Kinzinger. … It’s so unfair when you see what happened to BLM, when you see what happened to antifa, when you see what happened [in] all of the killings that took place all over the country. Then you see what they are doing to people that in some cases didn’t enter the building and are being tortured and handled so horribly. … Everything this corrupt establishment is doing to me is about preserving [their] power and control over the American people.”

He hit Biden’s intentional and reckless open-border policy: “Many of these people that are coming in will cause trouble for this country, the likes of which you have no idea, [including] terrorists sending people into our country that will cause problems for us for decades.”

And Trump made a strong pitch for law and order: “Under the Democrat rule, in Democrat-run cities, Democrat-run states, and a Democrat-run federal government, the criminals have been given free rein more than ever before. There’s never been a time like this. We need an all-out effort to defeat violent crime in America, and strongly defeat it, and be tough and be nasty and be mean if we have to. Our country is now a cesspool of crime. We have blood, death, and suffering on a scale once unthinkable because of the Democrat Party’s effort to destroy and dismantle law enforcement all throughout America.”

He went after the Demo police de-funders, saying: “We have to leave our police alone. Every time they do something, they’re afraid they’re going to be destroyed and that their pensions are going to be taken away. Let them do their job. Give them back the respect that they deserve.”

Finally, in a hint about running in 2024, Trump said this week: “[Democrats] really want to damage me so I can no longer go back to working for you. I don’t think that is going to happen.”

(You can view Trump’s full speech here.)

Of course, the Leftmedia talkingheads and scribes covered this as a “Trump vs. Pence” 2024 dustup, because Demos and their MSM publicists have little positive to run on ahead of the 2022 midterms. They certainly can’t run on the disastrous record of Joe Biden with his record-low job-approval polling.

What Demos do run on successfully is division and hate, as they demonstrated in the 2020 election. If they can bait Trump into running, especially if he announces ahead of the midterms, the Democrat Party’s key enemies of Liberty will have their most sought-after political holy grail.

The best opportunity for Demos to minimize the upcoming midterm election damage in the House and Senate, and retain the Senate and maybe the House, will be if Trump announces his 2024 candidacy ahead of the midterm election.

And the biggest piece of bait they are using is Pelosi’s J6 Committee charade.

So, the big question — what should Trump do now?

In the interest of ensuring a red wave has a better chance of hitting DC in 2024, Trump should not only delay his announcement until after the election, but delay it permanently. I believe he should spend all his energy and $100-million war chest rallying his grassroots base, and then undermine the Democrats’ 2024 primary field by endorsing a younger presidential candidate – and then get out of the way so that candidate is not dragging all of Trump’s baggage, the hate, fear and division he has fomented, into the 2024 general election.

As I have flatly stated for almost a year Joe Biden will NOT be a 2024 candidate, and once the Democrat Party has dispatched his heir apparent Kamala Harris, much as they did Bernie Sanders in 2016, I believe their nominee will be California Gov. Gavin Newsom.

While trump will likely not announce until after the midterms, despite all the leftist prodding of an announcement before November to ensure his name triggers lots of Demo voters. But he will announce soon after the midterm for two reasons: First, he can’t help being a spoiler; and second, he will have to set down a place-marker to stop the bleed of his supporters to other candidates.

There is a great field of rising Republicans, and I would exclude Mike Pence, who would also drag the Trump baggage and division into 2024. At the moment, I strongly favor Ron DeSantis, whose record is extraordinary and is positioned well, paired with any number of great prospects for VP.

And considering Biden’s failing mental acuity, I note that Trump would be 78 years old in January 2025, a year older than Ronald Reagan when he left office.

However, seasoned political observer Gilbert Sewall observes, “Trump shook the Republican Party from its torpor and championed the nation’s sovereignty, borders, and yeoman. Framed on Russian collusion, suffering two sketchy impeachments, hamstrung by concerted ideological forces inside government and his own belligerent personality, he nonetheless changed the nation’s political course.” He concludes, “A clever Trump would build this narrative, letting Florida’s Ron DeSantis, Virginia’s Glenn Youngkin, and Arkansas’s Tom Cotton strengthen the GOP’s future, going down in history as a pivotal leader, not as a demagogue.”

But, he concludes, as do I, that Trump’s insatiable and understandable desire to seek vindication against Hillary Clinton and her corrupt deep state political collaborators, who conspired against him even before the 2016 election, will blind him from doing what is best for the country now.

Bottom line, even if he announces, if Trump can exercise enough humility to clear a path for DeSantis or one of the other very capable conservative 2024 presidential candidates, Democrats will have a difficult time prevailing in the next presidential election. That is a very big “IF.”

Semper Vigilans Fortis Paratus et Fidelis
Pro Deo et Libertate — 1776