Anyone can rat, as Winston Churchill once supposedly said. But it takes a certain amount of ingenuity to re-rat.
Say what you like about Donald Trump, but there’s no shortage of rodent-like ingenuity around his dealings with the sewer life that populates today’s Republican party.
On Thursday, the convicted felon who now leads the party of law and order paid a very special visit to his closest friends on Capitol Hill.
This is the same convicted felon who bravely whipped a mob into attacking the same friends, in the same place, along with the police officers paid to protect them, all of three years ago. Which, as it happens, is the average life of a domesticated rat.
Back in the mists of time of 2021, all of 10 House Republicans and seven Senate Republicans voted to impeach the soon-to-be-ex-president for inciting insurrection.
Most of those brave and principled supporters of the blindingly obvious are no longer with us: either retired or defeated, they long abandoned the sinking ship of sedition. The rest decided to normalize an unhinged insurrectionist whom they all disdain while speaking to reporters in the fetal position of their own fears.
For those left scurrying below deck, Thursday’s royal visit from the king of bling was a dizzying display of dubious electioneering. The felonious future nominee managed to rat on the city of Milwaukee that will host his party’s convention next month, around the time he gets sentenced for his very many crimes of paying hush money to a former porn actor.
“Milwaukee, where we’re having our convention,” he proclaimed, “is a horrible city.” It also happens to be the largest city in the swing state of Wisconsin, where – until last week – the polls suggested Trump was running neck-and-neck with Joe Biden.
Instead of triggering a round of second-guessing about their presumptive nominee, the rat pack of Republicans proceeded to dump on the fine news outlet, Punchbowl, that reported on their friend in low places.
According to them, either Trump didn’t say any such thing, or he was talking about the city’s crime rates, or possibly its administration of elections, or its position on public protests against the party’s convention.
That’s the thing about re-ratting: it’s all a bit confusing. It’s almost like Trump and his enablers are making it up as they go along.
Of course he didn’t stop at Milwaukee. Why would he?
Trump has read the polls, or at least had the polls read to him. He knows that the greatest single achievement of his presidency – not peace in the Middle East, but stacking the supreme court with anti-abortion activist justices – is now one of the greatest motivators of votes against him and his hapless party.
So he had some choice words of advice for the party that opposes choice. Stop talking about abortion. Or at least talk about abortion with exceptions for rape, incest and the life of the mother.
There’s just one tiny problem with this position: his own party and his own supreme court justices don’t agree with him.
Anyone can rat on any issue. But it takes a certain amount of ingenuity to rat on your signature issue and expect your party to rat alongside you. It’s almost like Trump is expecting his enablers to make it up as they go along.
For someone who built his fragile fortune on branding, these ratty moments are something of a challenge to the core Trump-y brand.
Yes, the chaos is constant. But you’re supposed to know what you’re getting with Trump. He’s supposed to speak his mind, to mean what he says, even if you think he’s plain old bonkers.
Clearly and sadly, this election cycle is dominated, much like the last two presidential contests, by The Trump Question. He drives people to the polls both for and against him, in seemingly equal measure. The president certainly isn’t driving anyone to the polls.
However, The Trump Question is not what it used to be. Beyond the issue of whether he should ever walk inside the White House again, there’s an un-Trumpy confusion about what he stands for.
Is he for or against the anti-abortion movement? For or against TikTok under Chinese ownership? For or against Milwaukee, for heaven’s sake?
Even as he pandered recently to the nation’s richest CEOs, at the Business Roundtable, Trump promised to cut corporate taxes by a less-than-whopping one percentage point, from 21 to 20%. “It’s a nice round number,” he said.
At this point, Trump is in danger of flubbing the famous Roger Mudd question that Ted Kennedy fumbled so badly in 1979: Why do you want to be president?
It wasn’t that Kennedy couldn’t answer the question. He desperately wanted to say it was his turn to carry the Kennedy flame. He just wouldn’t say it in public.
Why does Trump want to be president? To stay out of jail? To seek revenge on his opponents? To pretend like he’s not the loser who lost the 2020 election?
They don’t really fit on a red baseball cap. Or a gold pair of sneakers.
So the tongue-tied populist returned to Capitol Hill to fire up his troops with a confusing set of ratty statements. Or, as Nancy Pelosi put it so memorably, he returned to the scene of his biggest crime: campaigning for election at the very place where he wanted to stop an election.
The writers of the Book of Proverbs might have recognized this story back in biblical times. Like a dog returning to his vomit, Trump can’t help but return to his folly. And his Republican supporters can’t help but return to him.
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Richard Wolffe is a Guardian US columnist