I know. I promised myself. But..

B. Jay Cooper
3 min readSep 8, 2021

My promise to myself was to stop blogging about former President Donald J. Trump because he is the, well, former president and really doesn’t matter anymore. But even after a significant (some would say landslide) loss last year, and the loss of his Twitter account, he’s not the type to fade quietly into the woodwork

His elected people can’t let him fade because, well, they are trying to grab Trump’s still strong base of supporters. Who?

  • Cong. Matt Gaetz, for one, who is being investigated for obstruction of justice and paying for sex with a minor, who just said Trump will run again at the next election and who went on a country-wide tour with another Trumpie, Cong. Marjorie Taylor Greene, who was stripped of her committee assignments for being nutso crazy. They went on that tour, that hasn’t been nationwide yet to build support with Trump voters.
  • Texas Gov. Greg Abbott whose spur-of-the-moment response made national news when a reporter asked why the new Texas rape law eliminates rape and incest as legal exceptions for abortion. First, Abbott said it doesn’t eliminate them because, well, a woman does still have six weeks to decide to have a legal abortion (even though for at least four of those six weeks even the woman doesn’t necessarily know she’s pregnant). Then to boost his argument he said that he will eliminate rapists with strong law and order — in spite of the fact that there are more than 6,000 rape tests in Texas yet to be analyzed. Justice delayed..
  • Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis who’s latest way of not ticking off the former president is to say that reports he is running for president in 2024 are “purely manufactured” and “nonsense” even though the world knows he’s running for president in 2024 but trying to not tick off the former president.

Meanwhile, the former president intends to spend the 20th anniversary of the Sept. 11 terrorist attack by providing color on the Evander Holyfrield vs Vitor Belfot boxing match that night, apparently wanting to reinforce that he still lacks empathy.

Is he running? No one really knows. He’s not one prone to keeping a secret though so I’m guessing he hasn’t yet made his mind up. But he does want to freeze the race as long as he can to stop anyone else from running officially.

My guess: He won’t run. He’s already lost one race and is batting .500 running for president and holds a unique place in history for being the only president to be…

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B. Jay Cooper

Former deputy White House press secretary (Reagan and Bush 41) and former head of communications at Republican Natl Committee. My blog: bjaycooper.com.