Republicans Fear Trump Has Taken Their Party Hostage

Republican insiders are beginning to fear that Donald Trump is going to take the Republican Party hostage during the 2024 primaries, believing he'll threaten to run as a third party candidate if he doesn't win the nomination. That is a very real threat for the Republicans, but it is a threat that they created themselves. They could have rid themselves of Trump nearly two years ago but refused to do so, so they get what they deserve. Farron Cousins discusses this.

Don't forget to like, comment, and share! And subscribe to stay connected!

Connect with Farron on Twitter

*This transcript was auto-generated. Please excuse any typos.

Republicans are worried that they might actually be hostages. And the hostage taker, of course, is none other than Donald J. Trump. Now here's what happened In a recent interview, you did have a couple of Republican operatives and strategists mention the hostage situation that they fear their party could be looking at ahead of the 2024 primaries. And they reminded everyone that back in 2016, Donald Trump when confronted with, Hey, maybe you don't win the primary, then what do you do? Floated the idea of I run a third party campaign, which of course easily would've handed that, uh, presidential race to the Democrats and we probably could have avoided a lot of the crap that has happened since 2016. But I digress. So Trump basically back then in 2016, told the Republican party, either you pick me or I'm going to tank the party. And that is essentially taking the Republican party hostage.

If you don't pick me, I'm gonna run anyway. Take enough voters away to where you can't win anything. And they're worried that a similar situation could arise in 2024. Now, obviously they didn't actually have to worry about that in 2016 cuz Trump very easily won the Republican primaries 2024 is not shaping up that way. All of Donald Trump's poll numbers, even after his presidential announcement, are trending the wrong way. Like he's lost support among Republicans since he announced he was running for president Again. He doesn't beat Biden in head-to-head matchups anymore, but Ron DeSantis does. So even though Trump is still in the lead, in the Republican primary, that gap is closing more and more every couple of days when new polls come out. So he is not running away with this thing. Furthermore, his losses in the midterm seem to have turned off a lot of the conservative media to Trumpism.

So he's not going to get the same fawning coverage that he got from a unified conservative media like he did six years ago. So he has a very massive uphill battle. Let's not forget, he could also be in jail. I know that's a long shot. I'm not saying it's gonna happen, but it is a possibility. So that is something that has to be factored into all of this. But he's not gonna cruise to an easy victory, but he can make his path a little bit easier by threatening to do the same thing that he threatened to do in 2016 by telling the Republican establishment. If you let these other people enter the race and hurt my chances of running, guess what? I'm gonna go third party, then none of us win. He's basically saying, I'm the captain of this ship and if you don't do what

I I want, I'm going to sink the ship. And yes, I'll go down with it, but so will each and every one of you. That is how spiteful and vindictive this man is. And Republicans, as I said, they're openly saying, we're afraid he is gonna do that. I would be too if I were you. But honestly, as somebody on the left, the best possible thing that could happen would be for Donald Trump to run a third party campaign that guarantees that no matter who the Democrats put up, they're gonna win. So I'm okay with it. And I also understand the fact that the Republican party is so stupid that they don't realize they did this to themselves. Y'all could have rid yourselves to Donald Trump back in the, uh, second impeachment, and you had good cause, right? You had the wind at your back, the public was with you. It was a gross thing that happened on January 6th. Could have impeached him for it, could have voted to bar him from ever holding public office again, and you wouldn't be in this situation. Well, you think those mega freaks were gonna suddenly go vote for Democrats? No, they'd have been mad for a bit. They would've moved on and voted Republican in the future. You did this to yourselves so you can whine about being hostage is all you want, but you willingly allowed yourselves to be the hostages here.