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‘I’m sorry to see Trump run’: Bill Bennett says it’s unfair, but he can’t win, better to embrace his legacy

November 17, 2022 | | Print Article

A “big Trump supporter” at Fox News is not so keen on former President Donald Trump’s second run for office because he genuinely believes Trump can’t win.

To hear Fox News contributor Bill Bennett tell it, that he can’t win is “unfair,” given all Trump accomplished while enduring so many attacks, but it’s the truth nonetheless.

Speaking on Fox News’ “Fox News @Night,” he explained that too many people irrationally hate Trump for him to ever win another election. Therefore, he argued, it’d be better for Trump to embrace his legacy and ride off into the sunset.

Listen:

“I’m sorry to see him do it [run for office again]. I had hoped that he wouldn’t. I had hoped that he would embrace his legacy, which was that he ran a great country, things were humming, the border was secure, our enemies feared us, the economy was roaring, we didn’t have these fentanyl deaths, we were thriving. … That’s his legacy. A good one. He should have embraced it,” Bennett said.

“But at this point, I couldn’t recommend that he run, because he won’t win. There are just too many people who will never vote for Trump. Those independents, those moderates, those people in the middle who decide elections, they are just not going to vote for Donald Trump,” he added.

It’s true that the president is despised by many, in large part because the media appear to spend virtually every waking moment obsessively attacking him.

Bennett concluded his remarks about Trump by reiterating the unfairness of it all

“We all know people who might have voted conservative this time and last time and maybe next time, but will just tell you I can never vote/support Donald Trump. It’s unfair — the guy was treated more unfairly maybe than any president in history — but it’s a fact,” he said.

He isn’t the only one who believes Trump is destined to lose in 2024. Even some former members of  the Trump administration have issued the same warning:

Speaking on CNN late Tuesday around the time that the former president’s reelection rally was occurring, former Trump administration official Mick Mulvaney was asked whether he thought Trump’s reelection announcement “is good for the Republican Party.” He answered no.

“No, I don’t, because I think he’s the only Republican who could lose. If he wins in 2024, now he’s the candidate, he is the likely Republican nominee. … But that means the 2024 race is not about Joe Biden or whatever Democrat is on the ticket, not about inflation, not about world events, not about abortion,” he said.

“It will be about Donald Trump, the same thing we saw in 2020. No one voted for Joe Biden. Everybody voted for or against Donald Trump. It was a referendum on him. And that’s what we’re hurtling toward in 2024. And I don’t see the outcome being any different two years from now than it was two years ago,” Mulvaney added.

Even former Vice President Mike Pence has expressed doubt. Appearing on Fox News’s “Special Report” earlier Tuesday, he was asked by host Bret Baier for his thoughts on the former president’s reelection bid.

“As I have traveled around the country over the last two years, what I hear again and again, Bret, is that people want to see us return to the policies of the Trump-Pence administration, but I hear people saying that they would like us to move forward with leadership that will unite our country around our highest ideals, and reflect the kind of respect and civility that the American people demonstrate to each other every day,” he replied.

This prompted Baier to ask, “So you wouldn’t vote for [Trump]?”

“I honestly believe that we’re going to have better choices, Bret,” Pence responded.

Listen:

Dovetailing back to Bennett, during his Fox News appearance on Wednesday, he also offered some tips on how Republicans can win elections going forward.

“We used to say that the Democrats were the evil party and Republicans were the dumb party. I don’t know if they were the evil party this time, but they were wickedly smart, and we were dumb. A lot of people have asked me how does John Fetterman get elected to the Senate. Well, he may start with 300,000 or 400,000 mail-in ballots. and this happened all over the country,” he said.

“They’re doing this harvesting and mail-in ballot stuff much better than we are. We seem to be an Election Day party. That’s what Republicans prefer to do when they prefer to vote, but we can’t ignore what’s going on on those days before,” he added.

So tip one would be to invest more resources into early voting and ballot harvesting. Tip two, he continued, would be to implement prefer voting integrity laws on the state level.

“I voted in North Carolina. Great state. Wonderful state. Went for my ID, [but] they said no, no, sir — just what’s your name and what’s your address. Well, the exterminator’s assistant here could have come to my house, knew my name, and gotten my address. We gotta get smart about this stuff. That means getting control of some of the mechanisms in the state. But we gotta play the game smarter,” he said.

Vivek Saxena
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