‘He won’t win another national election’: Wall Street Journal tells Republicans to ditch Trump

But he retains the support of his base

The conservative editorial board of the Wall Street Journal on Sunday drew a line in the sand and warned Republicans to leave Donald Trump behind if they want to retake the White House in 2024.

“Mr. Trump may run again, but he won’t win another national election,” they wrote in an opinion piece. “The country is moving past the Trump Presidency, and the GOP will remain in the wilderness until it does too,” they added.

The article argues that president was already unpopular, never having an approval rating of more than 50 per cent and already having lost the election before the events of the attack on the Capitol, but to run again would even further weaken the party.

“He may go on a revenge campaign tour, or run as a third-party candidate, but all he will accomplish is to divide the center-right and elect Democrats,” the Journal board wrote. “The GOP’s defeats in the two Jan. 5 Georgia Senate races proved that.”

During the Senate runoff in Georgia, the board warned that the president’s continued attacks on the election results and Republican officials overseeing the vote in Georgia were driving a wedge in the party.

“If Republicans lose those seats, President Trump will be the main reason, and the main casualty will be his legacy,” the editorial board wrote on 3 December.

If the president does decide to run again, he’ll face much steeper obstacles than his first two goes at the White House.

He’s banned, in some cases permanently, from the social media sites he used to rally a passionate base of supporters. He’s facing ongoing criminal investigations looking into business fraud allegations and his efforts to influence vote-counting in Georgia. His allies have warned him not to run in 2024, and he’s reportedly wary of doing so because it could mean offering up more financial disclosures.

And some former allies have denounced him.

“He’s fallen so far,” Nikki Haley, his former UN ambassador, said last week. Ms Haley is rumoured to be running for president in 2024. “He went down a path he shouldn’t have, and we shouldn’t have followed him, and we shouldn’t have listened to him. And we can’t let that ever happen again.”

After voting to acquit the former president, Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell tore into his former Republican partner.

“There is no question that President Trump is practically and morally responsible for provoking the events of the day,” he said. “The people who stormed this building believed they were acting on the wishes and instructions of their president”

Still, Mr Trump remains incredibly popular with his base, despite the objections of party elites. Even after the trial, only 14 percent of Republicans thought he should be impeached, and last month, following the riots, Mr Trump retained a more than 80 percent approval rating, while more than 70 percent of Republicans continued to believe his false claims that voter fraud cost him the election.