While some in the media might try to spin the number of emerging GOP presidential primary candidates as a negative for former President Donald Trump, American Conservative Union Chair Matt Schlapp tells Newsmax it helps Trump's prospects.
"The Republican side is interesting because for Trump it's a good for him, the more people get in," Schlapp told Wednesday's "The Record With Greta Van Susteren."
Schlapp noted Trump has a "total lock" on his MAGA base, so anyone opposing him is going to divvy up the anti-Trump GOP support, while added perhaps Florida GOP Gov. Ron DeSantis can thread that needle.
"DeSantis' No. 1 strength is to kind of be the only other guy to try to knit that all together and to see if he can really wrest this from Donald Trump," Schlapp said.
"But the strangest thing of all is to have a former president running again, you know, separated by a term because, in essence, he's an incumbent, but yet he's not an incumbent. So it's a really interesting year for presidential politics."
Schlapp noted President Joe Biden is struggling with foreign policy, domestic policy, and avoided the hot-button issues as they arise, like the latest from the toxic fallout from the East Palestine, Ohio, train derailment.
"If you think about it, the Biden administration has such a cozy relationship with the media," Schlapp told Van Susteren. "It's so easy for them to get their message out. If they were really doing a good job in Ohio, believe me, everybody would know about it."
Instead, it has become an "obvious political problem" while he is struggling with Russia and Ukraine, according to Schlapp.
"Ohio is a real tragedy," he said. "They should be there. It's what Democrats usually do well."
Schlapp, author of "The Desecrators: Defeating the Cancel Culture Mob and Reclaiming One Nation Under God," said ultimately Democrats are going to be infighting, which can only help the GOP in the 2024 presidential cycle.
"The only thing that's interesting on the Democrat side is that interplay between Biden and Kamala Harris and clearly the people pushing for a new name like Gavin Newsom," Schlapp said of a potential Democrat primary battle if Biden chooses not to run or cannot run due to health. "So that's kind of an interesting. I can't imagine how those conversations are going. I think there's a lot of elbows being thrown."
One of the poised elbow throwers will be VP Harris, Schlapp warned.
"She wants to get that brass ring," he concluded. "She wants them to consider her as presidential, but she's failing that test.
"White Houses, as you know, are fraught with divisions. I've never seen anything like the Harris-Biden camps. I mean, there is not a lot of love lost between those two camps."
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Eric Mack ✉
Eric Mack has been a writer and editor at Newsmax since 2016. He is a 1998 Syracuse University journalism graduate and a New York Press Association award-winning writer.
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