As time goes on, Donald Trump’s future is coming to resemble the life cycle of the apocryphal Hollywood starlet. It starts with a producer calling out “Get me Donald Trump,” proceeds to “get me a Donald Trump,” and ends with “Who’s Donald Trump?”
We’ve entered the second stage, awaiting the third, which may take place at a minimum security prison in upstate New York. The contest to be “a Donald Trump” is starting early and wide open with the logical frontrunner, Mike Pence, rendered a dead man because he didn’t use the power he didn’t have to keep Joe Biden out of the White House.
No one has done more to move into that open lane or tied himself as tightly to Trump’s mast as Josh Hawley, the junior senator from Missouri. A poll taken at CPAC suggests that’s the way to go. Trump won 55 percent of the presidential poll—a poll that President Rand Paul won three times before, so take that for what it’s worth—but it also found only 68 per cent actually want Trump to run again, and 95 percent would be happy with someone like him.