Former president Donald Trump is notorious for calling his Republican critics with the monicker “RINO,” which stands for “Republican In Name Only.” But the MAGA king is now being mocked with a new nickname: “CINO,” or “a candidate in name only” as his campaign is already flatlining just weeks after declaring his 2024 White House bid.
Indeed. “Four weeks after declaring his 2024 White House bid, former President Trump appears to be a candidate in name only,” The Hill’s Brett Samuels writes.
You see, in Trump’s mind, he’s the MAGA king, and he expected that his announcement would generate so much excitement that people would spontaneously break into song and dance, thanking their “favorite president” for stepping up to rescue the country. That Fox News would stop all programming to tell the audience, “the greatest president ever is coming back!”
In his MAGA delusion, the twice-impeached former president thought that after his announcement the Republican Party would introduce legislation abolishing the presidential primary, and just give him the nomination. And maybe they’d throw in an addendum that, once he won the general, they’d get rid of the entire electoral process.
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While all of that may be “true” in MAGALAND, things are completely different in the real world.
In reality, almost no one in the GOP has come out to support his bid, despite his threats to punish Republicans who don’t endorse him ASAP. His own daughter, the one he really likes, wouldn’t even show up to his big announcement and has made it clear she wants nothing to do with his future political endeavors.
Rupert Murdoch’s media empire has spent considerable time and effort telling people he’s a loser. Polls released after his announcement had Florida governor Ron DeSantis beating him in 2024 by five points. Instead of 24/7 parades, he was hit last week with a guilty conviction for his family business, which a jury said committed 17 different crimes.
As noted by Samuels, “Trump announced his third presidential campaign on Nov. 15 from his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida, giving a long-winded speech in which he said he is seeking a return to the Oval Office “to make America great and glorious again. Since then, Trump has not held any formal campaign events. He has not traveled to early voting states, made any major staffing announcements or done much of anything to scare off would-be rivals. Instead, he’s been making headlines for controversies including dining with a white nationalist and calling to suspend the rules of the Constitution to redo the 2020 election.”
The failure to launch has fueled chatter that Trump is as politically weak as he’s ever been, making him officially a “CINO.”
Furthermore, former Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) gave Trump a harsh dose of reality:
“It’s crystal, crystal, crystal clear,” Ryan said in an interview with SiriusXM this week. “We lose with Trump if we stick with Trump. If we dump Trump, we start winning elections. So I think he has just shown himself to be who he is, and that is not a reflection on our democracy.”
