Donald Trump humiliates DeSantis and Haley in Iowa

The pantomime contest for the Republican presidential nomination formally started in the United States this week, and delivered the scale of result that means, at last, we are free to stop pretending.

Barring a catastrophic health episode for either of the ancients who stand astride US politics, albeit quite shakily and with hunched backs, Donald Trump is going to get his rematch against Joe Biden later this year. Yes, sorry, these two again, but older and grumpier and shoutier and somehow less coherent than before.

None of us yearned for it, and now we must honestly reckon with it. It’s the tax return due date of elections.

Years of speculation that one of Mr Trump’s rivals for the Republican nomination might just, somehow, magically knock him off his gilded perch – some of it hopeful, some driven merely by the political pundits’ insatiable craving for drama – now lie (mostly) buried under the cornfields of Iowa.

Mr Trump, whose attempt to stay in power after losing the 2020 election, and litany of criminal trials, and escalating oddness as a human being have so far done astonishingly little to degrade his appeal to Republican voters, comfortably won the state’s caucuses with a 51 per cent majority on Monday.

Ron DeSantis, long hyped as a genuine threat to Mr Trump, trailed 30 per cent behind him. Nikki Haley, to whom those wasted hopes are now being hurriedly transferred, was 2 per cent further back. So Trump first, daylight second, apathy third, and the other candidates lagging behind like the McDonald’s addict in a marathon (i.e. me).

Ms Haley will be much more competitive in Tuesday’s primary in New Hampshire, about as friendly a state as she could imagine, and could conceivably even win it.

Expect some renewed delusion at that point. Think of it as the equivalent of your NRL team scoring a try while down 30-0 on the scoreboard. “They couldn’t, could they?” you mutter to yourself, unable to keep the hopeful tone from your voice.

No, they couldn’t. And no, she can’t.

To be fair, the humiliation is infinitely greater for Mr DeSantis, who entered the race last May with a naive, bordering on cute degree of swagger and fanfare, having easily won re-election as Florida’s Governor the previous year.

He decided to try out a campaign strategy we might sum up as “being a bit of a dick on purpose”. This pioneering approach involved tapping into the culture war obsession, anti-woke hysteria and performative cruelty that’s infected much of right-wing politics – instead of his record as, he would argue, a somewhat competent governor.

What were we left with? Donald Trump’s signature perpetual grievance, but without the humour or weird charm the former president sometimes manages to offer. Why would anyone choose Budget Trump over the real Trump?

So, about the real Trump. His one-on-one polling against Mr Biden looks good. There’s a realistic chance that he’ll win in November and return to the White House in January, with a focus and impatience he lacked the first time.

There’ll be no senior advisers around him to urge restraint – no Rex Tillerson, no Jim Mattis, no John Kelly, no Bill Barr – only loyalists. And in a political system designed upon “checks and balances”, with the executive, legislative and judicial branches all restraining each other, Mr Trump has come to believe there should be no shackles on the president at all.

We have seen that argument pop up in Mr Trump’s legal cases. He believes he should be immune from prosecution for actions he took as president, particularly his efforts to overturn the 2020 election result.

“A president of the United States must have full immunity, without which it would be impossible for him or her to properly function,” he wrote in all caps on his social media platform, Truth Social, at 1am on Thursday (most of his posts are in all caps these days).

“Any mistake, even if well intended, would be met with almost certain indictment by the opposing party at term’s end. Even events that ‘cross the line’ must fall under total immunity, or it will be years of trauma trying to determine good from bad. There must be certainty.

“All presidents must have complete and total presidential immunity, or the authority and decisiveness of a president of the United States will be stripped and gone forever.”

For many people the task of distinguishing “good from bad” is actually no challenge whatsoever – crimes bad, no crimes good – but we’ll set that aside.

Mr Trump’s argument in short: a president must be immune from prosecution, or else he’ll be too terrified of ending up in court to do his job.

The courts will eventually rule on the legal argument here, and Mr Trump is hoping the three justices he appointed to the US Supreme Court will tilt the question in his favour.

We need not wait for those rulings to note the utter, farcical unworkability of the system Mr Trump proposes. Under this vision for the presidency, Mr Biden could order the US military to bomb Mar-a-Lago tomorrow, murdering his biggest political rival, and never be charged with a crime.

Not a fabulous idea. It would strip away any serious accountability for the most powerful person in the country, and put one citizen among 330 million completely above the law.

As Mr Biden has grown ever more doddery in office, and his approval ratings have plummeted, Mr Trump has become more extreme, and leant further towards something that sounds an awful lot like authoritarianism.

Republican voters are clearly OK with that. Is the rest of the country? And if he does return to the presidency, how should the rest of the world react?

It’s a hard conversation, one there is little point postponing further, and it’s important no matter how low your opinion of Mr Biden might be. Mr DeSantis, Ms Haley, the courts – none of them will make it disappear.

Twitter: @SamClench