Conservative columnist urges Trump to drop current election challenges, focus on 2024 White House bid

Weeks after the mainstream media declared victory for Democratic nominee Joe Biden, President Donald Trump continues to contest the results of this year’s presidential race.

While he still has plenty of supporters sounding the alarms over alleged voter fraud and other irregularities in the recent election, at least one pundit is arguing that the president does have a shot at a second term — but his current strategy for pursuing it could cost Senate Republicans dearly in upcoming Georgia runoff races.

“Focused on the wrong thing”

Washington Post conservative columnist Marc Thiessen made his case during a Fox News Channel appearance this week, encouraging Trump to give up on his current election-related challenges and focus on securing the GOP nomination in four years.

“The problem is that the president is focused on the wrong thing right now,” he told anchor Bret Baier on Tuesday.

Thiessen predicted that the president’s “chances of overturning the last election are next to zero, if not zero itself,” but that does not mean his presidential legacy has to end on Inauguration Day.

“So he has a path to a second term, but it’s in 2024,” he said.

Furthermore, Thiessen shared his belief that the Trump campaign’s ongoing election challenges in a handful of swing states are shifting focus away from a more critical short-term GOP issue.

“Trump supporters are not energized”

“And the path to a second term flows through Georgia and winning the Georgia Senate race,” he declared. “And right now it’s not just the opportunity costs, the fact that he spending his time and energy on these legal challenges that have no chance of succeeding, it’s also the fact that the Trump supporters are not energized behind these candidates.”

Georgia voters will head to the polls on Jan. 5 to cast their ballots in a pair of Senate runoff elections through which the chamber’s balance of power will be determined.

“This whole legal thing is creating a distraction that’s going to depress Republican turnout and it could cost Republicans control of the Senate, and that would be an absolute disaster,” Thiessen said.

While runoff elections typically attract far fewer voters than their general-election counterparts, the high stakes of the upcoming Georgia races are poised to be an exception to that rule.

As of Tuesday, more than 762,000 Georgia voters had requested an absentee ballot ahead of the January race, which represents three times more ballots than were requested during the 2018 election cycle.

The post Conservative columnist urges Trump to drop current election challenges, focus on 2024 White House bid first appeared on Conservative Institute.