The GOP primary is effectively over – now it’s up to the media to save us from Trump  

A lot of people have vowed to make triumphant last stands against Donald Trump. During the 2016 Republican primary, Jeb Bush piled all of his resources into a do-or-die fight in South Carolina. Marco Rubio risked it all on the voters of Florida. Earlier this month, Ron DeSantis bet his political future on the Iowa caucuses. All three ended up suffering humiliating defeats that ultimately drove them from the race. 

On Tuesday, Nikki Haley joined the long list of Republicans whose courageous last stands amounted to nothing in the face of Trump’s unparalleled cult of personality.  

Despite weeks spent building expectations around her strength in New Hampshire and a few late-breaking polls that showed a tight race there, Trump trounced Haley by a solid 10 points. It’s time for Haley to accept reality. This primary is over. 

Barring his death or disability, the former president now faces no practical GOP opposition. His rivals have either bent the knee, exiled themselves from the party or found themselves booted out by the MAGA faithful. Haley may declare the race “far from over,” but her campaign coffers are drying up after a heavy spend in New Hampshire, and her anti-Trump donor base has evaporated. Trumpism may now be the single most powerful political movement in America. 

It’s clear Trump no longer fears any meaningful challenge to his power within the Republican primary or from the GOP itself. How else can one explain his increasingly casual promises to trample the Constitution? His demand for “total immunity” from the crimes he intends to commit as president? His gleeful use of the same blood-and-soil rhetoric once touted by Nazi leaders? His renewed support for QAnon conspiracy theories? Trump knows he has nothing to fear from a Republican Party he has dominated so completely. 

Regardless, the mainstream media will continue to treat the GOP primary as something approaching a real contest. After all, their business model depends on an extended horse race — at least through Florida, where expensive media ad rates generate juicy profits for networks.

Florida ad spending topped $350 million in 2020. With Trump all but crowned after yesterday’s New Hampshire rout, experts project Florida will bring in only $81 million in ad spending this year. Manufacturing a Haley-Trump contest is now a matter of financial necessity for the media industry. 

That’s terrible news for the American public. They’ll continue to be fed a media fiction that Nikki Haley is, somehow, a viable candidate, and that there exists a meaningful anti-Trump movement within the GOP. It may be possible to peddle those bogus narratives for a few more weeks, but what happens when Trump clobbers Haley in her home state of South Carolina in just a month’s time? At that point even Haley’s die-hard donors will likely be telling the former governor to try again in 2032. 

What’s needed now isn’t a postmodern media eagerly trying to craft a competitive campaign out of Trump’s victory lap. Our country needs media outlets with the courage to hold Trump accountable for his antidemocratic promises.  

Voters were denied that opportunity when Trump refused to participate in a single primary debate. Now Trump is considering skipping the general election debates as well. In doing so, he hopes to deny the American people the chance to critique his increasingly authoritarian MAGA ideology. Only the press can fill that gap and ensure Trump faces pointed questions about what his “total immunity” really means for our country. 

It’s entirely possible that doing this won’t persuade a single Trump supporter to change their allegiance. That’s hardly the point. If Trump is a grave and imminent threat to our democracy, as his own former attorney, Ty Cobb, convincingly argues, it is the responsibility of the press to push Trump to explain in detail his nightmare vision for the country. The American people must have every opportunity to see and hear the horror speeding toward them if they are to have any hope of avoiding its disastrous results. 

We won’t get that necessary reporting if the media continues to prop up Nikki Haley’s zombie campaign. If Haley truly believes that Trump is the mentally incapable threat to America that she claims, the right thing to do is drop out immediately and spare the country another month of meaningless polls and media hyperventilation. That act alone may be the most consequential act of Haley’s political career. If the media can stay focused on the real threat, it may also be enough to prevent an electoral catastrophe in November. 

Max Burns is a veteran Democratic strategist and founder of Third Degree Strategies.