Ben Carson: ‘Chances Are Pretty Strong’
Cabinet job: secretary of Housing and Urban Development. Carson was friends with Trump in Palm Beach, Florida, before the campaign,
B
and they stayed close during their four years in Washington, D.C. Carson believes another Trump candidacy is likely. “I’d say the chances are pretty strong he will run again,” he told Newsmax. “It will depend in large part on what the circumstances are a year from now . . . the economy and how our country is regarded throughout the world.” Asked if he and Trump have been in touch recently, he simply replied, “Yes.” Pressed as to whether he would share what they discussed, Carson
remonstrated, “Of course not!” These days, along with his philanthropic activities, Carson heads up the
American Cornerstone Institute that “champions conservative solutions to the real problems our nation faces” and seeks to “heal the divisiveness that plagues our nation’s politics.”
Continued from page 65
paign, and former State Rep. Jake Ellzey — also a conservative Trump backer — won with 53 percent of the vote.
The former president’s po-
litical team is reportedly nervous about two endorsements he made in crowded and hotly contested U.S. Senate primaries — Alabama (where he backed Rep. Mo Brooks over Lynda Blanchard, his own longtime fundraiser and ambas- sador to Slovenia) and North Car- olina (where he endorsed little- known Rep. Ted Budd over fellow Rep. Mark Walker and former Gov. Pat McCrory). Defeats of Trump-backed con-
tenders in 2022, his supporters privately say, could raise doubts about his electability in 2024. But it is also inevitable that
many “Trump Republicans” will be elected in the midterms next year.
Like Richard Nixon in 1966 and
Ronald Reagan in 1978, Trump in 2022 will be able to claim he played
66 NEWSMAX | OCTOBER 2021
a role in the GOP capture of the House and Senate, about which Republicans are now “cautiously optimistic.”
Lights, Camera, Candidacy? As long as the camera is on Donald Trump and he maintains his star- ring role in the Republican Party, most Trump-watchers agree he will run in 2024. And the decision will be strictly
personal, unrelated to the econo- my, immigration, COVID-19, and Afghanistan, or other issues — or even whether Biden is the Demo- cratic nominee. “Damn the issues!” said Bill Bal-
lenger, editor of the much-read on- line Ballenger Report on Michigan politics. “Any and all circumstances
would motivate Trump to run again if his ego and health are intact. His grassroots apparatus is still largely intact and certainly more than any other potential Republican can- didate — but whether he could ex- pand that enough to win in 2024 is the great unanswered question.
en Carson was unique among members of the Trump Cabinet. One of a dozen presidential hopefuls at the beginning of the 2016 campaign, the acclaimed neurosurgeon was the only former rival to whom Trump gave a
“We can’t predict what the polit-
ical climate will be like three years from now.” “As we all know, Trump loves
attention,” said Linda Feldmann, Washington, D.C., bureau chief of the Christian Science Monitor. “He’s a performer and a show-
man, and running for and being president gave him a platform like no other.” Feldmann feels that Trump is
now “acting as if he may well run again because, why not? “There’s no downside to teasing
to run, which he can do until the day he announces he’s not running — if that’s his decision.” The words “motivation” and
“vindication” fi gured strongly into Feldmann’s analysis. “If Trump decides to run again,”
she told Newsmax, “I believe he will be motivated fi rst by a desire to vindicate himself. “He never conceded the 2020
election, choosing instead to claim widespread election fraud. But he has to know a signifi cant portion of the country doesn’t believe the election was stolen, and in running again, he has an opportunity to show he can win without a doubt, as he did in 2016.” This analysis was seconded by
G. Terry Madonna, a professor at Franklin & Marshall College in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, who is widely considered the state’s pre-
KARLA ANN COTE/NURPHOTO VIA GETTY IMAGES
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