Donald Trump's shocking transformation

Meet the new establishment candidate!

(Donald Trump/Associated Press)

Earlier this week, Montana Sen. Steve Daines endorsed Donald Trump’s 2024 presidential candidacy.

“The best four years I’ve had in the US Senate is when President Trump was serving in the Oval Office,” Daines told Donald Trump Jr., adding: “I am proud to endorse Donald J. Trump for President of the United States.”

Which matters for this very specific reason: Daines is the head of the National Republican Senatorial Committee and, as such, is a member of party leadership.

Daines’ endorsement comes on the heels of a slew of congressional endorsements — many of which came from Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ backyard — for Trump.

Trump now has at least 11 Republican Senators — including potential 2028 candidate Josh Hawley of Missouri — in his camp as well as nearly 50 members of the GOP House, according to calculations kept by The Hill newspaper.¹

That dwarfs the congressional endorsement totals of the likes of DeSantis (2) and former U.N. ambassador Nikki Haley (1).

And it speaks to this undeniable fact: Donald Trump is the establishment candidate in the 2024 Republican primary race.

Which is, frankly, astounding. And speaks to just how total his takeover of the Republican party really is.

Remember that Trump expressly ran against the establishment — Democratic and Republican — in his 2016 bid. (His first congressional endorsement didn’t come until 8 months into his candidacy.)

Trump was, at first, regarded as a nuisance candidate by that establishment, who had largely lined up behind the candidacy of former Florida Gov. Jeb(!) Bush.

Then he was regarded as a threat as the establishment desperately searched for a candidate who could stop him — a search that started with Bush but eventually led the party to Florida Sen. Marco Rubio and then, amazingly, to Texas Sen. Ted Cruz.

Through it all, Trump triumphed — exposing the deep rift between the party’s elected officials and its base. Trump exposed the establishment in that race as having far less power than everyone supposed they did. He won not just without them but with them actively trying to keep them from the nomination.

Once Trump became president, the establishment, largely, capitulated to him. Some did it out of fear (Trump had demonstrated that he could turn the base against anyone who crossed him) and others did it out of strategy (Trump would put conservative justices on the bench etc.)

There were breaks but far fewer than you might have thought given the opposition to Trump among the party establishment during the 2016 campaign. And, when someone did step out of line — Arizona’s Jeff Flake, for instance — Trump’s retribution was swift and effective.

But then Trump lost. And refused to admit he lost. And helped to foment an insurrection on January 6, 2021 the likes of which the country had never seen before.

And, at least some of the establishment walked away from him. There were predictions — even some public ones! — that Trump would recede in the minds of Republican voters, that his day had passed.

Even when Trump announced — again — for president last fall, you could find plenty of people who predicted that the Republican party had moved on, and that Trump wouldn’t find nearly as warm a welcome within the party establishment as he had when he was president.

What all that analysis missed is this: Trump destroyed the party establishment and rebuilt it in his own likeness over his four years in office.

Consider Kevin McCarthy — or “my Kevin” as Trump refers to him. McCarthy, with an eye on the Speakership, quickly grasped — even after Trump’s 2020 loss and the events of January 6 — that Trump was still the power center around which the party revolved.

McCarthy traveled to Mar-a-Lago soon after the January 6 riot to make amends. (He had been sharply critical of Trump in the immediate aftermath.) He defended Trump when FBI officials search Mar-a-Lago for classified documents last year. And he leaned on Trump to get him over the line — after 15 votes for Speaker — earlier this year.

While there are exceptions — Mitch McConnell and Trump are not on speaking terms - there are a lot more McCarthys than McConnells out there in GOP establishment land.

How did Trump take over the establishment? A few ways:

1. The old establishment — think Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan circa 2012 — was ripe for disruption. It had a distinctly country club and vests vibe to it — which was directly at odds with the increasingly alienated and angry party base.

2. The establishment, which is mostly just comprised of elected officials, cares first and foremost about self preservation. And once Trump had taken over the party base, the surest way to survive, politically speaking, was to get behind him on, well, everything.

3. Lots and lots of candidates who ran for office in 2018 and 2020 did so either inspired by or in homage to Trump. Many of them won — especially in overwhelmingly Republican districts — and grew the numbers of his “new” establishment in Washington.

I would argue that Trump is more in control of the new Republican establishment today than he has been since leaving office in 2021. He is widely seen as the likely 2024 nominee and people — especially elected officials — love a winner (or someone who looks like a winner).

All of that suggests that there are more — many more — elected officials who will get behind Trump over the next few months. And that Trump will emerge, even more clearly, as the pick of the new Republican establishment — one he remade in his own image.

“The more people Donald Trump gets behind him the more clear it is that the new establishment is the Trump party,” Mitt Romney told the Washington Post this week.

Yeah, what he said.

1. Trump also secured the endorsement of former New York Rep. Lee Zeldin this week. Which is shocking because Zeldin was, at one point, expected to be part of Ron DeSantis’ 2024 team.