What Chris Sununu doesn't get about Donald Trump
It's, well, a lot.
New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu has been outspoken about his distaste for Donald Trump.
“He’s fucking crazy,” Sununu once said of the former president.
He’s also said that Trump is a “jerk” and engages in “kooky talk.”
And yet, asked this week by Puck’s Tara Palmieri about the 2024 race, Sununu seemed to acknowledge that he would likely vote for Trump over President Joe Biden.
“I’m a Republican,” Sununu explained. “I just want Republicans to win; that’s all I care about.”
There’s a lot going on here — a lot of mental gymnastics required to arrive at such a position. And those contortions that Sununu is putting himself through to get to “yes” on Trump are deeply revealing — not just about him but about what many so-called “establishment” Republicans don’t get about Trump and the dangers he poses.
Let’s go through Sununu’s thought process (as best as I can tell):
Trump is crazy
Despite that, Trump is better than Biden
The reason for #2 is that Trump is a Republican and Biden is not.
It is then better for a crazy Republican to win than a sane Democrat
Ok, so there are a few things wrong with that way of thinking.
The most obvious is that it requires a belief that electing someone you think is, at best, mentally unstable, as the leader of the free world makes good sense solely because that person happens to share the same party affiliation as you do.
This dogged party loyalty is made all the more ridiculous by the fact that Trump (and his MAGA cohort) clearly don’t care about it at all.
Can you imagine if the situation was reversed — and Sununu, a moderate, non-MAGA Republican, was the frontrunner for the party’s presidential nomination? Do you think Trump, who has called Sununu a “selfish, selfish guy,” would put aside his personal feelings about the New Hampshire governor for the good of the party? Because, for Trump, electing any Republican is better than choosing any Democrat?
I mean, of course not. It’s laughable.
No one has written more eloquently about this mismatch in expectations (and desired outcomes) than the Bulwark’s Jonathan V. Last. This passage from JVL is particularly powerful on that front:
“Normal” Republicans—and here I include everyone from House members such as Mike Rogers to governors like Chris Sununu—are motivated by only one thing: Winning power for the Republican party. They are willing to make any compromise if they believe it will increase the chances of a Republican holding power in government.
MAGA Republicans do not care—at all—about control of the government. Their only motivation is to control the Republican party itself. The MAGAs are happy to lose general elections, so long as they can dominate the institution of the party itself. That’s their primary motivation.
Incentives are everything and the dynamic in the House GOP caucus puts us back in Muad'Dib territory.
“Normal Republicans” want the Republican party to win power. They would prefer it if it was their version of the Republican party, but this preference is a secondary factor. The outcome they want to avoid at all costs is Democrats holding governing power.
MAGA Republicans want to control the Republican party itself. They would prefer to also control the government, but the outcome they want to avoid at all costs isn’t Democrats holding governing power—it’s letting “Normal Republicans” run their party.
And that’s why we are where we are.
In short: Trump doesn’t a crap about the Republican party. He’s spent the last 7 years systematically working to dismantle it!
Sununu — whether because he is oblivious or is purposefully not getting it — doesn’t seem to grasp this reality.
There’s another misconception — and a dangerous one — lurking in Sununu’s even-a-crazy-Republican-is-better-than-a-Democrat theory too. It’s this: That electing a crazy person (as he believes Trump to be) isn’t actually all that bad because there’s a limit to what any one person can do — even a president.
He’s literally said that! Here’s Sununu in conversation with the New York Times last month:
A single individual is rarely, if ever, a threat to democracy in this country. Because we have a system of foundational institutions that really, for lack of a better term, are unwavering in a very good way. And the example I gave in that discussion was, we had a Civil War for goodness sakes. As tough and as horrific as that was, at the end of the Civil War, we didn’t have to change Congress or change the presidency.
1968. I wasn’t here for it, but my goodness, when you had great American voices being assassinated, not shouted down. Literally assassinated while the Vietnam War was going on, while you had the Nixon [campaign] going on. People said it’s over. Democracy’s ending, this country’s doomed. It was a tough time, but we got through it. You had 9/11, right? And it’s a massive external threat. Our foundations, our institutions stood strong. Nothing fundamentally varied after that.
You had the pandemic. You had Jan. 6. The fact that Congress met and certified the election and there was a peaceful transfer of power. Trump walked out the door. As much of a stink as he made that the election fraud in Jan. 6 and all this stuff, he still walked out the door.
Jerks may come and go, bad leaders may come and go, but our institutions have stood through the test of times.
Um, what?
Sununu dismisses January 6 as a “stink.” You could also call it an armed insurrection on the U.S. Capitol with the express purpose of delaying the certification of a free and fair election.
And, yes, he’s right that Congress did meet and certify the election. But they came pretty damn close to not doing that. Almost 150 Republicans across the House and Senate opposed the certification of ballots in Arizona and Pennsylvania. Were it not for Mike Pence’s resistance to a massive pressure campaign from Trump and his allies, the election could have been sent back to state legislatures where — contra to the will of the American public — Trump might have won.
The lesson Sununu seems to be taking from January 6 (and the broader attempts to claim election fraud by Trump) is that our institutions and democracy are essentially impregnable.
I took the exact opposite lesson from that day. To me, what January 6 proved is that we were one Mike Pence action away from the basic tenets of democracy being totally undermined. (And Pence had plenty of doubts before he did the right thing!). The aftermath of the 2020 election showed me how paper-thin the difference between order and chaos, between democracy and, um, not-democracy really is.
Then there’s this: For Sununu to believe that Trump can’t do anything all that bad if he is elected again requires him to ignore ALL of the things the former president has already SAID he will do if he is elected again.
Among those proposals:
A political weaponization of the Justice Department
A purge in the civil service — aimed at installing more Trump loyalists
A new Muslim ban
Retribution against news channels he views as unfriendly to him
As the New York Times put it in a recent story about Trump’s 2025 plans, they would “upend core elements of American governance, democracy, foreign policy and the rule of law if he regained the White House.
No big deal!
The reality here is that the American presidency is an immensely powerful office. And Trump learned, over his first term, how to wield it to best accomplish his personal goals and vendettas.
The idea of reinstalling someone like that into office solely because he, like you, has an “R” after his name is, to borrow a phrase from Sununu, fucking crazy.
Well said, Chris. The respect I once had for Sununu has gone away. Anyone unable to see the clear and present danger presented by Trump should not be the governor of a state...and not anywhere near the levers of power, anywhere!
In his book "On Tyranny, Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century," Timothy Snyder agrees that our institutions are crucial for protecting democracy. But he also warns that they are not impregnable.
"It is institutions that help us to preserve decency. They need our help as well. Do not speak of “our institutions” unless you make them yours by acting on their behalf.
Institutions do not protect themselves. They fall one after the other unless each is defended from the beginning."
Mr. Sununu demonstrates a particularly irresponsible laziness as a "leader" by failing to defend our institutions. It's his duty to protect the institutions, not the other way around.
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