Trump’s Candidacy: Evaluated by 11 Opinion Writers

As Republican candidates enter the race for their party’s 2024 presidential nomination, Times columnists, Opinion writers and others will assess their strengths and weaknesses with a scorecard. We rate the candidates on a scale of 1 to 10: 1 means the candidate will probably drop out before any caucus or primary voting; 10 means the candidate has a very strong chance of receiving the party’s nomination next summer. This entry assesses Donald Trump, the former president.

How seriously should we take Donald Trump’s candidacy?

David Brooks There were real signs that large parts of the G.O.P. were ready to move on from Trump. But the Mar-a-Lago raid, the New York indictment and other attacks on Trump crushed that. Now Trump is once again dominant in the party. Seriously, some days I think his purported opponents want him back in the White House.

Frank Bruni We should take it with maximal, bone-chilling, psyche-ravaging, hope-slaying seriousness. Even under federal indictment, he’s the likeliest Republican nominee. And the Republican nominee ipso facto has a decent shot at the presidency. Which means a second term of Trump, heaven help us, is entirely possible.

Jane Coaston Extremely.

Michelle Cottle Be afraid.

Ross Douthat As seriously as a spring tempest. As seriously as a summer forest fire. As seriously as the north wind shaking the barren trees on the last day of autumn. As seriously as the winter wind, blowing in the same bare place, with the nothing that is not there and the nothing that is.

David French Any person who argues that Democrats should want to face him in the general election should be hauled before a pundit tribunal and duly punished. There is no such thing as a safe race against Donald Trump.

Michelle Goldberg He’s the clear front-runner for the Republican nomination. Even if he’s more likely to lose to Biden than other Republicans, that’s far from guaranteed, and a Trump restoration could be an extinction-level event for American democracy.

Nicole Hemmer If you haven’t learned to take Trump seriously as a candidate by now, nothing will convince you. But as the front-runner for the nomination and someone with a penchant for destroying democratic institutions, we should take his candidacy very, very seriously.

Jonathan Last As seriously as a heart attack. Donald Trump leads his nearest rival by about 32 points. At this point in 2007, Barack Obama trailed Hillary Clinton by between 14 and 20 points, and he barely managed to defeat her.

Katherine Mangu-Ward More seriously than we did in 2016, that’s for sure.

Daniel McCarthy His chances of winning the White House in 2024 are at least as good as his chances were in 2016.

What matters most about him as a presidential candidate?

Brooks In America as in other Western democracies, the most educated 20 percent who live in a few metro areas have disproportionate cultural, media, economic and political power. Trump drives those people crazy.

Bruni Where to start? Where to stop? We’re witnessing not just the unprecedented but the unimaginable: A former president who is very credibly accused of treating top-secret documents like a personal stamp collection and has shown spectacular contempt for democracy wants four more years and enjoys the backing of most of his party. That’s no mere “stress test” for the nation. It’s blazing meteor headed straight at the Capitol.

Coaston He is running for president because he has nothing else. He once had the presidency, and he wants it again, and that’s all that really matters to him.

Cottle He repeatedly has shown himself happy to trash democracy and shatter the nation to satisfy his own ego and ambition.

Douthat That his second term was foretold in the Necronomicon, written in eldritch script on the Mountains of Madness and carved deep, deep into the white stones of the Plateau of Leng.

French In 2016, many of us were concerned that Trump would prove far more erratic, divisive and corrupt than even the worst of our recent presidents. We didn’t believe assurances that he’d somehow grow in office. Now we know beyond a shadow of a doubt — Trump is uniquely dangerous.

Goldberg There was a lot of debate, in 2016, about whether Trump was a fascist. I think that debate is settled. He is offering himself as the quasi-mystical embodiment of his supporters’ will, glorifying the insurrectionary violence of Jan. 6 and promising “retribution” against enemies, who make up half the country.

Hemmer He has little interest in leaving office once he obtains it, and his odds of being re-elected — despite the attack on the Capitol, despite the current and pending indictments, despite his disdain for democracy — remain high.

Last His hold on the base. In a recent donor call, advisers to Ron DeSantis said that Trump controls the loyalty of 35 percent of the Republican base. Every other candidate in the race would run over their own grandmother to get to 35 percent. And that’s probably Trump’s floor.

Mangu-Ward Nobody stimulates the polarized, tribal, panicky parts of the American political psyche like Trump. During his presidency, both sides became convinced — often with Trump’s encouragement — that the other side had broken so many rules that fair play was out the window and violence was on the table. With Trump’s return to the campaign trail, expect that sense to redouble and become self-fulfilling.

McCarthy Opponents and supporters alike should recognize that Trump is a strong candidate because our institutions have forfeited the public’s trust. Both parties, the media, the federal government (especially the intelligence agencies) and academia are vulnerable to a candidate like Trump not only because of his prowess but also because of their own depleted legitimacy. He’s their comeuppance.

What do you find most inspiring — or unsettling — about his vision for America?

Brooks A second Trump presidency would be just like the first one except with an even more deranged president and an even more bottom-scraping staff.

Bruni At this point his “vision” will devolve into victory as a way of staying out of prison and finagling laws that protect him forevermore. Not a crumb of it is about America, and not a crumb of it ever was. It’s about him, and it’s morphed from the glorification of Donald Trump to the effective pardon of Donald Trump. “Unsettling” doesn’t do that remote justice.

Coaston What vision? Trump’s vision for America is one in which he is president and has all constraints on the presidency removed. He doesn’t want to run for president, or act as president, he simply wants to be president, with the coterie of sycophants and the obsessive attention of a media apparatus he purports to loathe but seems to need to survive.

Cottle His capture of the Republican Party is essentially the political version of the mutant fungal outbreak that turned everyone into crazed zombies and wiped out civilization in “The Last of Us.”

Douthat I believe that before the sixth seal is opened, the sun becomes black as sackcloth and the moon becomes of blood, he will deliver more winning than we have ever seen, and I look forward to it.

French There is nothing inspiring about Trump. What’s most unsettling isn’t his vision, but rather the cultural damage he’s inflicting on the G.O.P. and the country. In parts of the right, he’s turned vice into virtue and elevated cruelty to an art. He degrades any institution he leads.

Goldberg There will be no adults in the room this time. It will be, even more than before, a deeply corrupt and vicious kakistocracy.

Hemmer At his Inaugural Address, Trump spoke about American carnage — and over the next four years, he delivered it. If he’s returned to the White House, he’ll do it again, only this time with more loyalists and fewer restraints.

Last The authoritarianism isn’t great? Not sure what it would mean if a major political party renominated a man who helped attempt a coup.

Mangu-Ward Trump’s vision of America is darkly dystopian. The country is under threat by “terrorists, misfits and lunatic thugs who are working feverishly from within to overturn and destroy” America. Trump’s vision for America is deeply authoritarian. He is what you get when you unmoor a standard-issue Republican from even a tenuous commitment to constitutional limits on the size and scope of government or the powers of the executive.

McCarthy As exceptional as Trump himself might be, his vision is a return to common sense: putting American jobs ahead of globalization, engaging in creative diplomacy rather than reckless attempts to spread liberalism abroad by military force and enforcing immigration law and border security. Democrats like Eugene McCarthy once had a similar vision. This should be the political center.

Imagine you’re a G.O.P. operative or campaign manager. What’s your elevator pitch for a Trump candidacy?

Brooks He makes the right enemies. He brought us peace and a good economy.

Bruni It’s an age of rage, and no candidate will tap into that as shamelessly and with as little regard for the consequences as the madman of Mar-a-Lago.

Coaston Make America Great Again, Part Deux, the Second.

Cottle It’s his party now. We’re just living in it.

Douthat Some day the world will end in fire, some say in ice. From what I’ve tasted of desire, I hold with those who favor fire. But if it had to perish twice, I think I know enough of hate to say that for destruction ice is also great and would suffice. MAGA!

French No one — not even Ron DeSantis — hates your enemies as much as Donald Trump.

Goldberg He’s probably inevitable, and if he doesn’t win the primaries, he’ll sabotage whoever does, so if you want a Republican White House you need to get on board.

Hemmer He has the biggest base of support in the Republican Party, and his supporters would do anything — anything — for him.

Last “I am your retribution” works pretty nicely. But watch how Trump demagogues very accessible issues: inflation, war, economic uncertainty (like bank failures). He’s not in the weeds with E.S.G.-D.E.I.-C.R.T. gobbledygook. He’s a much more skilled demagogue than anyone else in the race. But this only works because Republicans don’t need to get to 50 percent plus 1. They need to get between only 46 percent and 48 percent of the vote to have a good chance to win the presidency.

Mangu-Ward You already know all the worst stuff, so vote for him if you still like him.

McCarthy Trump delivered on Roe and judges, he reformed and cut taxes, he advanced Middle East peace, he started no wars he couldn’t finish, he toughened attitudes toward China, he restrained immigration, and he was a great jobs president. He’s proven he can win, and he does what Republicans are elected to do.

David Brooks, Ross Douthat, David French and Michelle Goldberg are Times columnists.

Frank Bruni is a professor of journalism and public policy at Duke University, the author of the book “The Beauty of Dusk” and a contributing Opinion writer.

Michelle Cottle (@mcottle) is a member of the Times’s editorial board.

Jane Coaston is a Times Opinion writer.

Nicole Hemmer (@pastpunditry) is an associate professor of history and director of the Rogers Center for the American Presidency at Vanderbilt University and the author of “Partisans: The Conservative Revolutionaries Who Remade American Politics in the 1990s.”

Jonathan V. Last (@JVLast) is the editor of The Bulwark.

Katherine Mangu-Ward (@kmanguward) is the editor in chief of Reason magazine.

Daniel McCarthy is the editor of “Modern Age: A Conservative Review.”

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