Why is former President Donald Trump leading Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, not to mention all the other candidates in the crowded field, by a massive margin despite his foibles and the frightening legal attack upon him? Because, unlike everyone else aiming for the presidency, Trump has the “it” factor.
He knows what people want, is charismatic, and knows how to put things in just the right way to get his point across without being boring or pedantic. That is to say, whatever his other failings, Trump is an expert at wielding “our democracy” against the regime in a way that the other 2024 just are not.
Such is what the Daily Wire’s Candace Owens pointed out in a recent interview, noting that whatever DeSantis’s resume and history as governor, Trump is the one that can wow the crowd and bring in the votes, rather than boring most people with dry speeches or pre-planned talking points.
Making that point, Owens said, “Yeah, resume doesn’t mean anything. It doesn’t mean anything. And unfortunately people hate to hear that and to accept that as a truth where it’s like, ‘well, he’s done all of these things and this means that he should be president.’ It just doesn’t work like that.”
Continuing, she noted that Trump has the necessary ingredient for success, noting, “The number . . . the number one thing is you got to have the it factor. You mean it and it has to do with how you warm the crowd. The crowd responds to you. Trump has it.”
Owens, though generally a defender of former President Trump, was furious about the way he treated her when a false rumor about her reached his ears. Describing the incident, she said, “I did never once called Trump too old. I did never want to that Trump could not understand the Internet. And yet somehow he got that information and believed it to be true. He thought that I said that he was too old and he couldn’t understand the Internet and did not quite get the information that actually what I was saying was in defense of him so that his supporters would still believe in him. Not only was he just mad, by the way, he then during a golf session with some mutual friends of ours, had a person next to him who was egging this on, saying to Trump, and I know this because, again, this is a mutual friend, “Aren’t you mad at Candace? Aren’t you mad at Candace? Aren’t you mad at Candace?” And eventually he was like, “Yeah, I’m so mad at Candace. I’m so mad at Candace.” And this got back to me that he was upset with me, that he was angry at me. And the next time that I saw him, he was quite rude to me. He was actually rude to me.”
Continuing, she said that story showed Trump’s big problem, which is that sometimes he has trouble being a leader and leading the massive movement he created, rather than letting sometimes falsely-based grievances get in the way of his political project.
She said, “I’m telling you, this personal story, because I think it is something that made me for the first time question him as a person. So you have an individual that spent years defending you, right? And that individual gave you a completely kind and fair interview. You said something yourself that your base didn’t like and you somehow transformed that into something that I did wrong. That’s unacceptable. And is that is not being a leader. That is not owning things that you did wrong, that is not owning that you misunderstood something about your base. That’s not growing. That’s not developing. In fact, he should have tried to understand why the base was so upset with him, which would have led to the fact that his base is not pro-Covid vaccines, that simple. I understood that. I could have told him that. But at that moment I realized that he’s not listening. Who is this guy next to him trying to egg him on to be angry at me for trying to defend him, say that he’s not a shill to say ‘No, actually, I think that he genuinely does support the vaccine. He did genuinely support the vaccines.'”
She added, “That’s what it means to be a person. That what that’s what it means to be a friend. That’s what it means to be a colleague and even a friend. What it means to be a colleague is to actually have relationships with people to honor the relationships that you have with people that don’t take place in the public sphere.”
She also gave Trump some advice on how to win, adding, “Trump needs to take a good look in the mirror and he needs to take a good look in the room, and he needs to read the room accurately. He needs to take a look at those that are around him that are inspiring this paranoia and making him believe that everyone’s out to get him, including his friends, and he needs to exercise a tiny bit more humility when he gets something wrong.”
Candace Owens explains why Trump is leading the GOP nomination.
"Resume doesn't mean anything. You gotta have the 'it' factor and know how to work a crowd." pic.twitter.com/n0m0iV6Iyi
— Citizen Free Press (@CitizenFreePres) September 17, 2023
Featured image credit: screengram from the embedded video
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