OPINION:
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Walking out of court in Manhattan last week, former President Donald Trump boasted that he was up in all the polls even though, as he likes to remind us, “I have a gag order!”
As if the two were not related.
Sure, Mr. Trump has demonstrated his supernatural ability to defy all political odds by watching his poll numbers go up and up and up as more and more Democrats persecute him with all their fantastical court cases and absurd show trials. Voters — including many independents who do not particularly like Mr. Trump — recognize what President Biden and his Democratic Party are doing to Mr. Trump, and they are rightfully disgusted.
But also at play may be the gag order itself, which is unconstitutional. Perhaps the gag order throttling Mr. Trump’s free speech in the middle of a presidential campaign is actually helping him — to whatever degree he is abiding by it. Just as getting kicked off Twitter more than three years ago probably helped rehabilitate Mr. Trump in the wake of the Jan. 6 Capitol riot.
Unbridled free speech for Mr. Trump is both his eternal genius — and his Achilles’ heel. It is the secret to his success — and it is his downfall. It is the air he needs to breathe — and the foul air that gives him cancer.
Such is Mr. Trump’s rare brand of blistering honesty in the political arena.
In the case of Twitter, Mr. Trump’s ability to instantly communicate his unvarnished opinions — including those issued faster than the speed of spell check — got Mr. Trump invited to the party. His musings on everything from Rosie O’Donnell to Barack Obama’s birth certificate to the extravagant failings of the Republican Party proved that he was not your average poll-tested, focus-grouped, cautious and laundered politician.
Love him or hate him, Mr. Trump was going to tell you what he thinks. And people loved it.
Simultaneously, the No. 1 thing people say they dislike about Mr. Trump is that he is always telling them exactly what he thinks. His “mean-tweets.”
Even his biggest supporters often say they wish his wife would put Mr. Trump in a pair of those thumb locks to keep him from opining so often about everything under the sun.
In the case of the Jan. 6 riot, Mr. Trump has been aided by the passage of time. Despite the Democratic Party’s best efforts to make that day the primary issue of this election, it is not in the top 100 issues for regular voters.
And as a technical and legal matter, even Mr. Trump’s most virulent enemies among Democratic prosecutors could not come up with any charges that Mr. Trump or any of his supporters engaged in an actual insurrection on Jan. 6.
The only thing that might have kept that issue alive would have been Mr. Trump’s live-tweeting about it for the next three years.
Any political adviser who has ever lived would give Mr. Trump the same advice at this moment in the 2024 presidential campaign: Shut up.
You are up in the polls and going in the right direction. Your opponent is down and circling the toilet. You are right on all the issues that voters care about. Your opponent has wrecked everything people want fixed in this country.
Play it safe. Don’t say anything. Just wait it out, and you will win.
But that is not Donald Trump. Donald Trump never plays not to lose.
Donald Trump always plays to win and wants every victory to be as meaningful as possible.
Donald Trump believes in leveraging every situation for maximum return. This has always been his philosophy, in business and politics.
So he demands to debate the man he is already beating and then hectors Mr. Biden for agreeing to only two. He accepts the unfair rules that give his opponent the advantage in those debates.
And Mr. Trump will debate Mr. Biden over all the issues he thinks people care about, including those the political masters warn will help his opponent.
Mr. Trump’s pyrotechnic instincts about politics understandably cause indigestion for those advising him. But his rare, blistering honesty is just what the republic needs today.
• Charles Hurt is the opinion editor at The Washington Times.
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