The Republican civil war that Donald Trump’s continued ascendance has long heralded is finally happening. That much is evident from recent events. But you can be forgiven for confusing it with a clown show. There is no clear line where one ends and the other begins. In the 2024 G.O.P. Presidential primaries, a few candidates have—finally, belatedly—begun to criticize the former President, who faces an escalating array of legal challenges and a host of former confidants turned rivals. But how serious are these political threats in this age of performative B.S. that has come to characterize the Trump-era Republican Party?
On paper, Trump’s weaknesses are tremendous. Seeking to defy history and become the only defeated ex-President aside from Grover Cleveland to reclaim the office, Trump has an increasingly narrow window in the Electoral College, and almost no prospect of converting the millions of Americans he would need to win the popular vote. Already the first former chief executive subject to a criminal indictment, in a case brought by the Manhattan District Attorney, he has now reportedly been indicted on federal charges related to his retention of classified documents after he left the White House. Other charges, connected to his unprecedented efforts to overturn his 2020 election defeat, could follow.
On Wednesday, Trump’s own former Vice-President, Mike Pence, announced he was running against him. This also has little historical precedent, unless you count John Nance Garner’s half-hearted bid against F.D.R. in 1940 or reach all the way back to the early days of the Republic, to the election of 1800, when Thomas Jefferson defeated John Adams. After years of enabling Trump, Pence unexpectedly came out swinging during an announcement speech, in Iowa, in which he castigated Trump for pressuring him to refuse to certify the 2020 count and then, when Pence wouldn’t do it, inciting the pro-Trump mob that stormed the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021. “I believe that anyone who puts themselves over the Constitution should never be President of the United States,” Pence said. “And anyone who asks someone else to put them over the Constitution should never be President of the United States again.” A début ad, paid for by the pro-Pence Committed to America super PAC, which started airing on Thursday, was even tougher, calling Trump “a weak man,” who “failed the test of leadership,” mocking his support for the “genius” Vladimir Putin, and accusing him of betraying conservative principles.
Pence was not even the harshest critic of Trump to enter the Republican Presidential race this week. That title belongs to another former Trump cheerleader, the former New Jersey governor Chris Christie, who finally broke with Trump after catching a serious case of COVID while helping him prep for his first debate with Joe Biden. Christie announced his bid on Tuesday, during a town hall in New Hampshire, in which he savaged Trump as a “bitter, angry man,” who is “self-consumed,” “self-serving,” and has a family of “breathtaking” grifters. “I’m going out there to take out Donald Trump,” Christie said, as he mocked the other Republican candidates—including most notably the Florida governor, Ron DeSantis, who registers a distant second to Trump in the polls—for being so afraid of the former President that, like the evil Lord Voldemort in the “Harry Potter” series, they are loath even to say his name.
Trump predictably and rapidly punched back, circulating a fake video of Christie launching his campaign at an all-you-can-eat buffet. His son Don, Jr., greeted Christie’s announcement by tweeting an altered version of the Krispy Kreme donuts logo. “Chris Krispy,” it said. In other words, while Christie was calling out the family’s corruption, lying, and other malfeasance, the Trumps went with fat-shaming and schoolyard insults. So classy. Especially from a man whose prolific diet of cheeseburgers and ice-cream sundaes has put him in the medical category of obese. Nasty is not Trump’s only setting, though. In recent days, even before the revelation on Thursday evening that federal prosecutors had secured his indictment by a federal grand jury in Miami, he had started to sound downright hysterical when complaining about the rogue prosecutors and “DISLOYAL politicians” going after him. A new ad from his campaign this week disparaged them as “rabid wolves” trying to take him down. If this were anyone else, we might be justified in asking: is he panicking?
But not Trump. This clown show is his preferred form of politics, and he relishes nothing more than a fight, or, as is now the case, many fights simultaneously. Criminal charges against a front-runner, at virtually any other time in American history, would likely have been seen as disqualifying. The pile-on from other Republicans might, in a different moment, be seen as confirmation of the candidate’s incredible weakness. Yet Trump remains the overwhelming leader in the G.O.P. race. And, rather than unite against him, the other Republicans in the fast-growing field—ten and counting with the addition this week of Christie, Pence, and the little-known North Dakota governor, Doug Burgum—seem determined to replay the early 2016 primary season, when Trump’s fervent minority was enough for him to win in a crowded race despite the majority of Republicans not supporting him.
If anything, since that race, Trump has only perfected the art of using division to his own advantage. The New York indictment caused his poll numbers to go up, not down. He likely anticipates the same thing happening now that federal charges have indeed been filed. And why shouldn’t he? In an NBC survey in April, sixty-eight per cent of Republican voters polled said that charges against him were “a politically motivated attempt to stop Trump” and agreed with the statement “No other candidate is like him, we must support him.” According to the Times, the Trump campaign almost immediately began fund-raising off of the news. An emergency appeal for money at 7:45 P.M. on Thursday screamed: “We are watching our Republic DIE before our very eyes.”
With Trump both a proven loser and at some actual risk of future imprisonment, there remains a real, if slim, chance that this could be an actual Republican race and not another coronation. But, if this is a genuine civil war inside the G.O.P., even some of the combatants don’t seem fully committed to the fight. Take Pence, who long ago secured his place as among America’s most sanctimonious—and most subservient—politicians. Shortly after his announcement, he quickly undercut his strong words about Trump and January 6th, vowing to back whoever became the eventual Republican nominee—presumably even if it is Trump, a man he had just said dishonored the Constitution. And he followed that up in a CNN town hall with Dana Bash on Wednesday evening, in which he criticized the prospect of the Justice Department indicting the former President. “It would only fuel further divisions in the country,” Pence said, adding, “It would also send a terrible message to the wider world.”
Bash seemed incredulous. When she reminded Pence that he had just insisted on the necessity of the rule of law, the former Vice-President reverted to a word salad of excuses about Trump’s “unique circumstances.” “I would just hope there would be a way for them to move forward without the dramatic and drastic and divisive step of indicting a former President of the United States,” he said.
Which, of course, sounded a lot more like a Trump talking point than the words of a political rival determined to take him out. Civil wars are not generally won by those who project such ambivalence about waging them. If nothing else, Pence’s rollout this week has served as a reminder of why he is languishing in the single digits in the polls. It’s really hard to be against Trump and also sort of for him, too. 
This article has been updated to reflect news developments.
Finally, a Few G.O.P. Candidates Dare to Speak Trump’s Name
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