Jonah Goldberg: GOP ‘Closet Normals on the Hill’ Want to Move Beyond Trump

Conservative syndicated columnist Jonah Goldberg said Wednesday on CNN’s “The Lead” that Republican “closet normals on the Hill” want to move beyond former President Donald Trump but are waiting for their voters to do so.

Anchor Jake Tapper said, “Do you think that, assuming that Jack Smith does go forward and bring some sort of charges related to this, do you think that will have any impact whatsoever on Trump’s standing among must be members of Congress, Republican officials and voters?”

Goldberg said, “Those are different constituencies, to be sure. I think there is a possibility, if not one that I think is necessary that I would bet a lot of money on, that the slow accretion of more baggage, more hassles, there’s always something going on with this guy, hits a critical mass point when Republican voters are starting to pay attention to the primaries, which they are not now, and they will say, look, I like the guy’s policies, but we need someone with less baggage, younger, blah, blah, blah. That’s possible. I think for leaders of the party and members of Congress. They’re there psychologically, a lot of them, but not politically because the voters haven’t gone that way yet.

He added, “There are all these closet normals on the Hill who would very much like to move beyond the Trump era, but they can’t until the voters do.”

Tapper said, “Do you want to out them for us right now?”

Goldberg said, “I could guess a lot of them.”

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