EDITOR'S NOTE: See related stories on the website: 'If we don't have free democratic unions we don't have a democracy' and Trump will 'have no compunction against going after and attacking trade unions'
By FRANK BRUNI
Like many other Americans struggling to find scraps of calm and slivers of hope in this anxious era, I resolved a while back not to get overly excited about Donald Trump’s overexcited utterances. They’re often a showman’s cheap histrionics, a con man’s gaudy hyperbole.
But I can’t shake a grandiose prophecy that he made repeatedly last year as he looked toward the 2024 presidential race. He took to calling it the “final battle.”
I first heard Trump use that phrase in March, when he addressed the Conservative Political Action Conference. I laughed at his indefatigable self-aggrandizement. He said it again weeks later at a rally in Waco, Texas, not far from where the deadly confrontation between the Branch Davidians and federal law enforcement officials took place. I cringed at his perversity.