On Thursday, MSNBC’s Chris Hayes spent some time discussing the current slate of GOP presidential hopefuls running against Donald Trump in the 2024 primary. And one of Hayes’ guests, Bulwark writer and former Republican strategist Tim Miller, dismissed the lot of them as falling into one of two categories: “Grifter” types hoping for a job in a theoretical Trump administration, and “delusional.”
Miller worked on the Jeb Bush campaign in 2016 before becoming a so-called never-Trump Republican (he’s now an independent), and Hayes asked him about his thoughts. Read on for a run down or scroll to the bottom of the page for the clip.
“So last time,” Hayes said, talking about the state of Republican politics before Trump entered the race, “Obama’s term limited out, right? So you’re not going to have an incumbent President to take on. That always, I think, invites a lot of challengers. And there was no, like, massive, formidable behemoth… on the right. There was Jeb Bush, he was sort of the early favorite — there were a lot of reasons people thought that. But nothing like Trump. Why are so many people getting in this time around?”
“Jeb hadn’t been in office for decades when he started running,” Miller said, “so he was not in fact that formidable. I was looking at a number of candidates, I like Jeb the best but, you know, I was assessing the field as wide open as an operative, trying to decide who to work for. [And] that is very much not the case this time.”
“So I think we have two things happening in this election,” Miller continued. “One is you have a group of people that fit in the ‘grifter, slash you know, maybe if things work out, I can, you know, be in the Trump administration’ category. The Vivek Ramaswamys of the world. The mayor, Suarez, from Miami, I think fits that bill. And then I think you have a really large and kind of dangerous category of people that are delusional.”
At that, Hayes joked, “Wait, as second, wait a second, a politician who’s delusional about their own chances, and their own appeal?
“Narcissistic and delusional? I know, that’s gonna be hard to believe Chris,” Miller replied. “But, this is [Tim] Scott, [Nikki] Haley, [Mike] Pence, [Will] Hurd. And I really think, my understanding from talking to people around them, is that they are, you know, in a bubble of this small minority of Republicans who agree with them, those are the people they socialize with, you know, those are the donors that they’re dealing with. They deeply want and are wishing the Republican Party would go back to a candidate like them.”
“And I think they’re hopeful that either Donald Trump will, you know, have a heart attack or end up in prison, you know, and things might fall in their lap, you know. Or that there’s gonna be some magic fairy that makes the Republican Party go back to what it was in 1999. And that’s just not going to happen. But I think that is that delusion is motivating a lot of these guys,” Miller concluded.
Watch the clip below: