Trump's Got Two Issue Lanes To '24

But two serendipitous events have come to his rescue and dumped two potent issues in his lap: the Twitter file expose and the big spending, budget-busting omnibus bill Senator Mitch McConnell let the Democrats pass, effectively disempowering the new Republican House majority.

Two great issues to ride: Free speech and fighting McConnell.

Both issues strike deeply responsive chords with Republican and Independent voters — deep enough to power Trump to the 2024 Republican nomination, regardless of what DeSantis decides to do.

The Twitter/FBI free speech issue gives Trump the unique status of victim-in-chief of the greatest government effort to fix and rig a presidential election in our history. Forget Maricopa County, Fulton County, Philadelphia or Milwaukee, the fraud that rigged the 2020 election occurred when the FBI and Twitter suppressed and discredited convincing evidence, on Hunter's laptop, that the Biden family was in bed with the Chinese Communist Party.

Had this information come out two weeks before the 2020 election, there is no way Biden could have won.

It did come out but was buried beneath the well-planned efforts of the FBI to discredit and denigrate it as Russian disinformation, so the mainstream media felt able to ignore and even suppress the story.

As the main victim of this blatant attempt to muzzle free speech and use government funds and personnel to fix and rig an election, Donald Trump has unique standing to address the issue.

His putative rival for the nomination, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, has no role to play and will be relegated to the sidelines as this battle plays out.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell gave Trump his second Christmas present; A bloated, pork-laden budget bill passed even as the Democrats saw the Republican moving vans headed to Washington to take over the House.

Like Vietnamese boat people or anti-Taliban Afghanis, the Democrats are clinging to their rafts or airplane skids to pass one last spending bill before the Republicans arrive.

Thanks to McConnell's green light, the lame duck Congress passed one of the most outrageous spending bills in history — a $1.76 trillion travesty filled with every earmark a congressman could want.

This spending bill passed with support from RINO Republicans like Mitt Romney but also with the votes of GOP senators slated to retire in a few weeks. With one foot out the door, they left a legacy of inflation-inducing spending in their wake.

McConnell is becoming a curse word among Republicans for letting it pass as he threw away his leverage by agreeing to raise the debt limit through 2024.

McConnell's craven surrender makes his battle with Trump the central issue in the primaries of 2024 for senate and inevitably for president as well. From now on, you are either for McConnell or for Trump.

A feud has now become a central policy division in the GOP, dividing the establishment — fat and happy to share in the spoils of spending –against the grassroots, the former Tea Party Movement, determined to rein in government and contain inflation.

In this battle, as well, DeSantis can only root from the sidelines, even as he hesitates to alienate the anti-Trump wing of the party. Indeed, Florida benefited from almost $300 million of earmarks in the Omnibus Spending Bill.

Will he turn it down? Order his counties to refuse the pork?

Meanwhile, Donald Trump has two great issues to ride: free speech and McConnell.

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Dick Morris, who served as adviser to former Sen. Trent Lott (R-Miss.) and former President Clinton, is the author of 16 books.