 I think it's pretty obvious that the Republican Party's base is unquestionably loyal to Donald Trump and he's well aware of this fact. The Republican Party establishment and leadership, however, not necessarily. I mean, they'll play nice with Donald Trump publicly, but behind the scenes, you know that they hate his guts and the feeling is mutual. Donald Trump hates them as well. And the precise reason as to why Trump doesn't like the Republican Party leadership and why he's taken shots at Mitch McConnell is because they won't tow the line that he wants them to tow. He wants them, even in October of 2021, to say that the election was stolen. He wants them to pretend as if he won, but it was just stolen away from him due to widespread fraud committed by the Democratic Party, but they won't do that as much as he wants them to. So he has a plan, which he's concocting currently to try to get them to play the games that he wants them to play, no matter how unreasonable he seems and how unreasonable it makes them seem. And this strategy is actually brilliant, but it is incredibly, incredibly destructive, not just to the Republican Party, but possibly democracy itself. So NBC News reporter Sahil Kapoor says this via Twitter, Trump just threatened to have Republican voters stay home in 2022 and 2024, unless the party is able to solve by which he seems to mean overturn the result of the last presidential election, which he lost. The statement reads, if we don't solve the presidential election fraud of 2020, which we have thoroughly and conclusively documented, no, you have not, Republicans will not be voting in 2022 or 2024. It is the single most important thing for Republicans to do. So what he's doing here is huge. He's saying the single most important thing for his followers to do is to boycott the 2022 and 2024 elections. If he's not installed as president, I mean, there's a couple of caveats here, right? It's Donald Trump. So he might change his mind in five minutes and say, no, of course, I would never encourage Republicans to boycott these elections. We've got to win. We've got to beat the Democrats. If he actually sticks to this, the base would absolutely listen to him. I don't think anyone doubts that the base would not go against their dear leader, because I mean, it's to the point where I don't think you can say that this is just a normal political wing of the Republican Party. It's a cult. It's a cult of personality. The loyalty to Donald Trump is what they want above everything else. So if he says don't vote, the Republican Party is toast. So he's putting them in this unwinnable situation to where if they don't somehow install him as president or at a minimum advocate for him to be reinstalled as president, then he's going to tell all of the base to stay home. It's truly insane. Now, as Sahil Kapoor put it, the same fabricated claims of fraud, arguably depressed GOP turnout in the Georgia runoffs and helped Democrats win the Senate. And that's right. And I'm not necessarily one to say that Trump is super strategic and he's politically savvy and he's playing 40 chess. But here, it seems like this is part of a bigger plan. And as political reporter Sam Stein put it, he's setting up a situation in which he drags the entirety of the party into questioning election legitimacy as a platform. He's already making headway. So with this one move, he can get the entire Republican establishment to bend to his will like that. They'll ask him how high when he tells them to jump. Now, in the short term, this is great news for Democrats, right? Because they're going to win every single election for the foreseeable future. So long as Donald Trump says, don't vote, the system is rigged. Long term, however, this is incredibly destructive to democracy. Because if you have the base of one of two major parties in the United States, basically think that their vote doesn't count at all. And if they no longer believe that the democratic process is the main way that they can affect political change, well, then they'll begin to opt for undemocratic means to affect political change. And overall, with time, that starts to cause democracy to erode support for democracy declines. And we've seen just within the last year, the impact that that has. We've had members of the Republican Party's base openly call for a military coup here in the United States. There have been reporters that interview Trump supporters at Trump rallies that still take place in 2021. And they say, yeah, the election was stolen and I would welcome a military coup. Some aren't even saying, yeah, the military, they're already planning to reinstall Donald Trump. So you can only keep up the charade for so long until democracy itself begins to really suffer more so than it already has. But the only way Trump can pull this off is if that base remains loyal to him. If, you know, they start to gravitate towards someone else like Ron DeSantis. Trump no longer really has that much sway. But the problem for the Republican Party is that he still is the most influential figure within the Republican Party. As Lexi Lownes of the Hill reports, former President Trump holds a 35 point lead over Florida Governor Ron DeSantis and former Vice President Mike Pence in a hypothetical 2024 GOP primary matchup. A new morning consult Politico poll found 47 percent of respondents in the survey said they would vote for Trump, while only 12 percent each said they would vote for DeSantis or Pence, the only candidates other than Trump to hit double digit support. The huge lead highlights the popularity of Trump, who has repeatedly floated but not confirmed another White House run continues to enjoy in the Republican Party. He has said, however, his supporters will be very happy when he does announce his decision and that he could easily defeat other candidates and believes most people would drop out if he entered the race. If I faced DeSantis, I'd beat him like I would beat everyone else. Trump said in an interview earlier this month, but I think most people would drop out. I think he would drop out. And I don't usually say this, but I agree with Donald Trump. I think that they would all clear the field for Donald Trump in the same way that we saw basically every single Democrat clear the field for Hillary Clinton in 2016, we're going to see all Republicans clear the field for Donald Trump in 2024. Maybe there's going to be like one centrist Republican, a more moderate Republican step up and try to be the anti-Trump. But Trump is going to dominate if these numbers hold. So could Trump feasibly manipulate the entire Republican Party base into boycotting the 22 and 24 elections if he wants them to, if he wants to find some way to manipulate the Republican Party establishment? Absolutely. He knows this. The heart of the GOP still lies with Donald Trump. So if he really, really wants to, he could crush the Republican Party and bring every single establishment figure within the Republican Party to heel. And they're not happy about that prospect. But wow, if he did this, that would be certainly entertaining to watch. But long term, like I said, pretty destructive to democracy as well, aside from the short term benefits that Democrats would reap from this insane move.