Ann Coulter: ‘I don’t think Trump will be the nominee’

Conservative pundit Ann Coulter is voicing confidence that former President Trump won’t be the Republican nominee for the White House in 2024.

“I don’t think Trump will be the nominee, but you’d really do the country a solid if you could get Democrats to stop indicting him,” Coulter said during a discussion hosted by Frank Bruni, a contributing writer for The New York Times Opinion section, ahead of the first GOP debate Wednesday.

“Trump can barely speak English. He’s a gigantic baby,” she continued when pressed to explain her view. “The only reason he crushed in 2016 is because of immigration — the wall, deport illegal immigrants, the travel ban (which imposed limits on travel from several predominantly Muslim countries). That is DeSantis this time — without the total lack of interest in carrying it out.”

Coulter, a onetime Trump booster, has more recently been a vocal critic of the former president. Early last year she declared Trump was “done” amid speculation of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis mounting a GOP primary challenge.

DeSantis formally launched his campaign in late May but has struggled to gain traction against Trump, who maintains a large lead in polls of the GOP field and decided to skip the party’s first debate Wednesday night.

“If Trump gets the nomination, I say he will lose,” Colter told the Times. “I know it, you know it, the American people know it (to paraphrase Bob Dole).”

The commentator described DeSantis, seen as Trump’s closest rival, as “head and shoulders above every other G.O.P. presidential candidate (or politician) on the three most important issues: immigration, crime and the Covid response.”