Could Ron DeSantis be America's new Maga bearer?

He was the most powerful man in the world, the possessor of the nuclear codes. Yet he behaved like a deranged manchild who threw temper tantrums, and food against the wall.

- David Smith SARASOTA

That was the tragicomic story told last Tuesday at a congressional hearing that had even seasoned Donald Trump watchers lifting their jaws off the floor and speculating that his political career might finally be over.

In two seismic hours in Was hington, Cassidy Hutchinson, a 25-year-old former White House aide, told the panel investigating the January 6 attack on the US Capitol that Trump had effectively gone haywire.

She said the former president knew a mob of his supporters were carrying rifles, yet he asked for metal detectors to be removed. She also recounted how his desire to lead them to the Capitol caused a physical altercation with the secret service, and how in a fit of rage he threw his lunch against a wall, staining it with tomato ketchup.

Trump vehemently denied the allegations, but the political damage was done as infighting and plotting engulfed the Republican party.

The hearings could, some believe, prove terminal to Trump’s ambition of regaining the presidency in 2024 as Republican leaders, donors and voters run out of patience and move on.

“Former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson’s Tuesday testimony ought to ring the death knell for former President Donald Trump’s political career,” said an editorial in the Washington Examiner, a conservative news website. “Trump is unfit to be anywhere near power ever again.”

The column concluded: “Trump is a disgrace. Republicans have far better options to lead the party in 2024. No one should think otherwise, much less support him, ever again.”