‘Republicans Need to Get Their Head Out of the Sand’: Margaret Hoover Slams GOP In Denial About Trump Running in 2024

Margaret Hoover — along with her fellow CNN commentator husband John Avlon — has had enough of Republicans playing ostrich about former President Donald Trump’s intentions to run again in 2024, bluntly saying they “need to get their head out of the sand,” recognize that he is running for re-election, and they need to deal with it.

CNN Newsroom anchor Jim Acosta introduced the segment with a clip of Trump from his rally in Iowa the night before, where Trump flat out said that “talking about the election fraud” was the “single biggest issue, the issue that gets the most pull, the most respect, the biggest cheers.”

“He just gave away the big lie,” said Acosta. “He is admitting that his election lies are ego juice, just there to pump up the crowd, the very stuff that fueled the insurrection. And by now we know he’ll take those crocodile tears, the big lie is the big cry, of course, as we said before, all the way to the bank and perhaps to the 2024 election.”

Acosta introduced Hoover and Avlon, commenting that “Trump’s 2024 teases are beginning to feel like infrastructure week,” because “they just happen over and over again” but “never really come to fruition.”

“But this may actually happen,” Acosta continued, saying that Trump was “sounding more and more like a contender despite, you know, all of those lies that he tells over and over again.”

“Jim, he’s in it to win it,” replied Hoover. “Let’s not kid ourselves, let’s not fool ourselves.”

“Maybe not win it,” Avlon jokingly interjected.

“Well, as we know, he’ll claim that he won it even if he didn’t,” she chuckled — “Fair enough,” Avlon noted — before turning more serious, noting the many Republicans she knows who still say they don’t believe he intends to run again, and have “some kind of justification” for that belief.

“But if you look at every single thing he says and every single thing he’s doing,” she continued, “which includes putting the team back together and having his PAC going and basically saying everything he can legally without triggering a campaign violation, he has said that he’s running.”

“So you gotta take him for his word,” she emphasized. “This man is running and he still runs the Republican party. Republicans need to get their head out of the sand and start dealing with it.”

“Yeah, out of something, the sand or other places,” quipped Acosta.

Avlon jumped on that thought, referring to his own commentary last week that “the symbol of the Republican party should no longer be the elephant, it should be the ostrich.”

He called the situation “deadly serious,” not just because Republicans were in denial about Trump running, but also their silence which was “effectively complicity” in the effort to overturn the 2020 election.

“Because, look, if trying to overturn an election isn’t wrong, isn’t disqualifying? Nothing is,” Avlon declared, slamming every single Iowa Republican who joined Trump on the stage for his rally as “complicit” whether it was “out of fear” or “out of a desire to get some benefit from his base.”

Acosta replied that those Iowa Republicans were “normalizing” and “sanitizing” Trump’s attempt to overturn the election by being on stage with him.

“And the fact that he goes out and blurts out in front of the crowd that, ‘oh, by the way, when I talk about this election stuff, that’s what gets most of you guys all fired up’ — he’s just out there admitting what he’s doing here,” Acosta concluded.

Watch the video above, via CNN.

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