There’s nothing more entertaining than watching multi-billionaires having a social-media slapfight, am I right? It’s too bad that Elon Musk wants out of his Twitter deal, because the platform war between a Musk-led Twitter and Donald Trump’s Truth Social would have been spectacular.

Trump ripped Musk over the weekend for allegedly sucking up by privately claiming to have supported Trump in 2020, after which Musk declared that he’d never voted for a Republican this year. “So he’s another bull**** artist!” Trump declared, and, um … he should know. Musk responded overnight in tweets that never quite add up to a denial (via Twitchy):

I don’t hate the man, but it’s time for Trump to hang up his hat & sail into the sunset.

Dems should also call off the attack – don’t make it so that Trump’s only way to survive is to regain the Presidency.

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 12, 2022

As slapfights go, this is pretty weak sauce. Where’s the punchy insult, the mockery, the gleeful jab? When it comes to trolling, Trump is clearly the winner here. Although in politics, especially these days, being called a “bull**** artist” isn’t an insult, it’s a qualification — as Trump and Joe Biden know all too well.

However, when it comes to an actual argument, Musk may come out on top:

Yeah, but too much drama. Do we really want a bull in a china shop situation every single day!?

Also, I think the legal maximum age for start of Presidential term should be 69.

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 12, 2022

Trump would be 82 at end of term, which is too old to be chief executive of anything, let alone the United States of America.

If DeSantis runs against Biden in 2024, then DeSantis will easily win – he doesn’t even need to campaign.

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 12, 2022

Those are two of the main three arguments Trump will have to answer if he launches a run at the GOP presidential nomination. Drama can be useful, but it requires a deft and disciplined touch to keep it from destroying your own edifices. Trump used drama effectively until the pandemic, when he failed to realize that the American public wanted calm and cool leadership in a real crisis. That exposed his lack of discipline and political foresight and cost him the election to the barely-moving Biden. It then got exponentially worse when Trump tried to use chaos and drama to force states to reconsider their election results. The resulting riot on January 6 shows the danger of undisciplined drama and chaos.

Second is Trump’s age, and there’s no getting around that. It’s true that Trump is far more energetic and vital than Joe Biden, but that’s a very low bar, too. Trump will turn 78 in 2024, and the risks of age-related infirmities increase by the day. Why put the Oval Office at risk in that manner, especially when other alternatives are at hand, such as Musk’s suggestion of Ron DeSantis? Especially when Trump carries enough baggage from the past six years that could easily be avoided with a fresh-start candidate?

Combine up the aging risk with Trump’s already-poor discipline and chaos, and it doesn’t paint a pretty picture for Republicans in 2024 and beyond.

Finally, although Musk doesn’t mention this, Republicans will have to consider a third problem with a Trump nomination. He would only be constitutionally eligible for a single term, which means he’d be a lame-duck president almost from the moment he took office. Republicans would spend four years jockeying behind the scenes for the next presidential nomination, and likely would force another fight between the wings of the GOP that would last all through that term. Isn’t it better to have that fight now, in a shorter period of time, when the political environment for Republicans is as good as it has been in decades?

Does Trump himself provide so much unalloyed value to the Republican Party that they’re willing to essentially toss away the opportunity for eight years of control of the White House? Before answering that, remember that the only two times in the past century that the same party kept the White House in an election while changing presidents was in 1988, when George H.W. Bush won after two terms of Ronald Reagan, and in 1928 when Calvin Coolidge demurred on re-election and Herbert Hoover won for the GOP. The other same-party transitions took place through deaths of US presidents — 1923 with Harding and Coolidge, 1945 with FDR and Truman, and in 1963 with LBJ; all three also won another term, but that was largely on the basis of their accession and were essentially re-elections. In every other instance since Wilson and even before that, the normal end of one presidency has led to the other party taking over the White House in an election. American voters like to make changes in executive power when incumbency runs its course, and the political currents that create that impulse would likely amplify in another Trump-chaos term.

Some Republicans may well think Trump is worth the effort, but as Allahpundit will lay out in the next post, that number appears to be shrinking. Once the midterms are over, they may shrink even further for voters who want to look forward rather than backward in the 2024 cycle.