A Flake primary challenge would have only helped Trump

In fact, there’s a sense in which a primary challenge from a guy like Flake, far from overturning the Trump presidency, could actually be the shot in the arm Trump needs to get out of his own current funk. My colleague Jonathan V. Last has written about the idea that Trump could see a GOP primary against a weak contender as a squash match: a chance to give Republican voters a sharp reminder of why exactly they picked him out of the lineup last time around. As Last wrote, Flake would present Trump with “the perfect foil: A young-ish pretty boy with no national constituency who can easily be painted as a RINO who’s weak on immigration and might not break the 15 percent mark in New Hampshire.” Behind Trump Jr.’s mockery, perhaps you can detect a hint of mourning.

And maybe Flake knows this himself. His announcement comes at a chaotic and uncertain time in the prelude to 2020: More Democratic challengers seemingly come out of the woodwork every day, with no clear frontrunner emerging, while a mind-boggling 57 percent of voters say they won’t vote to re-elect the president. If Flake thought he was the only person who could stand between, say, Kamala Harris and the White House, it seems likely he’d give it the old college try. But it’s pretty clear by now that Flake doesn’t harbor that particular delusion: “I do hope that there is a Republican who challenges the president in the primary,” Flake said Tuesday, “but that somebody won’t be me.”