Who would Donald Trump most like to face as Democrat nominee in the forthcoming 2020 election?

I’d hazard a guess it would be a young, female, screechy, super-woke, easily triggered radical socialist snowflake with a disdainful view of America.

In fact, I can narrow it down more specifically to any one of the Squad - the four newly elected firebrand Democratic congresswomen of color currently lighting up U.S. politics: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar, Rashida Tlaib and Ayanna S. Pressley.

The Squad proudly bleed pure unadulterated socialism from every pore. It’s in their DNA. Their policy proposals include free healthcare and tuition for all and a massive environmental ‘Green New Deal’ program. All of which sounds great until you try to calculate a budget for it all, and realize it would cost $43 trillion which would instantly bankrupt America

On the hot button issue of immigration, the Squad has ludicrously and offensively claimed America has ‘concentration camps’ on the border, demanded free health care for illegal immigrants, and called for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to be abolished. Ocasio-Cortez (top left), Omar (top right), Tlaib (bottom left) and Pressley (bottom right)

They are what President Trump would categorize as perfect electoral fodder.

Why?

Because he knows most Americans would never vote for a diehard socialist to run the country.

In fact, there’s never been a genuine socialist U.S. president in the country’s 243-year history.

Oh, there have been many presidents who’ve rolled out socialist programs, like Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal.

But none of them has identified as a socialist.

The Squad proudly bleed pure unadulterated socialism from every pore.

It’s in their DNA.

Their policy proposals include free healthcare and tuition for all and a massive environmental ‘Green New Deal’ program.

All of which sounds great until you try to calculate a budget for it all, and realize it would cost $43 trillion which would instantly bankrupt America.

Their plan to finance their policies by introducing a punitive 70% tax rate for rich Americans would barely touch the sides of this kind of unprecedented expense, and would also guarantee many rich Americans bankrolling Trump to stop them getting into power.

On the hot button issue of immigration, the Squad has ludicrously and offensively claimed America has ‘concentration camps’ on the border, demanded free health care for illegal immigrants, and called for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to be abolished.

They also persistently scream that Trump must be impeached.

Tlaib even said the actual words: ‘We’re going to impeach the mother*cker’.

Yet any attempt at impeachment, which would certainly fail due to the Republicans’ control of the Senate, would be a gift to the incumbent President.

It’s little wonder then that Trump wants the Squad to dominate Democrat discourse, since everything they do or say further enrages and mobilizes his base.

There’s also a massive disconnect between the Squad and reality.

Trump knows the Squad is a very potent vote-winner for him. The more everyone’s talking about them, the less they’re talking about Biden, Harris, Warren, Buttigieg or any of the other Democrat presidential candidates.

On social media, where they spend most days screaming away, they are all heroines of our time, with millions of like-minded followers cheering their every move as they lecture us all on how to think and how to lead our lives.

It must be very seductive for them, a constant apparent validation of their political views.

But it’s important to remember that social media is predominantly one gigantic liberal snowflake platform that never thought a Trump presidency could happen in the first place.

And the vast majority of Americans are not on Twitter anyway.

So this raucous hard-left echo-chamber cacophony is irrelevant to the bigger political picture.

The Squad is deeply unpopular even within their own party, not least because of their irksome and self-defeating ‘Girl who cried wolf’ habit of furiously branding anyone who criticizes them for anything as racist, despite Omar herself posting anti-Semitic tweets.

Even Nancy Pelosi, the House Speaker and one of the most experienced and respected Democrats in America, got the full Squad ‘YOU’RE RACIST!’ treatment when she dared to suggest they should stop tweeting their grievances about fellow party members.

Ocasio-Cortez accused Pelosi of ‘singling out newly elected women of color’ in an astonishing attack that threatened to rip the Democrats apart until Trump stupidly distracted media attention from the furor with his own racist remarks about he Squad.

Those remarks, in which he said the Squad should go back to the ‘crime-infested’ countries they came from, were indefensibly racist and I was pleased to see him distance himself from the horrible ‘SEND HER BACK!’ chants about Omar that soon followed at one of his rallies, even if he disingenuously tried to claim he disapproved in real time.

But make no mistake about Trump’s higher purpose here: he just wants America to perceive the Squad to be the true face of the Democrats as we head into 2020.

Today, as soon as he woke up, he unleashed a fresh blizzard of tweets to ensure a new Squad-related news cycle.

‘The facts remain’ he raged, ‘that we have 4 Radical Left Congresswomen who have said very bad things about Israel & our Country!’

An hour later, he added: ‘The “Squad” is a very Racist group of troublemakers who are young, inexperienced and not very smart. They’re pulling the once great Democrat Party far left, and were against humanitarian aid at the Border.. And are now against ICE and Homeland Security. So bad for our Country!’

Of course, none of them will actually be the nominee.

But between them, they can swallow up vast swathes of media attention that the nominee will desperately need to combat Trump’s own powerful media dominance.

And there lies the big problem for the Democrats: how do they shut up the Squad?

Especially if Trump is deliberately talking about them 24/7?

They are the first people on his mind each morning.

Today, as soon as he woke up, Trump unleashed a fresh blizzard of tweets to ensure a new Squad-related news cycle.

‘The facts remain’ he raged, ‘that we have 4 Radical Left Congresswomen who have said very bad things about Israel & our Country!’

Trump knows the Squad is a very potent vote-winner for him.

The more everyone’s talking about them, the less they’re talking about Biden, Harris, Warren, Buttigieg or any of the other Democrat presidential candidates.

And that means the whole image of the Democratic Party is now being moulded into far-left socialism, to potentially disastrous electoral consequences.

As Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell told Fox News’s Maria Bartiromo last week: ‘They (the Squad) want to take America into a socialist country. Margaret Thatcher said the problem with socialism is pretty soon you run out of other people’s money. You know, they’re giving away free this, free that. Who do you think is going to pay for that?’

If Trump can curb his ugly, unnecessary race-baiting – and on current unedifying form, that’s a big ‘if’ – and keep the Squad center-stage then the 2020 election could come down to a straight fight between capitalism and socialism, at a time when the U.S. economy is surging and job numbers are roaring, and with the specter of socialist-run Venezuela lying in ruins.

That fight - trust me - won’t end well for socialism.

The Democrats are desperate to stop Trump winning a second term, but the Squad has emerged now as his top vote-grabbing marketing tool.

So long as they remain the face of the Party, the Democrats are doomed.