The Trump campaign that is not

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Four weeks after declaring his 2024 White House bid, former President Trump appears to be a candidate in name only.

Trump announced his third presidential campaign on Nov. 15 from his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida, who gave a long speech in which he said he sought to return to the Oval Office to make America great and glorious again.

Since then, Trump has not held any formal campaign events. He didn’t travel to early voting states, make any major staff announcements or do much to intimidate would-be rivals.

Instead, he’s making headlines for controversies including dining with a white nationalist and calling for the suspension of the Constitution to redo the 2020 election.

The launch failure fueled talk that Trump is as politically weak as he has ever been giving others weighing 2024 campaigns more food for thought.

His announcement and post-announcement period have been overwhelming, said a former Trump campaign adviser, pointing to Republican Herschel Walker’s loss in the Georgia Senate runoff on Tuesday as the latest negative development.

Trump is plowing ahead

Trumps own campaign launch comes at a time when many Republicans, including some of his own advisers, are urging him to delay at least until after that vote.

Bad midterm results for Republicans, with primary defeats by Trump-backed candidates in Arizona, Pennsylvania, Nevada, Michigan, Wisconsin and now Georgia leading some in the orbit of former presidents to hold off until there is a clearer argument for his candidacy.

Instead, Trump plowed through his launch. Although there was still plenty of time left on the calendar, what followed was nothing like a campaign-building momentum or a field sweep.

Trump brought in several staffers for the operation, including Chris LaCivita and Susie Wiles, but no clear campaign manager.

He did not leave Florida for any campaign events. He spoke to the Republican Jewish Coalition in Las Vegas while several other possible 2024 candidates attended in person. Trump did not hold a rally in Georgia in support of Walker, instead making a teleral amid concerns that his presence will turn off independent voters.

There have been no major policy launches or campaign infrastructure announcements in the weeks since Trump launched his bid. His impromptu speech came at a gala at Mar-a-Lago, when he took to a microphone to denounce the appointment of a Justice Department special counsel to handle investigations into his conduct today. who is the candidate for the role.

The general lack of activity has only fueled speculation among some Trump critics that the early announcement was intended to potentially insulate the former president from a possible indictment over his handling of classified documents.

Meanwhile, Trump has generated an avalanche of bad headlines with his private meetings and social media commentary.

Republicans widely condemned his meeting with rapper Ye and Nick Fuentes, both of whom espouse violent antisemitic rhetoric, the latter of whom is a Holocaust denier.

The former president again drew condemnation from his own party, although it was more muted, when he suggested the country should ignore the Constitution and redo the 2020 election or return him to the White House due to internal affairs. communication that showed Twitter employees decided to limit. the spread of a story about President Biden’s son, Hunter, in the fall of 2020.

Last week, a jury in New York found the Trump Organization guilty of tax fraud, and a federal appeals court ended the appointment of a special master to conduct an outside review of White House records seized from Mar -a-Lago which includes top secret and classified government documents.

‘ready to win’

Despite all this, Trump and his team believe the former president remains the candidate to beat in any GOP primary.

President Trump entered the race three weeks ago ready to win and he’s going to do exactly that and no amount of thinking from the media or the consultant class is going to change that, said Taylor Budowich, head of MAGA Inc., a super PAC which is aligned with Trump. . He is building one of the most talented teams in American politics, and he is the only person in the country willing and able to reverse America’s decline.

Meanwhile, other possible candidates are building their own infrastructure as they weigh a 2024 campaign.

Former Vice President Mike Pence made multiple visits this year to New Hampshire, Iowa and South Carolina, the first three key states. And Republican operatives formed a super PAC in support of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R), who reportedly will be meeting with major donors in the coming weeks.

Republican strategists largely agree that Trump should still be treated as the front-runner in any GOP primary because of his loyal base of voters who give him solid support. Recent polling also shows that Trump is still the preferred candidate of many voters, especially in a large, divided field.

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A YouGov-Yahoo poll conducted Dec. 1-5 found that 35 percent of voters would support Trump in a GOP primary in 2024, followed by 30 percent who said they supported DeSantis. Twelve percent of respondents said they weren’t sure who they would support, while 5 percent said they would back Pence.

The same poll also found that Trump would lose a hypothetical rematch with President Biden, 45 percent to 42 percent, underscoring the fears of many in the party about nominating Trump for a third term. The first few weeks of Trumps campaign did little to dispel those concerns.

It’s crystal, crystal, clear, former Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) said in an interview with SiriusXM this week. We lose to Trump if we stay with Trump. If we throw out Trump, we will start winning elections. So I think he just showed himself for who he is, and that’s not a reflection of our democracy.

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