Trump steps up battle of wills in announcing 2024 bid
Donald Trump escalated his battle of wills with the Republican Party by declaring his candidacy for the White House in 2024 just as many GOP faithful are ready to abandon the former president.
Defying his party’s growing desire to find a new standard-bearer, Trump gathered his staunchest supporters at his Mara-Lago resort in Florida Tuesday for a nationally televised announcement that revived many of the themes of grievance that marked his previous two campaigns.
“Two years ago we were a great nation and soon we will be a great nation again,” Trump said.
Yet his bravado rang hollow a week after Republicans fell short of party expectations in U.S. elections, missing a chance to retake the U.S. Senate and win a significant majority in the House. Trump had sought to use the midterms to tighten his grip on the party ahead of his entry into the presidential race by issuing more than 280 endorsements.
That gambit backfired, as Trump’s favored candidates floundered in key races with voters rejecting almost all of those who espoused his false claims that the 2020 presidential election was stolen from him. Many Republicans blame him for the lackluster performance -- leaving him vulnerable to the very 2024 primary challengers he had hoped to box out.
GOP leaders and donors are now signaling that they’re eager to fall in line behind Florida Republican Governor Ron DeSantis, a chief target of Trump’s ire before Tuesday’s declaration. Even Trump’s daughter, Ivanka, who served in his first administration, suggested she had no appetite for another round.
“I do not plan to be involved in politics,” she said in an Instagram post. “While I will always love and support my father, going forward I will do so outside the political arena.”
Blackstone Inc. Chief Executive Officer and Republican mega-donor Stephen Schwarzman also said Wednesday that he won’t be backing Trump’s new bid.
“America does better when its leaders are rooted in today and tomorrow, not today and yesterday,” Schwarzman said in a statement. “It is time for the Republican
Party to turn to a new generation of leaders, and I intend to support one of them in the presidential primaries.”
The former president had been lobbied by Republicans, including some of his own aides, to postpone his announcement until after the Dec. 6 Georgia U.S. Senate run-off election featuring his handpicked candidate, Herschel Walker.
But Trump left himself little wiggle room by pantomiming the Tuesday announcement on the eve of the midterms, and an about-face would risk showing further political weakness.
“For any other conventional politician, it would seem like this would take the wind out of their sails,” said Republican strategist Sarah Longwell, publisher of the conservative website The Bulwark who has worked to defeat Trump. “But he’s never been a conventional politician.”
Trump acknowledged the criticism that Republicans should have done better in the midterm elections but said it was because voters haven’t yet realized the full extent of the nation’s problems under President Joe Biden.
“I have no doubt that by 2024, it will sadly be much worse, and they will see much more clearly what happened and what is happening to our country and the voting will be much different,” Trump said.
He also squarely took aim at Biden’s biggest vulnerabilities: inflation and energy prices.
“We will immediately tackle inflation and bring it down to a level where it was,” Trump said. “Remember, economic security is national security.”
The fastest inflation in 40 years looms large in a