In third campaign, Trump starts off small
Donald Trump campaigned during his first presidential race in a distinctly audacious style, giving free helicopter rides to children at the Iowa State Fair and using his Trumpbranded 757 jetliner as an event backdrop.
He rolled out a second campaign in equally unusual fashion, filing reelection paperwork on the same day as his inauguration and staging 10 signature megarallies before the end of his first year in office.
For his third campaign, it's back to basics — for the first time.
More than two months after formally opening his White House comeback bid, the 76-year-old former president staged his first two public events Saturday. Both were the type of textbook campaign stops he mostly skipped in his first two runs for office.
In New Hampshire, Trump spoke in a high school auditorium in Salem, where he addressed an annual state party meeting. In South Carolina, where he previously has attracted thousands to rallies, Trump introduced his state leadership team at the state capitol, an extraordinary setting for a politician known for upsetting the establishment and taking direct aim at long-standing public institutions.
But while the settings were new, his speeches carried a typically Trumpian timbre.
He mocked President Joe Biden for losing New Hampshire's Democratic primary in February 2020, and ignored that Biden defeated Trump in the state's general election nine months later. He disputed that electric cars were environmentally friendly and declared windmills a threat to the nation's prairies, oceans and birds.
Trump framed his candidacy as a shield for the country from communism and Marxism and vowed to keep transgender athletes out of women's sports. He falsely claimed that his administration had been on pace to eliminate the national debt — it grew by about $7.8 trillion during his administration and now stands at $31 trillion — and promised an economic plan that would rely mostly on tax cuts.
“I am more angry now and I am more committed now than ever,” Trump said in New Hampshire.
Trump's attempt to drape himself with the trappings of a traditional campaign is an unspoken acknowledgment that he begins the race in one of the most politically vulnerable positions of his public life. He remains the clear frontrunner for the Republican presidential nomination, yet the solidity of his support seems increasingly in doubt.
Longtime donors have been reluctant to recommit. Leaders in the Republican National Committee are openly encouraging other candidates to run.
Voters rejected the handpicked candidates he vowed would win Republicans control of the Senate, but whose losses instead left the chamber in Democratic hands.
“There's no question former President Trump has lost some people — independents, some people in his base — so he's got to come out of the gate slowly,” said Jim Renacci, a former Ohio congressman and a Trump acolyte. “He's got to work to get them back.”
Still, Trump maintains his perch as the most powerful Republican. An Emerson College poll last week showed Trump with support from 55% of primary voters, nearly twice as much as his closest competitor, Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, in a hypothetical matchup. The same poll showed Trump in a statistical tie against Biden in a potential rematch next year.
“The campaign is firing on all cylinders and continues to build up an operation that will be unmatched,” Steven Cheung, Trump's campaign spokesperson, said in a statement. “President Trump's significant lead in poll after poll shows that there is no other candidate who can even come close to matching the enthusiasm and excitement of him returning to the White House.”