President Trump is openly flirting with the possibility of running for president again in 2024, complicating the path of Republicans who hope to launch their own bids next cycle.
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Given the president’s ironclad grip on Republican voters, even the flirtation with a run could freeze some GOP hopefuls in place given the risk of a battle with Trump.
“Trump is the 800 pound gorilla in the Republican Party right now. For the time being, everyone else is going to make room for him,” said Alex Conant, a GOP strategist and former communications director for Florida Sen. Marco Rubio’s 2016 presidential campaign.
“I think if you’re somebody who is considering a 2024 presidential bid, in many ways you need to wait and see what Trump does because that will clearly impact what sort of campaign you run, if you run one at all,” he added.
Trump has told people that he is running again in 2024, according to one person close to the White House, but his allies have doubts as to whether he will go through with it.
There have been reports that Trump may even announce plans to run in 2024 on the same day as Biden’s inauguration. White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany told reporters Wednesday that she is unaware of any such plans and hasn’t spoken to Trump about whether he plans to run again.
One source close to the Trump campaign said that Trump, who would be 78 in 2024, could “dance” with the idea of running for some time to attract media coverage and help his business pursuits, but predicted that he would not seek another term.
Only one former president, Grover Cleveland, has served two nonconsecutive terms as president. While other one-term presidents unsuccessfully ran for another term after leaving office, like Martin Van Buren, recent one-term presidents have not done so.
But recent one-term presidents also have not emerged from an electoral defeat with the strength of Trump. While he lost the popular vote handily and Biden won more than 70 more electoral votes, the margins in the three states that effectively decided the contest — Arizona, Georgia and Wisconsin — was a total of about 50,000 votes.
Biden won the most total votes of any candidate running for president in history. Trump’s total was the second most.
It is possible that Trump’s sway with Republicans will falter after he exits the White House. He will no longer have the presidential bully pulpit, nor the wheel of the federal government.
He will retain his Twitter account and it remains to be seen how much he will continue to drive news coverage.
Republicans are watching the president’s next moves closely, acutely aware of the clout he holds in the party and his penchant for attacking anyone whom he perceives as a political rival.
“It’s a matter of playing the long game,” a person close to one potential 2024 contender said. “No one is second guessing their plans yet, but we might have to be a little more subtle about how we approach things – see what Trump does.”
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The president’s flirtation with a 2024 campaign “freezes the field and lets Trump and the Trump family toy with them” in the meantime, the operative said.
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- Discussion
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Trump 2024 talk threatens to freeze other GOP hopefuls in place https://t.co/wDaSaObPQo pic.twitter.com/oynj6WpcH7
— The Hill (@thehill) December 6, 2020
Broken record me: A strong political party probably wouldn’t have gotten into this mess. And if it did, it would have options to get itself out. Laughable that the entourage of sycophants running GOP now would or could help extricate itself from Trump. https://t.co/Q0OFJSsLvb https://t.co/CWuNCOqsLl
— Jonah Goldberg (@JonahDispatch) December 6, 2020
Well, the GOP is dead to me, so I wouldn’t be voting for any of those lowlifes anyway. As for Trump, well with any luck he will be in prison. Hard to run a campaign from there.
What in the world would he run on? His record? His impeachment? His handling of the Pandemic? His promises like the wall, the $200 prescription cards for the elderly? His health care plan that he never produced? His record of having told the most lies by a POTUS ever? His record of the most firings and largest turnovers in an administration in history? His failure to make American great again? His criminal activity? His mental health? His behavior after he lost the election? The ads just make themselves. The only votes he would get would be from his true believers and that’s not enough to win an election unless he gets better at cheating. He’s a blowhard. All talk. He may be in jail, or dead, or so busy fighting lawsuits and legal cases he won’t have time to run another circus act.
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