Trump Announces 2024 Presidential Candidacy
And here we go…
Donald Trump, the twice-impeached former president who refused to concede defeat and inspired a failed attempt to overturn the 2020 election culminating in a deadly attack on the U.S. Capitol, officially declared on Tuesday night that he is running to retake the White House in 2024.
The announcement at his Florida Mar-a-Lago Club came in a moment of political vulnerability for Trump as voters resoundingly rejected his endorsed candidates in last week’s midterm elections. Since then, elected Republicans have been unusually forthright in blaming Trump for the party’s underperformance and potential rivals are already openly plotting challenging Trump for the nomination.
Trump has been eager to reclaim the spotlight and pressure Republicans to line up behind him, inviting prominent party leaders to his launch event and keeping track of who attended. Advisers spent much of the year lobbying Trump to hold off announcing until after the midterms, arguing that he might motivate Democratic voters or get drowned out by election news. He finally agreed to promise a “very big announcement” for Tuesday, and stuck with that plan despite further efforts to convince him to wait until after next month’s runoff for a Georgia Senate seat.
“This comeback starts right now,” Trump said Tuesday night at his Mar-a-Lago resort, the site three months ago of an FBI search warrant to recover records he took from the White House, including some that were highly classified. He added later, “In order to make America great and glorious again, I am tonight announcing my candidacy for president of the United States.”
Trump’s attorneys filed paperwork Tuesday night with the Federal Election Commission for a newly named “Donald J. Trump for President 2024” committee. The filing said the new campaign would coordinate with an existing Trump Save America Joint Fundraising Committee, allowing him to potentially raise money at the same time for other political efforts.
After an election cycle were the GOP begged Trump not to announce his third bid for the presidency until after the midterms, and the week since with many of those same folks wishing he would just go away completely, here we are at the inevitable; Donald J. Trump is running for president, and everyone is just going to have to deal with it.
It was inevitable for a couple reasons, including his legendary ego and very much wounded public persona and personal pride after being defeated. There’s the money angle, as the official FEC filings give Trump yet another avenue to fundraise and move money around for the next two years. Coming in a distant third to those factors maybe there is some political calculations, or a plan, or a strategy, but who knows. It’s Trump, after all, and this version of Trump who is down to an almost comical “who’s that” roster of advisors these days is probably not going to be a strategic masterpiece. Or Subtle. Or graceful. Or Successful.
The inevitable part of all this was baked into the GOP’s raison d’être for the Trump takeover in the first place. How many times during that run against Hillary Clinton did the Team Red faithful chant “lesser of two evils” over and over as if it was an incantation that would protect them from that same evil. But it doesn’t. The problem with having the lesser of two evils is you still end up hitched to an evil. A week’s worth of post-election caterwauling about how it is time for the party to move on, and Trump is now toxic to voters, and his influence is waning, let’s all glam on to the new hotness of Ron DeSantis, and a bunch of other wordy word garble garble, is all wish casting that the Trump bargain of 2016 will just be a debt forgiven and forgotten.
Trump’s paint-by-numbers meh-athon of an announcement speech in the gold-plated gaudiness of Mar-a-Lago, indiscernible from his standard rally speech other than the announcement of filing to run again, should dispel any notion of that. There will be no note burning and debt forgiveness. Donald Trump has a receipt that the party has signed over to him, and he isn’t going away quietly at the gentle shooing of management, pundits, the party, or anyone else. The GOP political shop is going to have to make him leave, and it is going to be a mess in doing so; it’s going to interrupt the business of 2024, stuff is going to get broken, and feelings will be hurt in the process.
Anyone in the GOP or who supported Trump previously should keep one thing in mind during the sure to be messy months ahead before bemoaning, wish casting, or longing for the green pastures of post-Trump politics: yes, this is exactly what you signed up for. Embrace the suck. It is of your own making.
Now for the real question of who has the balls to take him on in the primary.Report
I think DeSantis has to as this point – he has spent too much time preening about doing so. And every day he doesn’t announce is another day Trump can consolidate his hold on the MAGA portion of the house which will be a key to winning the GOP nod.
Beyond that, if you are smart you hold off until sometime next year. I suspect both Georgia and the DoJ will drop indictments in the next 3 months and it will be easier to frame Trump as the ultimate looser after that because those will be about his conduct not the Party.Report
Probably. But I also can’t help but wonder if DeSantis looks at this situation, thinks he’s only 44, and decides he’d rather be the governor of Florida with a massive mandate while this whole thing shakes out. He has a lot to risk by staking his future on the outcome of a major party schism and I’m still not sure he’s that kind of guy.Report
Desantis doesn’t need to rush into an announcement. That would be foolish. Let Trump continue his self implosion.
Regardless, Desantis has this issue to deal with first:
From Tampa Trib:
“Florida law requires elected officials seeking a federal, state or local office while serving in a current one to resign. The resignation must occur no later than 10 days before qualifying for the federal office, and failure to resign by that date would result in automatic resignation effective immediately.”
“The statute in text does say federal,” Mills said, but applying the law to a presidential contest is more complicated. “The question is when? What does qualification mean in terms of running for president? Does it mean you are the final nominee or is it when you qualify for the first primary state?”
The statute reads: “Any officer who qualifies for federal public office must resign from the office he or she presently holds if the terms, or any part thereof, run concurrently with each other.”
Could the governor be a candidate for president on Florida’s Republican primary ballot?
“That would seem to be hard to get around,’’ Mills said.Report
Definitely some interesting and very important context. So maybe his choice is really (i) see if Trump implodes and/or appears to be going to prison then step in as a last minute savior or (ii) let Trump win the primary, (hopefully) lose in a 2024 rematch of 2020 then start his 2028 bid the moment his term as FL governor ends. The biggest risk to him in that case is probably Trump actually winning the presidency again, thereby making him yesterday’s news.Report
Now, I believe this is something that can be changed by the Republican controlled state assembly – so probably not a huge problem for Desantis – but something to watch. (Certainly not be as egregious as reversing term limit referendums)!
Waiting your turn is always dubious. It’s unlikely Desantis will have as much momentum as he does right now. I think back to Chris Christie as a recent example of a GOP gov who had the juice until he didn’t.
I think Desantis needs to shoot his shot this cycle if he want the office,Report
Yea, that’s a dilemma too. One assumes though he would hate to end up the standard bearer after a nasty primary resulting in a critical mass of MAGA sitting out the general. But as you suggest fortune favors the bold.Report
Good comparison. I think this is his best chance too.Report
Oh, and also, I think he could put it off voluntarily, but if it ever looks like he was badgered out of a run, he’ll never get another chance.Report
The only way to stop a bully is to punch him in the mouth.
No one did in 2016 and that is why Trump bulldozed the field.
Desantis can put the old orange man in his placeReport
I know you mean rhetorically punch him in the mouth, but there are two problems with that. First, you have to be inhumanly rude to out-badger Trump. Secondly, it never happened unless it gets coverage. Now, the mainstream press might cover all of Trump’s attacks, but they may not cover his opponents’. Even when they do, it’ll be “Trump drags party further down: what does this tell us about Trump?” The rightward press will have to step up.Report
You can’t out-Trump Trump. To your point, it would become a death spiral thank sinks the party. But I do think we saw a glimpse of how Desantis will approach him with that press conference yesterday. The media tried to draw him into the nonsense and Desantis was forceful while still taking the high road. Of course, some of the reports out of that ran with the “look at the scoreboard” soundbite completely out of context, but that is to be expected. For now, the best thing desantis can do with Trump is just to ignore him.Report
I think we’re in agreement. Just, every Republican has to realize that in 2023 the mainstream press is the enemy for a new reason.Report
There is one particular person I will see on Thanksgiving who I am very interested to know if she is ready to move on her from idol. If she is, I will be shocked and encouraged about a Trumpless future.Report
That was my initial thought on the DeSantis path. ‘I’m a winner and Trump is a cry-baby loser.’ But can he do that and still count on MAGA voters in the general if he spends months going no holds barred against their hero? I don’t know the answer to that.Report
It can’t be no holds barred mud-slinging, but that should essentially be the message. Trump is yesterday’s news. His schtick was “refreshing” in 2016 but played out now. You will never convert all of the MAGAs, but I think most would respond positively to a candidate that isn’t going to take crap like the cast of characters from 8 years ago. The GOP debates will be everything – assuming one or both actually make it that far. (I can see Trump backing out if he thinks he will not get the nomination. A long way to go).Report
Trump got billions of dollars of free advertising just by keeping himself in the news and being interesting. That’s what he does.
Count that as spending for his campaign and he outspent everyone else combined by Billions.Report
That is very true, but I think the circumstances have changed dramatically. It will be up to Republicans to decide if they still want to buy what he is selling.Report
DeSantis is young and clever enough to know that waiting to 2028 is the better option for his political future.Report
Probably no one. DeSantis is young politically speaking at 44. He will only be in his early 50s if he waits until 2028 and it might benefit him if Trump loses in 2024. Maybe you will see some token resistance from an anti-Trumper like Hogan.Report
I don’t personally believe Hogan will run and if he does he would really be running for VP or much more likely some kind of cabinet appointment, none of which will be in the offering from Trump.Report
I think the question is, who would be willing to risk getting squeezed out between Trump and DeSantis. I figure that Trump would do best in a more crowded primary. Every person who runs against him would in theory take up more camera time, but the media know that Trump sells, so he’ll still get most of the coverage. I think it’d tick him off every time someone declares against him, but he’ll be able to do his usual attack thing, then when a poll or primary result favors him, he can do his winning thing.
If I were a moderate who hated Trump, I’d stay out of the race and remain in Utah. If I were a conservative who hated him, I wouldn’t want to get in DeSantis’s way. I think DeSantis’s strongest move would be to let Trump do his national peacock tour for a year, make it clear to all the insiders that he’s running, and never acknowledge Trump . But the press will run with whatever nickname Trump comes up with for DeSantis, and they’ll show videos of him talking about how no one has the guts to challenge him, and they might build up Trump to an unbeatable level during 2023. As we’ve seen demonstrated, the liberals don’t honestly see much of a difference between Trump and DeSantis, so all other things being equal, they’ll go with the ratings winner.Report
Which gets to my previous point though. Why would DeSantis do that to himself? The only reason would be if he thinks this is his only shot.Report
I’ll say this much: if he’d wanted to sit it out, he could have made a promise to serve a full term. It would have been great theater, it would have come across as honorable, and it would have saved him 2 years of headaches. I don’t see a single advantage in not doing it unless he intends to run.Report
Viewpoint from the Democratic side- In 2024, Joe Biden will be facing a a Republican who runs on white male grievance and attacks democracy in an effort to install minority rule.
At this point, whether it is Coke or Pepsi doesn’t make much of a difference.Report
“Especially Lisa, but especially Bart”Report
If it is Biden-Trump again, we will be seeing old white men at their literal best and worst. Joe Biden as the avuncular older male relative that tells people to do their best and Trump as the perverted older male relative that encourages bad behavior as a patriarchal right.Report
I think you’re underestimating Bill Clinton. I’d say that the best humanity has to offer is Bill Clinton, then Dan Rather, then Joe Biden.Report
Or I guess they’re the best that old white men can do. Women/minorities are best, then Bill Clinton, then Rather or Biden, then the other one, then the other white men.Report
I’m wondering if CNN will push for Trump. Trump was *GREAT* for ratings.Report
As I commented above, if it’s a race between a fascist who brings in ratings and one who doesn’t, they’re going to promote the former. They don’t have the mental acuity to realize the difference between Trump and DeSantis.Report
Yglesias had an interesting post in his substack this morning asking what DeSantis’ policy positions actually are and which recounted his record in the House, some of which precedes Trump. It sounds like he was generally on board with the Paul Ryan program, at least at that time, including ultimately Trump’s failed effort to repeal Obamacare. If he has evolved passed that I think he could eventually be quite formidable. If he hasn’t… well then he’s just a meaner zombie Reagan hanging around way after the sell by and will be a far less interesting figure than he might have been, and not just for the media feeding frenzy.Report
DeSantis’ record as governor shows that not only has he not evolved beyond Paul Ryan’s program but he is more into waging the Culture War against perceived enemies of the Real True America (TM) than Paul Ryan and John Boehner were. So it will be a combination of Senator Lex Luthor’s, I mean Rick Scott’s, incredibly unpopular economic policies and reactionary culture war things like a federal abortion ban or nation anti-trans legislation. Sounds like a real popular package that the voters will eat up.Report
Trump wants to hurt the f***, whereas DeSantis wants to hurt the gays.
Worlds apart. Night and day, really.Report
DeSantis will kill you but he won’t use slur words when doing so. He will do his malice while speaking perfectly grammatically correct and polite English.Report
Yes please.Report
And how are they going to do that?
I made the same mistake in 2016, thinking that eventually the grownups in the room would put a stop to this bizarre Trump mania. I was asked the same question and hand-waved at “internal party machinery.” Which, if it existed, did nothing. It didn’t happen. The closest it came was this speech from Mitt Romney.
From my mistake, I have learned that one or both of the following are true:
1) there is an insufficient quantity of grownups in the room to stop Trump, or
2) said grownups lack the tools with which to do anything.
If Trump attracts the votes, he will be the nominee. The people who vote for him are undisturbed by his abyssmal personal qualities, demonstrable track record of failure, readily-apparent corruption, or any of the other good reasons to be repelled by the man and the stain he has left on American public life. There have been plenty of J6 apologists and denialists as well.
Yes, there are thoughtful Republicans with mostly-intact moral compasses and a serious, non-corrupt approach to governance. (They still have ideas I disagree with. But I could live with them holding power for a time.) They didn’t stop Trump in 2016, they did nothing to check him thereafter, and there’s no reason to believe they have enough strength to do so now.
I see no barrier between Trump and the GOP nomination; I see no barrier between the GOP nomination and another stint in the White House. The best I can hope for is that his own strength is diminished by experience; that a critical mass of the sorts of people who liked him because he was a winner will see for themselves that he is, in fact, a loser.Report
The only barrier I see is conviction . . . . and even then . . .Report
The good news is that the prospective state officials who would have tried to steal 2024 for him all lost.Report
Kris Kobach won his race for Kansas AG so we haven’t heard the last of his democracy-subverting ass, but at least he’s not Secretary of State there anymore.Report
This was obviously inevitable and baked into the cake in 2016. I’ve already said my piece on Trump and I agree with Andrew, the GOP is astride the tiger no matter how much they wish they hadn’t bestrode it. Couldn’t have happened to a nicer bunch.
DeSantis’ options present an interesting conundrum. Waiting offers a lot of promise. Trump seems somewhat likely to lose in which case the GOP could fall into DeSantis’ lap but a lot can happen in 2 or even 6 years.
Taking Trump on would be a fraught position and also a poison chalice since, even if Trump lost the primary, he could theoretically claim shenanigans and mount a third-party bid and tank the election for DeSantis. On the other hand, a third-party bid would require organizational competence and capability of which Trump has none. On the gripping hand, he needn’t run in all states to spoil; merely the swing ones- that could be within the capabilities of his decrepit organization.
If Trump had the brains God(ess) gave a chihuahua he’d offer the Veep nod to DeSantis. Though DeSantis would probably only want to accept such an offer if he though Trump could win the general election. It’ll depend on what happens in the next two years. Inflation could be tamed, the Ukraine war could end, Biden could be in a pretty strong position- or current trends could drag on with a recession to boot. A Biden presidency struggling with stagflation would be eminently vulnerable.
A lot of moving parts to be sure.Report
I think most of us are old enough to remember that George H.W. Bush looked nearly invulnerable in 1991. But then he lost in 1992 (to Bill Clinton of all people).
I’m pretty sure almost all of us are old enough to remember that Barack Obama looked very vulnerable in 2011. He won convincingly in 2012.
The lesson is: it’s simply too early to tell what things are going to look like in 2024. Take all elections seriously.Report
Well I wasn’t old enough for Bush Senior. I was 13 in ’92. I was also highly confident Romneybot wasn’t going to win it in 2011-12 (but boy did that ever set me up for a shock for 2016). But your overall point still stands.Report
1992 was WEIRD. Perot was a harbinger of the weirdness to come.
2011? Luckily I can just copy and paste this:
Report
LOL the lesson there is that July of 2024 is going to be simply too early to tell what will happen in November of 2024. Because yeah, Perot was weird. But Trump has made things even weirder.Report
…LOL unless you’re Editor-in-Chief Will Truman, who predicted on July 3, 2011 at 5:23 pm that it would be Obama/Biden 293, Romney/X 245 with “X” being someone who wasn’t yet on the radar. The word “Ryan” does not appear on that page but he was far from unknown in 2011.
Some of us (including me!) hadn’t yet figured out to stop taking him seriously. He became the VP nominee the same way he became Speaker — no one could think of anyone else who would be better.
The actual outcome was Obama/Biden 332, Romney/Ryan 206, which was only a few states off of Will’s prediction. He should still dine out once or twice on getting it pretty damn close to the bulls-eye.
This is the joy of opening time capsules.Report
My God(ess?) reading those comment threads!! Nathan Greer! BlaiseP! The Prof!Report
Why would DeSantis want to be on the ticket as VP?Report
If DeSantis thought that conditions were favorable for a Trump win in 2024 then taking the VP would cement him as the heir apparent when Trump was term limited out in 2028. Not doing so would be opening a spot for a rival to challenge him for that position and, of course, 6 years is an eternity in politics and he could easily fade as a Governor of Florida during that time.
Obviously if he had doubts about Trumps victory in 2024 then hitching his wagon to the Trump train would be a fools errand. It’s also moot, I suspect, as it looks like Trump has decided DeSantis is an enemy.Report
If I were DeSantis, and I thought Trump could win in 2024, and I were offered the VP slot, here’s what I’d say to myself: gosh, a chance to be treated as well as Pence for four years! Or Giuliani, or Christie, or any of the people who actually made it into the Cabinet! Or I could sit out the national stuff, let Trump be Trump, and run for president on my own in 2028. I’m in Florida. Unless North curses me with a hurricane, I’ll be fine down here.Report
I feel like there could be a great hypothetical SNL skit where DeSantis calls Pence for his advice on whether to join the ticket.Report
LOL that could be super funnyReport
That’d be great!Report
To expand the idea, if I were any Republican anywhere, and Trump asked for support, would I do it? Am I sure that being his ally plays out better than being his enemy? His opposition might lead to me losing my next race, but his support might mean the same thing. And his strong support *will* lead to him turning on me. From The Hunt for Red October:
“Listen, I’m a politician, which means I’m a cheat and a liar, and when I’m not kissing babies, I’m stealing their lollipops. But it also means I keep my options open.”Report
US likely to avoid recession: https://twitter.com/jdcmedlock/status/1593012426127310848?s=20&t=Kvwn5AfwIum6EPocSQxJLQReport