Donald Trump’s flirtation with announcing a 2024 White House bid before the midterm elections is sending signals of self-doubt and political vulnerability, with Republican operatives saying the former president is motivating challenges to his supremacy over the party.
Trump would begin any presidential primary with overwhelming advantages in popularity, name identification, and resources. But pulling the trigger on a third White House campaign prior to Election Day this November, as Trump concedes is possible, might boomerang. Rather than box out potential 2024 opponents and clear the field, such a move by the former president could reek of fear, inviting more competition for the Republican nomination.
“If Trump thinks he needs to keep others from running against him by announcing first, then he must realize he’s losing influence in the party and will only encourage others to get into the race,” said a GOP strategist who advises one of several Republicans vying to supplant Trump atop the party and requested anonymity to protect clients from reprisal by the former president and his supporters.
Trump has lately convened meetings with wealthy Republican donors to solicit feedback on a possible 2024 presidential bid, and in an interview last week, he told New York magazine another White House campaign is now a matter of when, not if. Specifically, the 45th president is mulling whether to announce before the Nov. 8 elections, in which Republicans are favored to reclaim control of Congress from the Democrats — or after.
Republican insiders among Trump’s inner circle say the former president’s seemingly fresh comments are stale. Privately, Trump has been discussing his entrance into the 2024 presidential contest as a fait accompli dating back to within months of him exiting the White House after being ousted by Joe Biden. Yet even Republicans close to Trump, those who want and encourage him to run, concede it’s hard to predict if he will declare.
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At 76, Trump is mindful of his health. The death of his first wife, Ivana Trump, at age 73 might weigh on him, and medical problems that arise could dissuade him from running. He also is wary of jumping in if prospects for victory appear thin, although that obstacle is less salient with Biden’s job approval rating below 40%. Meanwhile, Trump confidants don’t rule out him ratcheting up 2024 speculation simply to reframe a treacherous news cycle.
Hearings held by a House committee to investigate Trump’s role in the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot could prove damaging to his long-term political standing. Simultaneously, the former president’s stature has taken a hit inside the GOP following the defeat this past spring of a collection of candidates he endorsed in key congressional and gubernatorial primaries. Nonetheless, the betting line inside Trumpworld is that the 45th president is going to be a 2024 candidate.
“If Trump is alive, he’s running,” said one veteran Republican operative who speaks regularly with the former president.
Presidential contenders traditionally wait until after the midterm elections to launch a White House campaign. Logistically, declaring a White House candidacy prematurely can bring unnecessary operational headaches and fundraising challenges, not to mention fears of undermining a party’s effort to win seats in the House and Senate in the midterm campaign. None of these potential pitfalls appear to worry Trump, although his kitchen Cabinet of informal advisers is conflicted over whether he should be concerned.
Trump has stockpiled more than $100 million in his political action committees since his defeat in November of 2020 and raised another $17 million in the second quarter of this year. But the moment the former president becomes a formal 2024 candidate, federal legal constraints on how he spends that cash are en force.
Trump and his campaign team would be barred from coordinating with affiliated super PACs; his campaign’s legal ability to tap funds from the former president’s primary political action committee, Save America, to finance travel and rallies would be questionable; and he would have to file the required financial disclosures with the Federal Election Commission. How Trump handled all of this would no doubt attract FEC complaints from Democratic, and possibly GOP, opponents.
Indeed, one conservative election law expert said Trump is likely to be the subject of FEC complaints alleging that he became a declared 2024 candidate the instant he told reporter Olivia Nuzzi: “Do I go before or after, that will be my big decision,” in reference to the midterm elections.
“There’s a good argument that he’s no longer testing the waters and he’s a candidate,” the election law expert said. “If you say you are running, and figuring when to announce, then you’re a candidate. I think a Democratic or [liberal] campaign legal center may file an FEC complaint against him.” Republicans inside and outside of Trump’s orbit seem to agree on this much: Trump is likely to view such matters as a tolerable nuisance.
On another topic of some agreement, Republican insiders are near universally concerned that Trump launching a presidential campaign before midterm fall elections would damage the party’s prospects. That is why Republicans supportive of the former president and who have his ear are selling him on the upside of delaying.
“Advisers like me have said, ‘Wait until after the midterms; announce now if you’d like that you have a huge announcement the day after the midterms,’” one such GOP Republican insider said. “This way, he can share in the credit for huge Republican wins … and avoid being blamed by some in the GOP if they come up short in the Senate or other races.”
To be sure, pro-Trump Republican operatives reject suggestions the former president is projecting weakness and insecurity by toying with a pre-midterm elections announcement — at least publicly.
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But what they share with the former president’s GOP critics is anxiety that Democrats would be able to use his early entrance into the next presidential campaign to distract voters from Biden’s embattled leadership. Nonpartisan handicappers are projecting substantial Democratic losses in the House and Senate on Nov. 8, and Republican strategists across the party fret an early Trump candidacy could negatively affect their chances of winning governing majorities.
“When he decides to go, he’ll clear most of the field and only have opponents who benefit from the national exposure of taking on the giant — and he will enjoy crushing them,” said Matt Schlapp, chairman of the American Conservative Union. That said, Schlapp added, “I’m mindful of, we need to focus on 2022, because if you don’t stop socialists in Congress, the great American comeback is in a more jeopardized position.”
