There’s been no shortage of speculation on whether Donald Trump will make a go at a second term in the White House in 2024. “Will he or won’t he?” has been the top question on the minds of his followers and fans lately.
Trump has done nothing but tease. In fact, he’s kept his intentions close to the vest. But he did say something interesting about 2024 to the Washington Post.
The former president spoke with interviewer Josh Dawsey, who spent far too much time pressing Trump about Jan. 6, 2021. (Speaking of which, if Anne Applebaum thinks that Hunter Biden’s laptop shouldn’t be covered because she thought it wasn’t “interesting,” can we stop talking about Jan. 6 for the same reason?)
At the end of the interview, Dawsey spoke to Trump about the state of the GOP going into 2024. Trump touted his influence on the party, but he didn’t say anything definitive about running in the next presidential contest.
“Trump said it was true he had told advisers that his health would factor into whether he would run again in 2024 but that he was currently in good health,” Dawsey wrote.
“You always have to talk about health,” Trump told him. “You look like you’re in good health, but tomorrow, you get a letter from a doctor saying come see me again. That’s not good when they use the word again.”
“I don’t want to comment on running, but I think a lot of people are going to be very happy by my decision,” he added. “Because it’s a little boring now.”
Trump’s age and health are on the minds of a lot of people going into 2024. After all, Trump will turn 78 in 2024, older than Joe Biden was on Election Day 2020, and we can see the difficulties that having a president who is nearing 80 has brought us.
Of course, this isn’t to compare Trump to Biden, because I do believe that Trump could run rings around Biden cognitively and would probably be in better shape at Biden’s age than the current president is now. But when you’re in your seventies, everything is more difficult than it used to be.
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But one of the great things going for the Republicans in 2024 is a deep bench. Dawsey wrote that “Other Republicans, such as Pence, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and former secretary of state Mike Pompeo, would not want to run against him in a 2024 Republican presidential primary season, he said. None of them have ruled out challenging him.”
Trump had a ready reason for why he thinks other potential candidates for 2024 would defer to him.
“If I ran, I can’t imagine they’d want to run,” he stated. “Some out of loyalty would have had a hard time running. I think that most of those people, and almost every name you mentioned, is there because of me. In some cases, because I backed them and endorsed them.”
“I have a good relationship with Ron, I have a good relationship with all the names you mentioned,” Trump concluded. “Would they run against me? I doubt they would run against me. I doubt it.”
So if you were hoping for a definitive announcement from Trump about his plans for 2024, you’ll have to wait a little longer.
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