Donald Trump has let it leak out that he’s already planning a run for the presidency in 2024. And why not? Who else would the Republican Party prefer? A Morning Consult poll found Trump besting every other GOP candidate by double digits.
It’s not even close. Donald Trump has successfully captured the GOP and can do with it what he wishes. And it’s immediately obvious that, if his legal efforts fail to grant him a second term, he will go out and take the White House back from Joe Biden in 2024.
Trump will be able to do this by confounding his critics and revving up a still substantial base of support. The confounding part has proved to be particularly easy for Trump. He has driven the left and the media absolutely nuts and promises more of the same.
According to three people familiar with the conversations, the president, who refuses to acknowledge he lost the 2020 election as he clearly did, has not just talked to close advisers and confidants about a potential 2024 run to reclaim the White House but about the specifics of a campaign launch. The conversations have explored, among other things, how Trump could best time his announcement so as to keep the Republican Party behind him for the next four years. Two of these knowledgeable sources said the president has, in the past two weeks, even floated the idea of doing a 2024-related event during Biden’s inauguration week, possibly on Inauguration Day, if his legal effort to steal the 2020 election ultimately fails.
It will help Trump’s cause that he will almost certainly leave office without the word “concede” ever escaping from his lips. That will be a strong signal to his die-hard supporters to keep the faith. As far as keeping the party behind him, Trump will be in the most unique of positions: a defeated president who can command attention with one tweet.
Trump will continue to enrage, disgust, and amaze his numerous detractors. Every ignorant utterance, every insult, every misstatement of fact will be lept upon by his ravenous enemies, sucking the oxygen out of the race making it impossible for any challenger to breathe.
Trump has the GOP on life support, and his hand is on the oxygen valve.
According to two sources with direct knowledge of the matter, the president has privately bragged that he’d still remain in the spotlight, even if Biden is in the Oval Office, in part because the news media will keep regularly covering him since—as Trump has assessed—he gets the news outlets ratings and those same outlets find Biden “boring.”
Four years is a long time and America will be a different place then. But the Republican Party will remain the same, largely because they have no one else that draws as much attention and support as Donald Trump. For good or ill, Trump and the Republicans are joined at the hip and their fortunes will rise and fall together.
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