Former President Donald Trump last made a public appearance back on Nov. 15 when he announced his intention to run for President in 2024.
Since that time, it’s been rather quiet from Mar-a-Lago. While there is activity, it’s all been behind closed doors with advisors and donors. Reports indicate that the private Trump presidential campaign is about to turn into a public one. With President Biden now mired in a classified documents scandal and Trump taking credit for pushing Rep. Kevin McCarthy into the position of House Speaker, there are plenty of reasons for Trump to break his silence and inject himself into the current political conversation.
While there aren’t yet any rallies scheduled, Trump has announced an event later in January that will be of a more “intimate” setting:
Former President Donald Trump is planning to hold his first public campaign event of the year in South Carolina, in what aides are portraying as a first step into a more public phase of his 2024 White House run.
Trump is slated to make an appearance in late January in Columbia, S.C. It will not be a rally, his advisers said, but will be a more “intimate” event where he will roll out his leadership operation in a state which hosts a key early Republican primary contest. Trump’s advisers are casting the plans as part of a gradual build-out of the former president’s campaign, following a relatively private month-and-a-half since a November launch that coincided with the holiday season.
With the risk of political fatigue, Trump has been wise to take a quieter path over the past couple of months.
The upcoming event will take place in South Carolina, a key primary state which also may indicate that the Trump team foresees a primary battle in the future. Candidates will start lining up soon to visit all the early states and begin laying the groundwork for the logistics they’ll need down the stretch.
While many publications have been printing plenty of stories about Trump’s star power beginning to fade, that all could change once the campaign gets fully underway. However, there is plenty of evidence to suggest that some Republicans are ready to move past Trump due to a growing list of challenges the former president is facing:
The aggregate effect of the lawsuits, investigations, and scandals appears to be an impairment of Trump’s political viability.
Essentially, Trump’s stock – and perhaps his electability – are falling. Donald Trump endorsed candidates were trounced in the 2022 midterms (only one Trump endorsee won in a battleground state).
And Trump’s popularity amongst Republicans is falling to all-time lows. In fact, Republican voters are beginning to indicate that they would prefer an alternative to Trump as the GOP presidential nominee in 2024. Specifically, Republicans are indicating they prefer Florida Governor Ron DeSantis over Trump.
It would be foolish to count Trump out of anything at this point, his political epitaph has been written many, many times. The only difference is whether Republicans are ready to jettison the Trump years in favor of supporting a candidate that backs Trump’s policies but lacks his accompanying baggage.
We’ll get a glimpse later this month into what a Trump 2024 campaign is going to look like.
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