While Donald Trump still leads in the polls as the favorite to win the Republican Party 2024 presidential nomination, his campaign which should be putting more distance between himself and some of his potential rivals is going nowhere since his November announcement.
As former Trump administration officials like former vice president Mike Pence, ex-U.N ambassador Nikki Haley and former secretary of state Mike Pompeo maneuver and battle each other for expected runs, the former president is barely venturing out of Mar-a-Lago, losing lawsuits, and facing criminal investigations as his money begins to dry up.
And then there is current top rival Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL).
According to a report from the Guardian’s Lloyd Green, Trump’s early campaign events — from his 2024 announcement to his later “major” events have been “duds.”
For those looking for uplift from a Trump campaign, those days are over. Rather, personal grievance and claims of a stolen 2020 election will likely be his dominant themes. For the 45th president, that may bring catharsis for Trump. For everyone else in the Republican party, Trump’s antics spell chaos, headache and the possibility of another Trump defeat at the hands of Joe Biden and the Democrats.
Trump’s speech announcing his campaign was one the public never heard and now is another self-inflicted nothingburger, up there with his much-touted Trump NFT superhero trading cards – a waste of time and attention, a lost opportunity.
Trump had vowed to deliver a major political announcement later that night. He also promised to resume his signature rallies. Instead, he spoke behind closed doors at Trump Doral, his resort in Miami, to Judicial Watch, a tax-exempt group. Yet for all of his would-be opponents’ missteps, Trump’s road to re-nomination won’t be a coronation. His mojo is missing, his aura of inevitability damaged, if not gone. In the two months since Trump announced his candidacy, he has barely ventured from the confines of Mar-a-Lago, his redoubt by the Atlantic.
Trump is also facing trouble right out of the gate when the Republican primary season begins.
Trump could well face Chris Sununu, New Hampshire’s popular governor, in the state’s primary. A Trump loss in the Granite State would be monumental. He won that contest seven years ago.
Beyond that, Trump has suffered a series of recent legal setbacks. Last month, a Manhattan jury convicted the Trump Organization on tax and fraud charges. As a coda, the court imposed $1.6m in fines, the maximum allowed under state law. A federal judge in Georgia hit Trump and his lawyers with an almost $1 million sanction for filing frivolous suits and wasting the court’s time, after which Trump quietly withdrew his loony suit against Hillary Clinton. To top it off, in Georgia, a Fulton county court will hear arguments this coming week on whether to release a grand jury report on the 2020 election.
If indicted in Georgia Trump may need to be extradited to Georgia from Florida, a decision that will rest with Governor Ron DeSantis !!!