Trump wants to launch his 2024 presidential bid soon and could announce as early as September
Former President Donald Trump is anxious to announce his 2024 presidential bid and could launch his campaign as early as September, he told New York Magazine.
“Well, in my own mind, I’ve already made that decision, so nothing factors in anymore. In my own mind, I’ve already made that decision,” Trump told New York Magazine’s Olivia Nuzzi in an interview.
“I would say my big decision will be whether I go before or after,” he said, referring to the 2022 midterms this November.
Politico and the Washington Post report that Trump has met with top donors and supporters around the country in informal, off-the-record “kitchen cabinet” style dinners over the past several weeks, where donors and allies have discussed the midterms and a potential Trump 2024 campaign.
Trump is getting his campaign apparatus geared up for 2024, the Post reported, including building a staff and a website.
“I just think that there are certain assets to before,” Trump told New York Magazine. “Let people know. I think a lot of people would not even run if I did that because, if you look at the polls, they don’t even register. Most of these people. And I think that you would actually have a backlash against them if they ran. People want me to run.”
One person close to Trump told the Post it’s “70-30 he announces before the midterms.”
Trump initially considered announcing in July, possibly on July 4, but backed off of that plan, Insider previously reported, and denied ever having the idea to New York Magazine.
“First of all, a lot of people aren’t around on the Fourth of July. It’s not a great time to do an announcement … I never said I was going to. That was just fake news. Somebody said that I was going to,” he explained.
But advisers and allies are divided on how early Trump should announce a campaign.
“If Trump is going to run, the sooner he gets in and talks about winning the next election, the better,” Sen. Lindsey Graham told the Post. “It will refocus his attention — less grievance, more about the future.”
Others, however, fear that an early Trump announcement could hurt the GOP’s chances of winning back both chambers of Congress in the 2022 midterms by making the race a referendum on him and his controversies instead of the sitting President Joe Biden and the state of the economy.
An early announcement and official launch would subject to Trump to more limited fundraising capabilities, risks undermining his party’s prospects in November, and wouldn’t help him evade legal scrutiny, Insider’s Kimberly Leonard and Ryan Barber previously reported.
“Of all the selfish things he does every minute of every day, it would probably be the most,” one Republican strategist, speaking on the condition of anonymity, told the Post. “Everything we are doing that is not talking about the economy is going to be a disaster.”
