With every utterance in every forum, Donald Trump is accomplishing two things: keeping a very high profile that the kept media cannot ignore, and tantalizing his supporters that he is increasingly likely to run for reelection in 2024.
In his final speech as president on January 20, President Trump told a crowd of his supporters at Joint Base Andrews: “We love you. We will be back in some form.”
That form is taking shape.
Peter Navarro, a former advisor to President Trump, predicted a week later in an interview with Fox News host Jeanine Pirro: “When Donald Trump gets elected in a landslide in 2024 he’s going to roll out the same kind of executive orders [as Biden] to roll things back.”
In his speech at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), Trump further tantalized his supporters, declaring that his political journey is “far from over.”
The media furor over the commentary by Meghan Markle, the controversial wife of Prince Harry, Duke of Sussex, gave Trump still another chance to weigh in on his political future. Fox News host Maria Bartiromo asked him what he thought of running against Markle, who has been eyeing a potential presidential run. She asked:
Mr. President, what was your take on Meghan Markle now saying … meeting with Democratic operatives … she may want to run for president?
He responded:
Well, I hope that happens because if that happened, then I think I’d have an even stronger feeling toward running [in 2024].
I’m not a fan of hers. I think that what she talks about … the Royal Family and the Queen — I happen to think … I know the Queen, as you know. I’ve met with the Queen, and I think the Queen is a tremendous person.
And I’m not a fan of Meghan.
On Tuesday he had another opportunity to tease his supporters thanks to Bartiromo. In an interview at Fox News, he said:
Based on every poll, they want me to run again. But we’re going to take a look and we’ll see.
First steps first.
We have to see what we can do with the House [in 2022]. I think we [Republicans] have a very, very good chance of taking back the House.
I think we have a chance to do better in the Senate.
The opportunity for Republicans to regain control of the Senate is excellent, but the leadership is problematic, said Trump:
We need leadership in the Senate which frankly we don’t have. We need better leadership in the Senate.
We have a good chance to take back the Senate and, frankly, we’ll make our decision after that.
The former president has already endorsed two Republican candidates for the House, including Max Miller in Ohio, who is running against one of the 10 RINOs who voted to impeach Trump. And Trump has suggested that he is likely to endorse whoever runs against Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) in the primary next year.
It will take just five seats to regain Republican control of the House. And history has shown that the party out of power picks up between 25 and 27 seats in the off-year midterm elections.
This year the Republican Party is targeting nearly 50 seats where it has the strongest chance of flipping them.
In the Senate, there are 14 Democratic seats and 20 Republican seats up for grabs in 2022. A number of Senate RINOs have already announced that they won’t be seeking reelection, thus opening the door for Trump to reshape the Republican Party’s leadership in that chamber as well.
And the Biden administration, with its continuing avalanche of legislation and executive orders overthrowing Trump’s policies and installing more government interference in every aspect of private citizens’ lives, is helping the process along.
Come late 2023, the temptation to run for reelection [Grover Cleveland won two separate terms as President, from 1885 to 1889 and then from 1893 to 1897] is likely to be overpowering to the former president. In 2024 Trump will be 78, the same age Biden is now.
