The Trump who gave that 2024 announcement speech could win. But he can’t keep it up
If you watched The Donald Trump Show on Tuesday night, you’re forgiven if you were thinking that the holiday reruns had arrived a little early.
Trump announced his candidacy for the 2024 Republican nomination. It’s depressingly early, considering we’re still counting votes from last week’s midterms. Didn’t we used to get a nice little break before we had to binge the next season?
And yet, this episode was repetitive, even rote.
Trump laid out a better case for his return to the White House than he has recently seemed capable of. He itemized the successes of his administration and detailed an indictment of Joe Biden’s two years in the presidency.
“All [the Biden administration] had to do was sit back and watch,” he said. “There’s never been anything to compete with what we’ve done.”
He painted a picture of a strong U.S., rebounding from the coronavirus pandemic, winning respect on the international stage. He even managed, for a while, to keep from making it all about himself.
“This is a task for a politician or a conventional candidate. This is a task for a great movement that embodies the courage, confidence and the spirit of the American people,” he said. “This is a movement. This is not for any one individual.”
He added, uncharacteristically: “This will not be my campaign. This will be our campaign, all together.”
Eventually, he rambled on pretty badly, like an aging rock band that thinks it has to play every track off the greatest-hits compilation to get the applause it so badly craves.
If Trump has any chance, this is how he has to run: Highlighting the pain and frustration of inflation, crime and immigration without bogging down on his grievances about the 2020 election or the personal slights he sees from every angle.
Trump spoke for more than an hour from his Mar-a-Lago resort in South Florida, standing before a preposterous number of American flags and addressing a small but energetic audience, many sporting the jarring mix of business suits and cheap red MAGA hats.
The former president tried to take credit for the Republican victory in the U.S. House, arguing that others aimed too high in looking for a “red wave.” It’s a strange argument — that the party should have trimmed its sails in a midterm.
But then, what else could he say? What answer does he have for Trump-aligned losers such as Dr. Mehmet Oz in Pennsylvania, who couldn’t beat a Democrat obviously suffering lingering stroke symptoms? How does he explain Blake Masters and Kari Lake in Arizona, who lost even as other Republicans there were rolling?
Gov. Greg Abbott got a shout-out for reportedly praising Trump for his success in winning Hispanic votes in border counties. But it’s Abbott and other Texas Republicans doing the hard work of outreach and political organization. Trump isn’t capable of party-building.
For the first half-hour, Trump uncharacteristically seemed to stick mostly to the script. There was no long tangent about the “stolen” 2020 election. There were no snide shots at rivals such as Ron DeSantis. He took digs at Biden’s mental and verbal stumbles, but it never got truly nasty. He rambled, especially at the end, with long diversions on topics from Germany to the FBI, but nothing like his rally speeches that bog down in incoherence.
The Trump of the first part, before he turned into Wacky Rally Trump, might be unbeatable in the GOP primaries. But as he demonstrated, he’s not capable of this kind of discipline for two hours, let alone two years.
He won’t be able to keep the focus on an agenda or a movement. It’ll invariably become about Trump and whatever insults he perceives or whatever credit he thinks he deserves.
Besides, Trump did not really address his newest liability: The spreading sense within the Republican Party that he is primarily responsible for lost races that could have been won.
That’s the biggest hurdle he faces. And so far, he has little answer for it. Announcing his run so early is a clear sign of weakness — he’s trying to spook his rivals and perhaps deter a federal indictment over his handling of presidential documents and who knows what other charges.
With few other options, Trump is playing the hits. He wants GOP voters to ignore the episodes that dragged — the losses of 2018 and 2020 and 2022.
The question is whether the audience would really rather watch something it hasn’t seen before.
This story was originally published November 15, 2022 at 9:28 PM.
