President Trump
Donald Trump Senators Reach Agreement on Fed Powers, Paving the Way for Coronavirus Emergency Response Nearly 200 Organizations Reportedly Hacked by Russia: Cyber Security Firm Trump Named Sidney Powell as Special Counsel for Election Fraud Investigation: MORE will probably never admit that he lost the 2020 election, but the political world’s attention is shifting to what he will do after he leaves the White House.
It’s a tricky topic among those close to Trump, who don’t want to express his anger because they recognize that he has been defeated by President-elect Biden, who is taking office January 20.
Trump will clearly try to maintain his relevance after leaving office. There are some overlapping roles he could play in doing that: likely candidate in 2024, a GOP “kingmaker” for that race if he doesn’t eventually run, and a large media presence.
“I would certainly expect to see him continue doing some sort of rallies and I expect to see him try to make news,” said GOP strategist Alex Conant. “He will certainly try to bring up controversies, which he did before he was president and which he has no reason to do after he was president.”
Conant, laughing, added that he did not expect Trump to retire to live a quiet life. “I don’t think he’s going to paint,” he said, referring to the hobby that former President George W. Bush turned up after he left the White House.
Trump is widely expected to keep alive the possibility that he could flee in 2024, whether he eventually does or not.
Dropping the idea of a Trump campaign in 2024 is the easiest way to preserve his political capital. It’s also a path he has easy enough money to follow – in the month after the election, Trump raised about $ 170 million.
It is also in the interests of several Trump aides and friends to discuss a 2024 bid. Since launching his first presidential bid in 2015, Trump has attracted a number of figures to his circle who were on the fringes of Republican politics. Their relevance is at least as much linked to the idea of a future campaign as that of the president.
There is some speculation that Trump could even announce a 2024 campaign on the day of Biden’s inauguration. The game is said to be intended to steal some of the spotlight back from the president-to-be, and Trump has never worried about whether his behavior violates established rules or etiquette. Trump filed paperwork for his 2020 reelection on the day of his inauguration in 2017.
However, an actual campaign for 2024 is far from certain. For his 2016 campaign, he flirted with presidential bids in 2012 and, for the Reform Party, in 2000, before retiring. A GOP source placed the odds that he would run again “between 70 and 80 percent,” but said Trump’s real goal was to “control the conversation.”
The most obvious way to do that, at least in the short term, is to find a media platform outside of its Twitter account.
He will not lack willing takers. One of his more grounded braggers is that he’s good for TV viewers, especially conservative viewers.
Rumors that Trump would start his own media outlet flared up in late 2016, at a time when he was expected to lose that year’s election. This time, much of the speculation has been about whether he would join an existing network.
Fox News seems like an obvious choice given its audience. However, Trump recently tried to promote two smaller rivals, Newsmax and One American News (OAN). Trump and Newsmax Media CEO Chris Ruddy are friends.
“The president understands that he still needs to engage his grassroots, and the best way to do that is with a media platform,” said Brad Blakeman, a former White House member of President George W. Bush and a strong supporter of Trump. . “So I suspect the short term plan is to get a house, a platform for him to interact with his base on a regular basis.”
The right kind of media platform would also be lucrative – always a consideration of Trump, and likely will remain, given that he has potentially troubling debt. The New York Times revealed in October that Trump had personally guaranteed more than $ 400 million of his companies’ debts, and that about three-quarters of those debts will be due within the next four years.
Trump called his debts ‘a peanut’ during a televised city hall shortly before the election.
One of the most important questions – unanswerable for now – is the extent to which Trump’s presidential controversies have harmed his corporate brand.
In the years before he ran for the White House, his business dealings increasingly relied on licensing his name – a process helped by his fame of NBC’s “The Apprentice” – rather than building himself. to build. Whatever reputational damage he suffered in the past four years would likely have a negative impact.
A presidential memoir is another possibility for Trump.
In the political arena, no one doubts that Trump’s influence on the GOP will remain deep.
Despite his defeat – and his division in the nation as a whole – he is the most popular Republican in the country. Even if he doesn’t run again, any 2024 contender won’t want to get into his reticle.
When he runs again, GOP strategist Ford O’Connell said “he is without a doubt the favorite” to be the nominee.
For now, O’Connell added, “he’s essentially freezing the 2024 field because they’re all wondering what he’s doing,”
The Memo is a reported column by Niall Stanage focusing primarily on Donald Trump’s presidency.