Are Republicans too late to derail Donald Trump for 2024?

Donald Trump will this weekend address the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in Orlando, with many predicting that the former president will use the influential event to announce a second run for the White House.

The line-up for CPAC 2021, which includes former secretary of state Mike Pompeo and Trump’s son, Donald Jr, suggests that Trump’s “dominance” among right-wing Americans is “entirely undiminished” following his loss in last year’s presidential election, The Guardian says.

Tim Miller, the former political director of Republican Voters Against Trump, told the paper that he expects Trump’s speech, which will close the conference on Sunday, to “signal that he sees himself as… the frontrunner for 2024”.

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Although he has kept a low-profile since leaving office, Vanity Fair reports that Trump is “ramping up his political activities” and is “only taking meetings” at his Mar-a-Lago home in Florida “with those who share his desire for revenge” on Republicans who have “scorned him”.

“In reality it isn’t four years” until the presidential candidates for 2024 are decided, The Telegraph says, because any hopefuls will be “quietly cultivating donors and influential backers long before that”. “It is actually quite a narrow window for anyone else to overhaul Trump before his campaign juggernaut gets going,” the paper adds.

Those who might stand against him include Nikki Haley, his former UN ambassador, and Mike Pence, the former vice president, both of whom Trump turned against during the dying days of his administration. Senator Ted Cruz, who finished second to Trump in 2016, is also seen as a frontrunner, but damaged his odds after his much-criticised handling of the storms in Texas.

Mitt Romney, a long-standing critic of the former president who twice voted to convict Trump in impeachment trials, said during an online forum hosted by The New York Times: “I don’t know if he’ll run in 2024 or not, but if he does, I’m pretty sure he will win the nomination.”

And Mitch McConnell, the most powerful Republican in Washington who could have led efforts for the GOP to convict Trump in his second impeachment trial, has signalled that he would support Trump if he won a second nomination. Asked on Fox News if he would back a second Trump campaign, the Senate minority leader yesterday replied: “The nominee of the party? Absolutely.”

As for the man himself, when asked last week if he was planning to campaign again, Trump told Newsmax: “As far as ’24 it is too early to say but I see a lot of great polls out there that’s for sure. We have tremendous support, I won’t say yet, but we have tremendous support.”