Have the Republicans ‘handed the party’ to Donald Trump ahead of 2024?

Donald Trump has fuelled speculation that he is planning a bid to become the Republican presidential nominee in 2024 by staging a rally in a key battleground state.

In his first trip to Iowa since leaving the White House, Trump “spent almost 30 minutes” arguing that “he had won Arizona, Georgia and Pennsylvania” during last year’s election, The Telegraph said. The unsubstantiated claim prompted chants of “Trump won! Trump won! Trump won!” from the “audience of thousands” in state capital Des Moines, the paper continued.

The location of his latest rally served as “the biggest hint yet” that he is planning another run, given that Iowa is also the first state to vote in the race to pick presidential nominees. And he has “hired two political operatives” who will be based there and tasked with keeping “an eye on other candidates”.

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‘Rerun of 2020’

The crowd at Saturday night’s “Save America” rally “dwarfed those attracted by a slate of other potential Republican candidates who have already been pouring into Iowa”, said The Telegraph.

Back when Joe Biden was settling into the Oval Office “nine months ago”, said Politico, “Republicans were questioning Trump’s place as the lead fixture of their party” in light of his claims of election interference and his involvement in the riot on Capitol Hill. But the Iowa rally “provided the clearest evidence yet that they want him right there”.

“Trump has held rallies since leaving the White House,” said the news site’s Washington D.C.-based political correspondent Meridith McGraw. “But never have elected Republicans of such tenure and stature appeared with him” at any of his previous post-White House appearances.

The presence at the Iowa rally of Chuck Grassley, the state’s Republican senator, “signified that whatever qualms the GOP may have had with Trump are now faded memories”, she added. “Whatever questions they had about the direction of the party have been resolved.”

If, as Politico suggested, the Republican leadership are content to “hand Trump the party” and go “along for the ride”, the only thing stopping him from trying to win back the White House, bar his ongoing legal issues, would be his own interest in running.

Latest polling in Iowa found that “53% of people view Trump favourably, with 91% of Republicans in the state supporting the former president”, reported Sky News.

“He’s got millions of followers still who support him – and that’s the key,” Cypress College’s Professor Peter Mathews, an expert in political philosophy, told the broadcaster.

“Someone as popular as that” has a “good chance of winning the primary election” in 2024, Mathews continued. Trump will “be the one to be the nominee because then it’ll be a rerun of 2020 again”.

“His followers are enthusiastic about it and the Democrats are loathing and worrying about it,” the professor added.

A second run by Trump is not yet guaranteed, however. “Despite it looking as though the Trump 2024 campaign is already in full swing, he has indicated that a final decision will be made after next year’s midterm elections,” said The Sunday Times’ Washington correspondent Alistair Dawber.

Trump has “endorsed scores of candidates”, Dawber continued, as well as rebuking those who have failed to remain loyal to his legacy as president, “and if they perform badly it is unlikely that he will risk losing for a second time”.

“Time is also against” Trump, who will be 78 come election day in 2024. Although “he appears in robust health now, that may change”, Dawber added.

All the same, former White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham is among those betting that her former boss will try to secure a fresh term as US leader.

“I think he is going to run again and you know that’s why I’m speaking out the way I am. I don’t want him to run again,” Grisham told NBC on Sunday.

“He’ll have no guardrails because he will never have to worry about re-election, so he will do whatever he wants. He will hire whomever he wants, and I think that includes people of the 6 January minds,” she added, in a reference to the attack on Capitol Hill.

‘Crunch moment’

A second run by the former president would pose a major headache for the Republicans, because “there’s big gap between the GOP message and Trump’s message”, said Politico’s McGraw. While the party is seeking to “make the midterm elections about the issues”, for example immigration and the economy, Trump wants to make the election “a referendum on him instead of Biden”.

Trump is also devoting the bulk of his time to pushing “the single biggest issue” to him, wrote McGraw, “the issue that gets the most pull, the most respect, the biggest cheers”: his unsubstantiated allegations of fraud during the 2020 election.

The “crunch moment” in his decision whether to compete in another presidential election will come in November next year, when the US votes in the midterms, said The Sunday Times’ Dawber. Trump will “watch Biden’s performance closely” to judge if the sitting president can “arrest falling poll numbers and rescue his popularity”.

By contrast to Biden, latest polling numbers on Trump “say he is, at this stage, a shoo-in for the Republican nomination” should he choose to run, Dawber continued. “He tops every poll of hopeful candidates by a considerable distance” and “anti-Trump Republicans are not yet gravitating to a runner themselves, largely because they know that at this stage it would kill off their chances”.

Other candidates who might stand a good chance of winning the nomination if Trump decided not to run include Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, who has been tipped as a “Trump 2.0”.

But for the time being, Trump has been handed “a wonderful gift”, said Politico’s McGraw.

“The ex-president has been openly discussing the likelihood that he will run for president again,” she wrote. And being “greeted with open arms in the all-important, first-in-the-nation presidential caucus state of Iowa was a flashing-neon light signal to voters that this party remains his”.