Several people close to former President Donald Trump, either as advisers or former administration officials, spoke to the Daily Caller to discuss what a 2024 election strategy will look like and what will inform the 45th president’s decision on whether to run again.
Specifically, the half-dozen sources who spoke on condition of anonymity universally believe he’ll run but laid out conditions. Also, they discussed what they believe his strategy will be.
“If the Republicans take the House and the Senate, Donald Trump will run. If we take the House OR the Senate, Donald Trump will strongly consider running. If we take neither of them, he will not run,” someone close to the former president who is familiar with his thinking said.
Others said they believe his decision partially depends on what the deeply unpopular President Joe Biden does.
“If Biden really does run again, [Trump’s] running without question,” a former senior official in the Trump administration said.
“I think he’s [Trump] going to be looking to exploit a very unpopular president,” they said.
The Daily Caller notes further:
Trump’s 2024 strategy wouldn’t just be centered on Biden’s struggles, though. For Trump and some of his associates, none of these problems – inflation, a border crisis, a war in Ukraine and more – would have happened were it not for what they view as a fraudulent election in 2020.
From the outside, the former president’s tumultuous departure from the White House in 2020 poses many questions as to what another presidential run would look like. To date, Trump continues to say in nearly all his public speeches that mass voter fraud led to Biden taking office, and the January 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol remains front and center for much of the media and Democrats.
With the former president still focused on his election fraud claims, Trump associates believe the subject of 2020 will dominate his potential upcoming presidential run. And, some within the president’s inner circle still back Trump’s mass voter fraud push.
“I think he’s going to run. And here’s … why I think this: You don’t steal from Donald Trump,” another person said.
However, not everyone agrees that continual reflection on 2020 is wise.
“I think that running on the invalidity of the 2020 election is a mistake, because the American people are looking for solutions to the problems that Joe Biden created,” another person said. “Will Donald Trump talk about solutions? Absolutely. But unfortunately, he’s wrapped around the axel of what they did to him in 2020. And he’s right, but the American people aren’t as interested in that.”
Also, Trump will likely be hammered about the January 6, 2021 incident at the Capitol.
One person close to the Trump team said that he views January 6 as “completely overblown” and that “he didn’t do anything.”
“He’s not gonna be like, ‘oh what happened was good,’ he’ll say that that’s bad, but also … every single poll shows that the American people don’t care about Jan. 6 the way the media does,” they said.
“He [Trump] does not think that what went wrong at the Capitol was right,” another person said. “He doesn’t think that. He’s shocked at what went down, and so it’s not like he believes that the violence was right. He thinks it was wrong, but the idea that the Democrats are blaming it all on him, he just rejects it. As he should.”
“The press will not get over 6th January, they won’t get over 2016, they won’t get over Russia, Russia Russia, but … I believe the American people are getting tired of that. I think the trust in the American media is falling way off,” another former senior Trump administration official said. “It’s the economy, it’s inflation, it’s border … 6th January is far down. Most people go, okay that’s D.C. politics. It may sound good here in Washington, D.C., but I don’t think it’s playing well anywhere else.”
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