He is back on the trail.
74 days since announcing his third
bid for the White House.
Former President
Trump has made his first 2024
campaign stop yesterday.
His appearances in New Hampshire
and South Carolina come
as questions have been raised about
what has been so far which is a very slow
moving campaign.
Concerns that he addressed head on
and said he's not campaigning.
This is like
about a month ago when he announced
well I said, you know, I got two years.
They said he's not doing rallies.
He's not campaigning.
Maybe he's lost that step.
We didn't
I'm more angry
now and I'm more committed
now than I ever was this.
For the record,
he announced closer to two months ago.
But while the small scale of his events
yesterday were a far cry
from his traditionally large rallies,
what he chose to talk about would
be very familiar to you.
We're
going to restore
election integrity do we have to?
We have a woke military that can't fight
or win.
They're sending people
that are killers, murderers.
They're sending rapists,
and they're sending frankly, terrorists
or go to New York.
Nobody ever gets prosecuted.
I'm the only one they go after.
We have men being encouraged
to compete against women in sports.
The wind turbines are all made in China.
Alex Burns of
Politico is back with us on the panel.
And so are the wind turbines
killing off the bird population.
Which is a favorite of Trump's.
So, Alex,
this is clearly an attempt
to kind of
jumpstart his campaign,
but it was still kind of low energy.
Yeah, it really was.
And I do think, Abby, in that clip
that that you just played
is a really revealing moment
where he says,
you know,
they say that he's lost that,
but don't worry, I'm still really angry.
You're saying
it's not really the point
here, right,
that I don't think anybody doubts
that Donald Trump is a pretty angry man?
I think what they question is
whether he is fully engaged
with the task of running for president,
the answers that he obviously is not
And also whether he has something to say
that's really relevant to this moment.
Right.
That can really connect
with first
the Republican primary electorate
and then much more importantly,
the broader American public
and when you hear him
talking about how it's so unfair,
how he's getting
investigated in New York,
how the wind turbines kill birds,
I don't think he did
wind turbines
cause cancer at this event,
but I'm sure we will hear that one again.
He just sounds like a guy
from a different time, right?
A guy who
sort of trying to do the 2016 thing,
but at a smaller scale
and with less
sort of organic enthusiasm around it.
And what I will say
just in the vein
of putting an asterisk
on everything
I just said as
I covered his campaign
launch back in 20, 15,
and I remember for a couple of months
after that
there was a,
you know, fascination
with the spectacle of it all
but the sort of persistent question of
is he serious, is he really running?
Is he really going to go for it?
And in the end he did.
Yeah,
I don't think we can really
make any broad judgments
based on what's happening right now.
But it does seem to me, David,
that he is responding to the environment
which is that other
people are thinking about running.
He responded to two of them
yesterday as well.
Nikki Haley called me the other day
to talk to me.
We'll talk to her for a little while.
But I said, look,
you know, go buy your heart
if you want to run.
She's publicly saying,
I would never run against my president.
He was a great president.
Florida was actually closed
for a very long period.
I remember
it closed the beaches
and everything else.
You know,
they're trying to rewrite history.
By they, he means Ron DeSantis.
Right.
It is interesting because he is
he's clearly searching.
I think Alex, for what you're describing
as sort of
like a message of sorts
that isn't just let me revisit
the greatest hits.
And there's no doubt,
Abby, to your point,
that he's trying to fill
the void right now
because he's the only declared
presidential candidate.
And so
he wants to set the terms of debate
for Haley and DeSantis and and and start
making sure
that it's all playing out on his terms.
I'm not sure that that will be the case,
but that is clearly his hope.
What is also different
and I just think we can't
he is a twice impeached former president
who is facing a ton of legal peril
right now
in multiple investigations
that by its nature,
no matter how much he wants to dismiss,
it makes him
a different Donald Trump
in this moment,
entering this third campaign
than we've seen him before.
And what exactly is the pitch
to voters here?
I mean, I guess
the pitches that America was great
when he was president
and he's going to make it great again.
I mean, that he has kind of been
rehashing a lot of his old hits,
policy-wise at least,
you know, when you listen to
what he's saying.
But I mean,
I do think there are too many questions
still about whether or not, you know,
I was Chris
what you said, Alex,
because I think
that there was a lot of skepticism
when he first ran.
And I, I have a skeptical now, too.
But the one thing that keeps me
still parsing is, is that, you know,
nobody else has entered the field yet.
There was a lot of enthusiasm
ahead of the midterms
when I was out talking to voters
for Ron DeSantis.
People thought he could legislate that.
He had a lot of Trump ideas,
but he could
sort of speak to them
in a more eloquent way.
Ron, Atlanta has not officially entered.
Other people
are still waiting in the wings.
And so at least for now,
I mean,
there does seem to be this hesitation
within the Republican Party
to see where he goes.
There's absolutely a hesitation
on the fact of those other challengers
and uncomfortable
even with the reality
of a diminished Trump,
that he's
still not an easy person to run against.
But I think another thing
has really stuck out for me
about this version of the Trump campaign,
because there has been real energy
on the grassroots Republican side
over the speaker fight
and over of replacing Ronna McDaniel
as RNC chair.
And Donald Trump
was on the wrong side
of both of those things.
He is not only perspective
from the perspective
of the Republican grassroots
And so not only are we talking about
the candidate
who who is rehashing kind of old fights,
but in the way that the movement
he has inspired
has transitioned,
particularly since the midterms
that was seen
as universally disappointing.
He is not speaking that
same language right now.
And so you not only have
a Donald Trump disconnect,
what we know
with the kind of Republican
establishment figures
who blame him for those midterms
candidates elections.
You also have a disconnect
between Donald Trump
and the Republican grassroots right now,
which is currently organized
which are currently been motivated
by things
where he was on these complete
opposite side.
Well, I want to get back to something
that we were just discussing, which is
why aren't there more Republicans
putting their name in the hat?
Bob Vander
Plaats, an Iowa conservative activist,
told Politico
that I think it's going to be
one of those deals of who's
going to break first,
who, who's going to be the first
announced candidate
once that person gets in.
You'll see others follow suit.
So who will it be?
Will it be?
Are they all waiting for decent
just to get in?
You know, it
reminds me of one of those
sort of old martial arts movies
where like the bad guys run at Bruce
Lee one at a time, and he just hit
the wall.
And there is a collective
action problem here, right?
The first person to get in
is going to
find themselves in this brutal firefight
with Donald Trump.
None of them really has the firepower
to go up against him,
except maybe Ron DeSantis
who seems like he's
going to take his time and let Florida's
legislative session play out.
I do think there's a real risk
on the part of the other
candidates of overthinking this. Right.
And trying to find exactly the right
time to get in win at the
at the end of the day,
if you want to beat Donald Trump,
you should probably get in there
and beat Donald Trump.
There's no good solution to this
because you get into early.
You'll probably get a nickname.
You'll just be out there,
your neck out there for him to attack.
I totally agree with that.
At the same time.
It's not like the Trump
playbook is a mystery.
Right? We all know the
complex thing to
figure out something else to do about it.
All right.