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A top spokesperson for Ron DeSantis’ super PAC is sounding a decidedly dour note on the Florida governor’s presidential prospects, saying his campaign is facing an “uphill battle” and is trailing badly in the key nominating states.
Steve Cortes, who previously supported Donald Trump, also heaped praise on the former president, calling him a “runaway frontrunner” and “maestro” of the debate.
"Right now in national polling we are way behind, I’ll be the first to admit that,” Cortes said in a Twitter spaces event that was recorded on Sunday night. “I believe in being blunt and honest. It's an uphill battle but clearly Donald Trump is the runaway frontrunner.”
Calling the DeSantis campaign the “clear underdog,” he added: "In the first four states which matter tremendously, polls are a lot tighter, we are still clearly down. We're down double digits, we have work to do.”
The remarks amounted to a remarkably blunt admission of vulnerability from within the ranks of a leading presidential operation, contrasting with the projection of confidence that other DeSantis aides often adopt. Cortes did say he thought the gap between Trump and DeSantis could be closed once DeSantis’ personal and political story is shared more widely on the campaign trail. But he also rationalized a DeSantis primary campaign failure by predicting healthy competition could benefit Trump in a general election.
"If we do not prevail — and I have every intent on winning, I didn’t sign up for this to come in second — but if we do not prevail I will tell you this, we will make President Trump better for having this kind of primary,” Cortes said.
The commentary by Cortes came in a conversation with the @CryptoLawyerz, an anonymous Twitter account popular with conservatives.
When asked about his comments, Cortes responded in an email that Trump “has debated through two successive presidential cycles, so of course he possesses a lot of experience in that arena. But I am convinced that Governor DeSantis will outperform expectations and inform large audiences about his amazing life, political record, and winning agenda for the presidency.“
He said, “Taking on an incumbent or former president in the primary always represents a significant challenge. I gladly embraced that reality in joining the team. All of us on Team DeSantis remain convinced that the governor has a strong path to the nomination, and the best chance of any Republican to defeat Biden in the general election.“
In a statement, DeSantis campaign spokesperson Bryan Griffin said, “Ron Desantis has been underestimated in every race he has won, and this time will be no different. Donald Trump has to explain to Republican voters why he didn't do the things he is now promising in his first term as president. Governor Ron DeSantis over-delivered on his promises as governor and has the national vision we need to restore our country, clean out DC, and lead our Great American Comeback. This campaign is a marathon, not a sprint; we will be victorious."
Cortes endorsed DeSantis for president in May after working on the Trump campaign in 2016 and 2020. He joined the Never Back Down super PAC as an adviser and spokesperson in that same month. On the Twitter spaces discussion, Cortes called DeSantis the “next natural evolution” of the America First movement and said he does not believe Trump is the “most conservative, patriotic, populist candidate who can win the general election.”
“I am of the belief that since 2020 he has not gained any voters, but he has shed quite a few,” Cortes said of Trump.
In national polls, Trump has maintained a consistent, double digit lead over his 2024 rivals, none of whom have managed to capture the same kind of draw or enthusiasm as the former president. His grip on the Republican electorate has strengthened in the aftermath of two indictments — one for an alleged hush money payment to a pornographic actress, the other for allegedly mishandling classified documents. And although DeSantis is seen as Trump’s biggest threat, the Florida governor has been trailing Trump in national and state polling — with the exception of a recent state poll in Wisconsin that showed the two virtually tied.
Next month, the 2024 Republican field will have the opportunity to square off in a debate hosted by the Republican National Committee and moderated by Fox News. But Trump has made clear he is unlikely to join. Cortes said it would be a “great disservice” if Trump didn’t debate. But he also suggested that DeSantis might benefit from his absence.
“Is Ron the debater that Trump is?” he said. “No, no he isn't."
“Absolutely Donald Trump is the maestro of it right, no doubt about it, right. When he gets on the debate stage, you know, and on his feet, in front of a microphone, he debates like Jack Nicklaus played golf, there's no doubt about it,” Cortes said.
In addition to providing some of the most candid observations about the race from within the DeSantis camp, Cortes talked about some of the personal attacks and backlash he faced for choosing to endorse the Florida governor over Trump.
“I was honored to work for [Trump],” he said.
But he added, “I believe we can be reasonable about where he fell short and what the path is moving forward.”
Republican presidential candidate Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis speaks at the Moms for Liberty meeting.
Shortly after Vivek Ramaswamy, the biotech entrepreneur and anti-woke crusader, announced he was seeking the Republican nomination for president, a political consultant with ties to the Conservative Political Action Conference called his campaign asking if he planned to attend.
If so, the consultant had an offer, a Ramaswamy aide recalled.
“Basically, they were like, if you pay I think it was upward of $100,000, we can get tickets and bus a bunch of people in for the straw poll,” a senior campaign official for Ramaswamy described on the condition of anonymity to share details about the call. “I was taken aback, because I’ve never been to CPAC before, and it’s very activist driven but I think if any of them knew it was an artificial poll, they’d be pretty pissed about that.”
The Ramaswamy campaign declined the offer, so they did not get any more details about where the money would go or how exactly the arrangement would work. The anecdote was shared on condition that the name of the consultant not be revealed for fear of retribution. But POLITICO confirmed that the person who made the alleged offer does indeed have ties to the conference.
“A straw poll is a vote that those in attendance get to participate in. If a presidential contender is organized and popular, they can do well,” a spokesperson for CPAC said in response to POLITICO.
After publication, a CPAC spokesperson expanded and said, “Washington DC is riddled with unscrupulous consultants who make false claims including this one. CPAC attendance was so strong that we had to close ticket sales on Friday due to concerns over capacity. And anybody with a rudimentary understanding of politics knows how a straw poll work: it takes organization and/or popularity for a candidate to do well. One thing is enduringly true about presidential politics, it takes both to get to the Oval Office."
In the past, candidates have organized for their own supporters to come to CPAC to boost their standing in the straw poll or cheer their candidate on stage. But the Ramaswamy campaign’s allegation is fundamentally different: that someone with ties to the conference offered to arrange those supporters for a fee.
It comes as there have been questions about CPAC’s influence in the broader conservative universe. The leader of the conference, Matt Schlapp, is currently being sued by a campaign staffer alleging sexual misconduct, allegations which Schlapp has denied. And it suggests that the biotech entrepreneur is designing his outsider campaign for president as a disruptive force within traditional GOP circles.
Ramaswamy first mentioned his campaign was contacted about the straw poll on Fox News Business. In an interview with POLITICO, he expanded on it, saying he decided to speak out about the call as part of his campaign’s effort to shine a light on corruption and exposing the sometimes unsavory behind the scenes deal making that is part of modern politics.
“The premise of the campaign is to drive a national identity revival, but a definite secondary goal is going to be exposing – I mean I’m not someone who has grown up in politics but everything I’ve learned suggests that there is a lot that people need to see in the open,” said Ramaswamy.
“We've decided to go ‘full transparency’ on exposing the quasi-corrupt process of the campaign itself,” he said.
Ramaswamy spoke at CPAC last week and received 1 percent support in the straw poll of potential 2024 Republican primary contenders. Former president Donald Trump came in first with 62 percent, while Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis came in at 20 percent. Perry Johnson, the millionaire from Michigan who announced his candidacy last week, and whose team had a presence at the event, earned 5 percent.
During his speech at CPAC on Friday, Ramaswamy called for a “national revival,” said he would shut down the FBI and the Department of Education, and vowed to end federally mandated affirmative action by repealing Executive Order 11246, which mandates race-based quotas for federal contractors.
"Do we want a national divorce? Or do we want a national revival? It's not going to happen automatically, whatever it is — it is going to be what we choose it to be," Ramaswamy asked the audience, referencing Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene’s calls for a “national divorce.”
Following CPAC, Ramaswamy attended the anti-tax group Club for Growth’s donor event in Palm Beach, Fla. This weekend, Ramaswamy will be attending the Hamilton Co. Republican Party Pancake Breakfast in Cincinnati, Ohio, and will be making upcoming stops in Iowa and New Hampshire.
Ramaswamy said his campaign is thinking about doing things differently when it comes to fundraising and even showing how candidates are prepped for interviews or events with expert briefings. He plans to launch a podcast in the coming weeks where the public can listen in on his briefing on topics ranging from foreign policy to health care.
“I am increasingly intrigued by the process,” Ramaswamy said of running for office. “The Republican base likes my message about fixing government management but you need to fix it in your own backyard if you’re going to preach about it.”
Vivek Ramaswamy spoke at CPAC last week and received 1 percent support in the straw poll of potential 2024 Republican primary contenders.
OXON HILL, Md. — Like most politicians considering a White House run, Ron DeSantis published a new book this past week, designed to frame him as an unapologetic truth teller, eager to tackle the hard issues of the day.
But as the work came under scrutiny, reviewers pointed out something missing. The Florida Governor had nothing to say about one of the most consequential political moments of the past few years: the Jan. 6 riot at the Capitol.
They shouldn’t have been surprised.
If any subject is verboten in the early stages of the Republican presidential primary, it’s the insurrection that once served as a defining point in 2024 frontrunner Donald Trump’s career. Whereas Republicans once talked openly about it being disqualifying for the former president, today it is little more than a litmus test in GOP circles of a candidate’s MAGA bona fides. None of them want any part of it.
For a primary candidate, said Scott Walker, the former Republican governor of Wisconsin, going after Trump for Jan. 6 is “a huge risk.”
The Jan. 6 avoidance is not just in DeSantis’ book. Mike Pence, the former vice president and likely presidential candidate, is preparing to resist a grand jury subpoena for testimony about Trump’s efforts to overturn the election, seeing only political landmines in testifying. Nikki Haley, asked on a podcast recently if she would describe the riot at the Capitol as an “insurrection, a riot, or a coup,” went instead with a more banal — and safer — description: “a sad day in America.”
In the primary, said Dave Carney, a national Republican strategist based in New Hampshire, “I don’t think January 6th will come up, period.”
The insurrection wasn’t always destined to be taboo in GOP primary politics. In the immediate aftermath, the riot appeared to provide an opening not only for Trump’s loudest critics in the party, but also for more mainstream, otherwise-Trumpian Republicans seeking to distinguish themselves from him ahead of 2024.
It was Haley, the former U.N. ambassador, whoonce said she was angry and “disgusted” with Trump and told Republican National Committee members that his “actions since Election Day will be judged harshly by history.” Pence made his first post-presidential break with Trump by declaring that he and Trump might never “see eye to eye” on the insurrection. DeSantis once openly criticized “the rioting and disorder” at the Capitol.
“The calculation was that this is clearly indefensible, he’s not going to have a place in the party going forward,” said one Republican strategist and former congressional aide. “That clearly hasn’t happened … January 6th is advantageous for Trump in a Republican primary now. Nobody’s going to hit him on January 6th.”
The advantages for Trump, if they do exist, were in plain view at the gathering of conservatives at the Conservative Political Action Conference. At the yearly confab — held this year outside of Washington — some attendees wore their connection to Jan. 6 as a badge of honor and found sympathetic ears.
Micki Witthoeft, the mother of Ashli Babbitt — the protester shot and killed by Capital police at the riot as she tried to break down a door inside the building — appeared on set with Donald Trump Jr. outside the convention’s main stage. There were two booths in the CPAC exhibition hall focused on Jan. 6 defendants. And it was standing room only for a breakout session at the conference titled: “True Stories of January 6: The Prosecuted Speak.” Speakers included Jan. 6 defendants Brandon Straka, Simone Gold, West Virginia legislator Derrick Evans, John Strand and Geri Perna, the aunt of Matthew Perna, who died by suicide after pleading guilty to four charges related to the Capitol riot.
In the halls, it wasn’t unusual to bump into people who were protesting on Capitol Hill on Jan. 6. Deborah Gordon, a retiree from Maryland, said it was “disgusting” that politicians didn’t talk about Jan. 6 more. “I was there,” Gordon said. Bruce Cherry, the chair of Seminole County Republican executive committee in Florida, said it was important to reelect Trump “to pardon those people.” Melissa Cornwell, who attended CPAC from Beaumont, Texas, called Jan. 6 a “non-event,” adding that the “real insurrection” was the riots that followed the death of George Floyd in 2020.
If anything, the tone and tenor of the conference suggested that Republican presidential candidates may feel pressure from corners of the base to talk about Jan. 6 in positive terms — and rally to the defense of people arrested following the riot.
“I can tell you that just interacting with a lot of the activists here, there is concern that the violations of protocol and civil rights around the Jan. 6 issue haven’t gotten sufficient attention from the Congress, and that’s really a matter for us in the House majority more so than 2024 candidates,” Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) said on the sidelines of CPAC.
Already, the Trump world attacks on potential 2024 contenders for not being sufficiently supportive of the Jan. 6 protesters are coming. Alex Bruesewitz, a Republican strategist and influencer close to the Trumps, said others who could seek the nomination have shown they “don’t care” about Jan. 6 defendants “because they’re going to lose out on the Wall Street money, they hate Trump and his base.” Bruesewitz himself was summoned by the Jan. 6 committee but reportedly pleaded the Fifth when asked to testify about the events on that day. He once said he would help pay for the legal defense of accused Capitol rioters, while Trump has suggested pardoning some Jan. 6 defendants and even collaborated on a song with some of them.
CPAC has grown increasingly aligned with Trump, making it difficult to assess how representative its gathering is of broader Republican politics. Indeed, last August, the conference featured a fake jail cell where a convicted Capitol rioter sat, fake cried, and prayed with Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.). Still, the crowd assembled there was full of precisely the kind of hardline activists critical to presidential contenders in a GOP primary.
In the broader GOP ecosystem, even more moderate Republicans see little upside in mentioning the riot.
“I’m not trying to downplay January 6th and how terrible it was, but really, a lot of us just want to move past this guy, right?” said Mark Graul, a Republican strategist who worked on George W. Bush's 2004 campaign. “We want to move past him, and move past the awfulness, which culminated on January 6th. That was the peak of Trump awfulness.”
But Graul added that anyone running to be the GOP standard-bearer understood the calculations that come with it.
“We’re still in this stage where if you’re running for the Republican nomination, you’re going to need to get votes from people who voted for Donald Trump,” he said.
Indeed, polls show that there just isn’t much of a constituency in the GOP primary for anyone criticizing Trump on Jan. 6. More than two years after the riot, the share of Republicans who disapprove of Trump supporters taking over the Capitol building has fallen to 49 percent, from 74 percent in 2021, according to arecent Economist/YouGov poll. And even if Republicans didn’t like what they saw that day, a majority of them don’t blame Trump.
Two years ago, Walker said, Jan. 6 was worthy of condemnation. He said so at the time. But it makes no sense for presidential candidates to be talking about it now, he added, when most people have moved on.
Anymore, he said, “Nobody cares.”
Natalie Allison contributed to this report.
The advantages for former President Donald Trump, if they do exist, were in plain view at the gathering of conservatives at the Conservative Political Action Conference.
In his first minute onstage at CPAC on Friday, Steve Bannon identified one of his top targets of the moment, an entity he claimed is opposing Donald Trump’s presidential campaign at its own peril: Fox News.
The host of the popular War Room podcast and longtime Trump hand started by ripping the conservative channel for announcing that Joe Biden had won Arizona on election night in 2020.
“Fox News illegitimately called it for the opposition, and not Donald J. Trump,” the Trump adviser-turned-talk show host told the crowd in National Harbor, Maryland, an audience full of diehard MAGA supporters.
Ten minutes in, Bannon went after the network again, rousing the audience to their feet as he called out Fox for not having Trump on since he announced his campaign in November. He called out Rupert Murdoch, the News Corp. founder who sits atop the media empire.
“Murdoch, you’ve deemed Trump's not going to be president,” Bannon continued as the crowd roared with applause. “But we deem that you're not going to have a network, because we’re going to fight you every step of the way.”
Far from random broadsides, Bannon’s screed against Fox News was the latest in what has become a hot war between MAGA world and the longtime conservative channel. Trump himself has gone off on Fox News before, often for coverage he has deemed unfair. But the current state of affairs — coming at the start of what promises to be a deeply contested GOP primary — is as strained as it has ever been.
The network hasn’t featured the former president on its airwaves since November. The face of CPAC, American Conservative Union chairman Matt Schlapp, himself a close Trump ally, has also not appeared on the channel since allegations emerged in January that he sexually assaulted a campaign staffer. (Schlapp has denied wrongdoing). And in the halls of the CPAC conference, disdain for Fox News wasn’t an uncommon sentiment among those gathered.
Sandra Salstrom, a harpist from Houston, said she gets all the news she needs from Bannon’s War Room show, and enjoys tuning in to programs hosted by Charlie Kirk, another prominent right-wing commentator.
“I now have nothing to do with Fox,” said Salstrom, explaining she does not have a television at home, but used to watch the network while she was at the gym. “They disgust me.”
“I haven't watched Fox in years,” said Andra Griffin of Manatee County, Fla., who said she stopped watching the network in 2019, and was completely “unplugged from Fox” by 2020. Instead, right-wing activists like Griffin have turned their attention to more alternative conservative networks like Newsmax, which had a heavy presence at CPAC.
Fox Radio skipped its usual booth on media row at CPAC this year. Fox Nation didn't livestream or sponsor receptions as it has in years past. There were no primetime Fox News stars like Sean Hannity, Laura Ingraham, or Tucker Carlson scheduled to speak on stage — a contrast to years past, where Fox stars were in heavy rotation on the stage or in the halls.
“Dominion’s lawsuit has always been more about what will generate headlines than what can withstand legal and factual scrutiny, as illustrated by them now being forced to slash their fanciful damages demand by more than half a billion dollars after their own expert debunked its implausible claims. Their summary judgment motion took an extreme, unsupported view of defamation law that would prevent journalists from basic reporting and their efforts to publicly smear FOX for covering and commenting on allegations by a sitting President of the United States should be recognized for what it is: a blatant violation of the First Amendment," a Fox News spokesperson said in a statement.
The absence of Fox News at CPAC has fed larger questions about the role the Murdoch-owned network is gunning to play in the Republican primary. Trump’s likely 2024 rival, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, has been featured across Murdoch-owned entities as he promotes his recently published memoir. The anti-Woke activist Vivek Ramaswamy launched his presidential campaign with an appearance on Tucker Carlson’s Fox News show. And former UN Ambassador Nikki Haley has repeatedly appeared on the network, with her launch announcement covered live on TV.
All of this comes as Fox is facing a defamation lawsuit from Dominion Voting Systems, which is asking for $1.6 billion in damages over the role the network played in covering conspiracies around the 2020 election. Recent depositions reveal that high-level network officials privately cast doubt on Trump's claims that the election was stolen, even as on-air voices were backing Trump up on the false narrative.
While Trump himself has not been interviewed lately on Fox News airwaves – Semafor reported he is facing a “soft ban” by the network – he does continue to receive coverage and his campaign is referenced by hosts.
For his part, Trump has ramped up his attacks on the longtime conservative television channel, in recent days sharing multiple posts on his Truth Social platform critical of the channel and its owner, Rupert Murdoch. “Too many incompetent RINOS at FoxNews!” Trump posted on Thursday. A day earlier, Trump called Murdoch and other Fox executives a “group of MAGA Hating Globalist RINOS” who should “get out of the News Business as soon as possible.”
With Fox stars out of the picture, attendees at CPAC flocked to popular right-wing alternatives like Bannon’s War Room, which hosted its podcast live, along with Newsmax, OAN, Right Side Broadcasting Network and others.
William Marks, a software developer and manager from southern Maryland, said he still watches both Fox News and Newsmax, but believes the former is “moving further away from the conservative landscape,” a fault not of the anchors but of “the ownership,” he said.
Even with such defections, Fox News remains king of cable news and prime-time ratings. The top ten most-watched cable news shows are all on Fox News, with Tucker Carlson and the Five boasting over 3 million viewers according to AdWeek. And for conservative stars, Fox News’ evening shows are still the #1 spot for attracting attention for their cause.
“I love being back on Fox News and I have nothing bad to say about it,” said Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., who frequently appears on Fox News as well as Steve Bannon’s War Room podcast.
Steve Bannon rips into Fox News in fiery CPAC speech
Modern cities and flying cars might sound like the makings of an episode of the 1960s cartoon The Jetsons, where a fictionalized family flew around in Orbit City.
For former President Donald Trump, however, it’s the foundation of a new set of futuristic policy proposals.
In a video set to be released on Friday, Trump will call for a “quantum leap” in the American standard of living.
Trump’s plan, shared in advance with POLITICO, calls for holding a contest to design and create up to ten new “Freedom Cities,” built from the ground up on federal land. It proposes an investment in the development of vertical-takeoff-and-landing vehicles; the creation of “hives of industry” sparked by cutting off imports from China; and a population surge sparked by “baby bonuses” to encourage would-be-parents to get on with procreation. It is all, his team says, part of a larger nationwide beautification campaign meant to inspire forward-looking visions of America’s future.
“Past generations of Americans pursued big dreams and daring projects that once seemed absolutely impossible. They pushed across an unsettled continent and built new cities in the wild frontier. They transformed American life with the interstate highway system—magnificent it was. And they launched a vast network of satellites into orbit all around the earth,” Trump said in his video.
“But today, our country has lost its boldness. Under my leadership, we will get it back in a very big way. If you look at just three years ago, what we were doing was unthinkable, how good it was, how great it was for our country. Our objective will be a quantum leap in the American standard of living,” Trump said.
Trump campaign advisers acknowledge the new set of plans are out of the ordinary. But they note he’s made other eye-popping proposals before — like purchasing Greenland from Denmark. They offered analogies to Abraham Lincoln’s campaign for the transcontinental railroad, Teddy Roosevelt’s vision for a national park service, and Dwight D. Eisenhower’s Interstate Highway System.
A former celebrity real estate developer and TV personality, Trump has a long history of outlining audacious new initiatives that are heavy on imagery and light on details. The latest offerings come with a few explanations for how they will be executed.
Trump says he would host a contest for the public to design and then build “Freedom Cities” on a small portion of federal land to “reopen the frontier, reignite American imagination, and give hundreds of thousands of young people and other people, all hardworking families, a new shot at home ownership and in fact, the American Dream.”
Trump’s call for investments in vertical-takeoff-and-landing vehicles, which he says could transform transportation and connect rural and urban America, is part of a “major initiative” focused on lowering the cost of a new car and creating new transportation methods. It comes as companies like Boeing and Honda are currently spending billions to develop and test electric vertical takeoff and landing vehicles that operate like giant drones for humans.
“Just as the United States led the automotive revolution in the last century, I want to ensure that America, not China, leads this revolution in air mobility,” Trump said in the video.
As for “baby bonuses” to encourage the next baby boom and tackle America’s slowing birth rate, Trump appears to be (knowingly or not) borrowing a page from others, like Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.). During the 2020 campaign, the New Jersey Democrat proposed “baby bonds,” which would set aside funds in a savings account for every child in America.
Trump’s advisers concede that the set of proposals put out on Friday are broad brushstrokes. But they also insist that they aren’t moonshot either.
While in the White House, Trump proposed some similar ideas, like his executive order on “Promoting Beautiful Federal Civic Architecture,” that called for making classical architecture the standard for all federal buildings. It was panned by critics who said it discouraged modern ideas in design. It was ultimately revoked by President Joe Biden. Trump also called for a “Garden of American Heroes” in an executive order that would feature statues of major figures from American politics, art, science, and sports ranging from Harriet Tubman to Babe Ruth. Biden also revoked that order.
Trump’s “quantum leap” proposals are part of a series of policy videos he has rolled out since launching his campaign for president. Other videos have focused on issues like border security and education.
Earlier this week, Trump introduced his 2024 trade policy that would “tax China to build up America” and create a system that "rewards domestic production and taxes foreign companies and those who export American jobs."
Trump is set to deliver a speech at the Conservative Political Action Conference outside Washington, D.C. on Saturday, and he is expected to talk about some of his recent policy proposals.
Trump discusses vertical takeoff vehicles in 'quantum leap' plan
Donald Trump faces a dilemma just months into his third run for president: Two of his most important achievements from the White House have become politically complicated or just plain too hot to touch.
Operation Warp Speed, the public-private partnership that developed a coronavirus vaccine in record time and which Trump once called a “miracle,” has become vilified among a group of conservatives. And the toppling of Roe v. Wade by Trump-appointed Supreme Court justices has turned into a political Rorschach test for Republicans, with one camp seeing it as a boost at the ballot box and the other fearing it is a hindrance.
The tension over how and whether or not to lean into vaccines or abortion has been on display since Trump kicked off his presidential campaign.
Elsewhere, Trump has praised the anti-abortion movement and his role in picking conservative justices, but has also criticized some leaders in that movement for not doing enough in the 2022 midterm election. He has also said the issue was “poorly handled” by Republicans, pointing to members and candidates who advocated for no exceptions to bans on abortion.
Trump’s team believes that he can thread the needle between touting the work he did in facilitating the end of Roe while staying on the popular side of public opinion about abortion restrictions.
“Especially in the primary, it’s a very strong talking point for the president. He’s got a good record, and he’s on good ground going into the primary and general election,” said John McLaughlin, a Republican pollster who advises Trump. “His position since he ran for office and since he was in office has been consistent.”
But navigating those twin achievements from his time in office could become tricky to handle over the course of a potential primary and general election run. Trump has begun taking steps to try and maneuver that political landscape.
At the Council for National Policy summit last weekend at Trump Doral in Miami, he called in to praise the group’s work promoting conservative policies and touted his anti-abortion legacy, according to a recording of the call shared with POLITICO. The call came amid reports that evangelicals and pro-life leaders have been keeping their options open going into the 2024 Republican primary.
“We appointed 300 judges. We appointed, as you know, the three Supreme Court judges that made your whole right to life, and everybody was trying to get this for many, many years, for many, many decades, and we were able to get that done. And we're very proud of it, and it was a tremendous tribute to many of the people in the room that worked so hard with us,” Trump said in the roughly five-minute call. “But it was the whole pro-life movement. They say I'm the most pro-life president in American history.”
Steve Cheung, a Trump campaign spokesperson, called the former president’s record “unmatched” when it came to “nominating pro-life federal judges and Supreme Court justices that overturned Roe v. Wade.” Of his boss, he added, “there has been no bigger advocate for the [anti-abortion] movement.”
Trump is not the only Republican grappling with the issues of vaccines and abortion.
His only official challenger in the race, Nikki Haley, ignored the latter issue in her launch speech but was confronted on it after in interviews. Haley, who has said she is “pro-life” because of her experiences as a mother and as governor of South Carolina, signed a law banning abortions past 20 weeks, said she would not support a “full-out federal ban” on abortion, but wouldn’t articulate exactly what she would stand behind now, only saying that there should be “consensus” on when exactly abortion should be banned.
The issue confronting both Haley and Trump is that any abortion policy stance that plays well in a primary may present problems in a general election. While only 35 percent of Republicans said they disagreed with the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, the decision is overall unpopular among Americans, with a majority — 56 percent — saying they did not support the decision, according to a recent Ipsos poll.
Trump could be rewarded by GOP voters for putting conservatives on the Supreme Court. But Erick Erickson, a conservative radio host who does not plan to endorse any candidate in the GOP primaries, said the former president had an altogether different “vulnerability” on the topic: “that it is no longer an issue.”
“The conservative voters don’t need Donald Trump now to put conservatives on the court, he did it. If anything, he’s kind of hurt himself among social conservatives after Dobbs, by coming out and saying maybe it wasn’t a good idea,” Erickson said.
The more complicated issue, Trump allies say, will be how he navigates his role in the Covid-19 pandemic. Privately, Trump has expressed pride in the historic efforts to produce a vaccine. But he is also quite aware that the far-right has made vaccinations and especially mandates a toxic issue. He was personally booed for telling a crowd he had gotten a booster shot.
Cheung called Operation Warp Speed a “once-in-a-lifetime initiative that gave people the option of utilizing therapeutics if they wished to do so.” But he also stressed that Trump “fought against any attempt to federalize the pandemic response by protecting every state’s right to ultimately decide what is best for their people because of the unique challenges each state faced.”
Since launching his campaign, Trump has attacked another likely 2024 political foe, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis for trying to “rewrite history” on his coronavirus response. Trump’s campaign has built up an arsenal of video clips showing DeSantis as supportive of the Covid vaccine even as he has become favored by the anti-vaccine right. The video moments include DeSantis personally greeting a FedEx truck with the first batch of Pfizer vaccines arriving in Florida.
And one person close to the campaign suggested trying to turn former Vice President Mike Pence and Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner into the faces of Operation Warp Speed, noting that they had leadership roles in the vaccine's development. But it’s unclear just how effective those lines of attack would be as time passes since the pandemic.
“There may be a small faction in the Republican Party that this applies to, but I don’t see how many Republicans are going to hold it against anyone for promoting the vaccine back in 2020, whether it was Trump, DeSantis or anyone,” said Matt Wolking, a former Trump campaign official and Republican strategist. “The true hardcore anti-vaccine [crowd is] found on the right and the left and it’s been that way for decades. So I think most Republicans are going to continue to advocate for personal choice and not mandates.”
But distrust of the Covid-19 vaccine — not just the mandates — has been a central theme of far-right broadcasts, including Steve Bannon’s “War Room” podcast, which regularly features skeptics on the show. Bannon, a former Trump strategist, has called vaccines and vaccine mandates a “major issue” for Republican voters and Trump’s base. He has warned against Trump leaning into his role promoting the development of the vaccine.
Still, McLaughlin said he doesn’t see any risk to how Trump handles the vaccine. Some conservative voters may recoil at it. But, he said, the more significant dynamic was that the issue itself was no longer as animating as it once was.
“I think people have moved on,” McLaughlin said. “I think there are more pressing issues that people are looking at. When you talk to the average person, they’re struggling to buy food or buy gas.”
Trump’s team believes that he can thread the needle between touting the work he did in facilitating the end of Roe while staying on the popular side of public opinion about abortion restrictions.
Donald Trump is settling on a simple foreign policy pitch in his second bid for the White House: Want World War 3? Vote for the other guy.
Over the past week, Trump has assailed President Joe Biden’s handling of Afghanistan. He has said he could end the almost year-long conflict in Ukraine within “24 hours,” but without any indication how, and suggested sending tanks to the country could spark nuclear war. He has railed against China and called Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis a “globalist.”
The claims are a continuation of a posture Trump sought to project both as a candidate for president in 2016 and while in the White House — one occasionally contradicted by his record.
But his renewed focus on international affairs also comes as the Republican primary field is expected to get crowded with potential challengers likely to pitch their own foreign policy bona fides. That includes two former Trump lieutenants: former U.N. ambassador Nikki Haley and former secretary of State Mike Pompeo.
Those close to Trump’s campaign operation say he plans to try and paint himself as an anti-war dove amongst the hawks. They believe doing so will resonate with GOP voters who are divided on, but growing wary of, continued support for Ukraine in its war with Russia.
“Trump is the peace president and he’s the first president in two generations to not start a war, whereas if you look at DeSantis' congressional record, he’s voted for more engagement and more military engagement overseas,” said a person close to the Trump campaign, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe internal discussions.
“Trump is the only person who has said no more funding for the Ukraine war. I haven't heard Nikki Haley say anything like that... Pompeo or Pence? Where do they stand on Ukraine?”
In fact, Haley, Pence and Pompeo have all, to varying degrees, called for the U.S. to fund Ukrainians and even, on occasion, criticized the Biden administration for not doing enough.
Still, Trump’s modernized “America First” framework has already had profound implications, both in upending establishment Republican and neo-conservative orthodoxy on foreign policy and in muddying the consensus on issues ranging from military intervention to how to handle ruthless dictators.
And as multiple Republican officials noted for this story, last week the conservative and once-hawkish Heritage Foundation stepped away from its long standing demands for a robust defense budget and said cuts to Pentagon spending should be on the table as part of the debt limit negotiations.
“I do think national security is going to be a much more important issue in 2024 than in many of the most recent presidential elections,” said Trump’s former national security adviser-turned-public critic John Bolton, who also is considering a 2024 run. “You may have noticed there's a Chinese balloon floating over the country today.”
Aware that his instincts aren’t as hawkish as some of his potential Republican challengers, Trump and his aides have started to draw contrasts and set the parameters of the debate.
On Thursday, Trump said Pompeo “took a little bit more credit than he should” for accomplishments made while he was secretary of State, a sign that Trump may try to minimize his opponents’ foreign policy experience, despite having been appointed by him. Later that day, the super PAC supporting Trump highlighted recent attacks on Haley by right-wing conservative commentators, some of whom called her a “warmonger” and “Neocon Nikki.”
Trump’s team was also eager to tout a Wall Street Journal op-ed endorsement this week from Sen. J.D. Vance, the populist Republican from Ohio, who touted Trump’s inclination against getting into foreign entanglements.
“Every Republican running is going to be opposed to [critical race theory]. Every Republican running is going to say we need to secure the border and we need to oppose amnesty. Every Republican running is for lower taxes and less regulation,” a Vance adviser said of Trump’s early foreign policy play. “It makes sense for Trump to drag the race where his opponents don’t want to be.”
Trump’s team also sees foreign policy as an area to draw distinctions with his potential top political foe, DeSantis, who gained national attention for his handling of the Covid-19 pandemic and embrace of cultural wars but who, as governor, has a limited track record internationally.
“The governors will have a tough time proving their foreign policy chops because it’s not in their job description so they’re going to have to do something to step up and prove to voters that they’re capable of handling all these issues that present themselves on the global stage,” said David Urban, a Republican strategist who remains close to numerous potential 2024 contenders.
“[Potential] candidates such as Pompeo and Haley and Pence and the [former] president can say, ‘Here’s me sitting down with Kim Jong Un, and here’s what we were able to accomplish with the Abraham Accords or on USMCA.’ Everyone has something they can talk about on concrete terms, where governors can’t and that will be a point of differentiation among a wide group of them.”
There are already signs that DeSantis is making moves to address this likely line of attack. He has had phone calls and meetings with foreign leaders and ambassadors in recent months, including a face-to-face session in Tallahassee last week with Mario Abdo Benítez, the president of Paraguay. Relatives of Paraguay’s first lady – Silvana Abdo – were killed in the deadly Surfside condominium collapse of 2021.
Back in December, DeSantis met in his office with Michael Herzog, the Israeli ambassador to the U.S., along with Yousef Al Otaiba, the ambassador from the United Arab Emirates. Right after DeSantis handily won re-election he met top officials from Japan, including Koji Tomita, ambassador to the United States, as well as Japanese business leaders.
“Florida continues to be an important political and economic partner to many countries around the world, and as foreign officials request meetings with our office it is appropriate to further develop these ties,” said Bryan Griffin, a spokesman for DeSantis.
Bolton, for his part, said he thought Trump would prove vulnerable on foreign policy when it became clear that he had none.
“He doesn’t have policy on much of anything, he has Donald Trump,” he said. “So his most recent musing is that if he were president he could solve Ukraine-Russia dispute in 24 hours — I think it is so ridiculous it falls on its own weight. …I think people over time and self-identified Republicans just don’t buy it."
But so far, Trump’s other likely opponents aren’t taking the bait. DeSantis this week hit back on Trump’s digs about the governor’s Covid response, touting his margin of victory in Florida’s November election, but has not sought to defend his record on foreign policy.
A person close to Haley’s political operation, meanwhile, said the former U.N. ambassador will tout her own foreign policy record, one that involved helping Trump secure some of his top accomplishments abroad. They include moving the United States embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, repealing a nuclear deal with Iran and securing buy-in from China on sanctions against North Korea.
While some big gulfs do exist between Haley and her former boss — she has championed U.S. support of Ukraine and became a vocal critic of Putin and Moscow during her tenure in the Trump administration — she likely won’t take swings at Trump, choosing instead to criticize Biden’s approach to China, Iran and the U.S withdrawal from Afghanistan.
“That is not the focus,” the Haley ally said of contrasting with Trump. “We are focused on Biden.”
Those close to Donald Trump’s campaign operation say he plans to try and paint himself as an anti-war dove amongst the hawks.
Former President Donald Trump’s principal fundraising committee spent more than it raised during the final month of 2022, underscoring Trump’s fundraising challenges as he attempts a political comeback.
The Save America Joint Fundraising Committee, the primary fundraising vehicle for Trump’s 2024 campaign and his leadership PAC, raised just shy of $5 million between Nov. 29 and Dec. 31, according to filings reported to the Federal Election Commission on Tuesday.
But the fundraising apparatus spent heavily to do so, including nearly $2.5 million on texting, $1.7 million on online advertising and $950,000 on list rentals — totals that when combined exceed what the group took in over that period.
Despite those high expenses, the fundraising committee — which had money in the bank going into December — still distributed significant funds to Trump’s campaign committee, enabling him to pay staff and fund a variety of campaign initiatives over the holidays.
But the high costs of fundraising are an ominous sign, as the early days of campaigns are often a time for candidates to reap easy cash from enthusiastic donors.
Trump has significant fundraising work to do ahead of what could be a grueling election cycle. His campaign reported only $3 million in cash on hand, compared to more than $19 million that his campaign had at the same time in the 2020 election cycle. Four years ago, the then-president also did not have a competitive primary approaching.
The former president’s fundraising numbers would still be enviable for many candidates. December is typically a slow fundraising month, and the fundraising committee raised more than $15 million in October and November, mostly before Trump’s presidential campaign launched. Declining rates of return on digital fundraising is a problem that has plagued many candidates. But Trump was once considered the exception to his party’s digital fundraising woes, as he raised record sums online during the 2020 election cycle and continued raising large amounts of money after he left office in 2021.
“President Trump has raised $21.3 million in the last quarter, proving that he is an unstoppable force that continues to dominate politics,” said Steven Cheung, a spokesperson for the Trump campaign. “The campaign built out a second-to-none operation both on the national level and in early states since announcing. The President will wage an aggressive and fully-funded campaign to take our country back from Joe Biden and Democrats who seek to destroy our country.”
Trump will still benefit from significant outside money. A super PAC backing him, MAGA Inc., reported having $54 million in cash on hand at the end of 2022 and will likely look to target potential GOP primary opponents in advertising — a costly part of any campaign.
Overall, Trump’s fundraising committee spent over $250,000 on top political consultants and staff, while his campaign spent another more than $330,000 on staff and consultants.
The joint fundraising committee paid more than $4,400 to GS2LAW PLLC, the law firm representing Trump in his lawsuit against journalist Bob Woodward over audio of their interviews released by Woodward. Other major campaign expenses in December included $67,000 spent at Mar-a-Lago and a $5,000 donation to the Republican Party of Iowa.
The filings give some clues as to who exactly is working with Trump in the early days of his campaign. Aides say Trump’s 2024 operation, headquartered in West Palm Beach, Fla., not far from Trump’s Mar-a-lago club, is expected to be scrappier than the large 2020 campaign based at a high rise in Virginia.
Over $50,000 went towards paying advisers like Boris Epshteyn and Christina Bobb, who have assisted the former president on his numerous legal cases. The fundraising arm also paid longtime Trump aides like Lynne Patton, who has worked closely with the Trump family for years and was with Trump since his first campaign, and Dan Scavino, Trump’s director of social media in the White House who will continue that work on the campaign.
Other aides included in the filing include Margo Martin, who worked for Trump in the White House and has continued to be a press and communications aide for his reelect, Liz (Harrington) Shrew, a spokeswoman for Trump who frequently appears on right-wing media, Justin Caporale, a Melania Trump aide-turned-operations adviser, and Danny Tiso, a press lead for the campaign.
Vincent Haley and Ross Worthington, Trump’s top policy advisers and speechwriters who worked with him in the White House, are on the campaign payroll. And so are two of the people frequently at Trump’s side: Natalie Harp, the young OAN anchor-turned-aide, and Walt Nauta, Trump’s former military aide in the White House who moved down to Florida to continue to work for Trump and found himself at the center of Trump’s Mar-a-lago document drama.
Former President Donald Trump arrives to speak at a campaign event at the South Carolina Statehouse on Jan. 28, 2023, in Columbia, S.C.
COLUMBIA, S.C. — Since announcing in November, Donald Trump had an unconventional start to his third presidential campaign: He did not campaign at all.
That’s now changing, and part of the reason the former president is holding his first formal campaign events of 2024 in New Hampshire and South Carolina this weekend is that others may be forcing his hand.
In recent days, former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley called Trump and suggested she would be announcing her decision to enter the presidential race soon, a conversation that a person familiar with it described as cordial.
“She called me and said she’d like to consider it. And I said you should do it,” Trump told reporters, noting that Haley once said she would not get in the race if Trump runs again.
But Haley may be only a modest challenge for Trump going forward. He also is on a collision course with Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who is widely expected to jump into the race.
On Saturday, Trump took his sharpest swings at DeSantis to date, accusing the governor of “trying to rewrite history” over his response to the Covid-19 pandemic. Trump said DeSantis, who has been openly skeptical about government efforts to vaccinate people against the virus, “promoted the vaccine as much as anyone.” He praised governors who did not close down their states, noting that DeSantis ordered the closure of beaches and business in some parts of the state.
“When I hear that he might [run] I think it’s very disloyal,” Trump said.
As for the polls showing DeSantis beating him in key nominating states, Trump was dismissive.
“He won’t be leading, I got him elected,” he said. “I'm the one that chose him.”
For months Trump has been tucked away at his resort in Palm Beach, where he has hosted parties, sent out missives on his social media site Truth Social, played golf, and plotted out his next steps.
When he re-emerged on Saturday, flying to New Hampshire on his rehabbed Trump-branded 757 plane, he was determined to showcase himself as a candidate who still has the star power that catapulted him to the White House in 2016, and could once again elbow out a full field of Republican challengers.
“They said ‘he's not doing rallies, he is not campaigning. Maybe he's lost his step,’” Trump said at a meeting of the New Hampshire Republican Party. “I’m more angry now, and I'm more committed now than I ever was.”
Unlike 2020, when he ran unopposed as president, Trump is expected to have a field of Republican challengers to deal with this time around, beyond Haley. In anticipation of a crowded field, Trump’s campaign has compiled research on different potential candidates, according to an adviser. But Trump himself brushed off concerns that he is in danger of not securing the nomination. “I don’t think we have competition this time either, to be honest,” he said.
At the New Hampshire GOP meeting, Trump announced outgoing New Hampshire GOP Chair Stephen Stepanek would help oversee his campaign in the first-in-the-nation primary state.
And later in the day, at an appearance at the South Carolina statehouse, Trump announced endorsements from close ally and occasional golf buddy Sen. Lindsey Graham, and Republican Gov. Henry McMaster — a notable display of political muscle in Haley’s home state.
“The good news for the Republican Party is there are many, many talented people for years to come, but there is only one Donald Trump,” Graham said. “How many times have you heard we like Trump’s policies but we want somebody new. There are no Trump policies without Donald Trump.”
But Republican activists in New Hampshire are plainly divided. As Stepanek rejoins the Trump campaign, outgoing Vice Chair Pamela Tucker was recruiting volunteers for Ron to the Rescue, a super PAC formed after the midterms to boost DeSantis if he runs for president.
“We’re not never-Trumpers. We’re people who supported Trump. We love Trump. But we also know, more importantly, that we need to win. And Ron DeSantis has proven it time and time again now he can win elections,” Tucker said in an interview.
Matt Mayberry, a former congressional candidate and past New Hampshire GOP vice chair who supported Trump and has appeared at rallies with him in the state, said he isn’t taking sides yet in the still-forming primary.
“Let them all come,” he said.
Walter Stapleton, a GOP state representative from Claremont, sat toward the back of the auditorium wearing a Trump hat. But he said he, too, was undecided as to whom he’s backing in 2024.
“We have to put a candidate there that can win and maybe draw some of the independents and some of the voters from the other side of the aisle. I think DeSantis is the runner for that,” Stapleton said. “But I’m always willing to see if Trump will change his tack … and come across more balanced and more reasonable.”
During his speech in New Hampshire, Trump doled out red meat to a friendly crowd. The crowd roared with applause when he said that, if elected, he would “eliminate federal funding for any school that pushes critical race theory or left-wing gender ideology,” and support “direct election of school principals by the parents.”
His speech in New Hampshire echoed policy prescriptions he has released over the past several weeks in the form of video addresses, on issues such as education and protecting Social Security and Medicare. His team has seen those pronouncements as a way to maneuver back onto the political stage without having to organize the signature rallies that defined Trump’s prior bids.
Saturday, however, was about preparing for life back on the trail. The day comes as Trump has dipped in recent polling from New Hampshire and South Carolina.
Despite those surveys, Trump — the only declared candidate — consistently leads in national polls against a field of potential challengers, including DeSantis, his former vice president Mike Pence, and former members of his cabinet, including Mike Pompeo and Haley.
Trump said he welcomes the competition. “My attitude is, if they want to do it, they should do it. I have a good relationship with all of them.”
Trump was joined Saturday by some familiar faces from his White House days, including social media guru Dan Scavino, political director Brian Jack, and Jason Miller, as well as his campaign’s new top lieutenants, Susie Wiles and Chris LaCivita. The campaign has grown in recent months with a series of new hires and the establishment of a campaign headquarters in West Palm Beach, Florida, not far from Trump’s home in Mar-a-Lago.
Along with staff from the Trump-allied Make America Great Again PAC, there are around 40 people working on Trump’s campaign or with the aligned PAC, according to multiple advisers.
There is a push for the campaign to be scrappier than it was in 2020, when a massive operation worked out of a slick office building in Arlington, Virginia. And that ethos, according to an adviser, extends to how Trump will approach fundraising with a focus on small-dollar donations over big donor events.
The Trump campaign will still be working with longtime adviser Brad Parscale’s Nucleus to send out emails but is also working with an entirely new vendor in 2020 — Campaign Inbox — to help with digital fundraising.
Both Trump and his team seemed eager on Saturday to get back to the hustle and bustle of his time in the White House, and there were signals he has kept his same habits. Following Trump on the plane on Saturday were his assistants — Natalie Harp, the young OAN-anchor turned aide, and Walt Nauta, who carried a giant stack of newspapers on board for Trump to read through on the flight. Margo Martin, a former White House press aide who has worked for Trump in Florida since his 2020 loss, watched from the tarmac as Trump boarded the plane with a wave.
"We need a President who is ready to hit the ground running on day one, and boy am I hitting the ground running,” Trump said later in the day.
Lisa Kashinsky contributed reporting from New Hampshire.
Former President Donald Trump speaks at the New Hampshire Republican State Committee's Annual Meeting on Jan. 28 in Salem, New Hampshire.
Former President Donald Trump issued a warning to Republican lawmakers on Friday: Don’t lay a finger on entitlement programs as part of the debt ceiling showdown with the White House.
“Under no circumstances should Republicans vote to cut a single penny from Medicare or Social Security,” Trump said in a video message.
The two-minute video — which goes on to lambaste President Joe Biden over the migration crisis at the southern border — is part of a series of policy announcements put out by his campaign. And it comes amid growing brinkmanship between congressional Republicans and the White House over raising the nation’s debt limit.
Republicans have vowed not to raise the federal government’s borrowing capacity unless Biden makes steep cuts to federal spending, potentially impacting social insurance programs like Social Security and Medicare. Trump’s video is a warning to his fellow party members not to go there. Instead, he suggests targeting foreign aid, cracking down on migration, ending “left wing gender programs from our military,” and “billions being spent on climate extremism.”
“Cut waste, fraud and abuse everywhere that we can find it and there is plenty there's plenty of it,” Trump says. “But do not cut the benefits our seniors worked for and paid for their entire lives. Save Social Security, don't destroy it.”
The video message was shared in advance of its release with POLITICO.
Trump’s position echoes his long-held, albeit unorthodox, conviction that the Republican Party should stay away from attaching themselves to entitlement reform. Prior to being elected president, Trump was highly critical of then-Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) for pushing austerity budgets during the Obama years. As a candidate for president, he insisted he would preserve both Medicare and Social Security. There was never any serious discussion of doing so during his time in office, though he obliquely hinted he may consider it in a second term.
Nevertheless, in issuing his statement now, Trump places his fellow Republicans in a political corner. Several of them have openly discussed using the looming debt ceiling standoff to extract cuts in non-discretionary spending, though party leadership has not fully embraced such a demand.
Over the last few months Trump himself has insisted that congressional Republicans use the debt ceiling as a leverage point to achieve policy objectives, despite having done no such thing during any of the times the debt ceiling was lifted when he was president. But his statement makes clear he views certain pursuits as off limits. And it puts him at least partially on the same page as Biden, who has not only insisted he won’t cut Social Security or Medicare but excoriated Republicans for suggesting they would.
The statement is among a series of policy-specific videos Trump has released since formally launching his third bid for the White House. And it suggests that the ex-president is looking to enhance his footprint on the current political landscape following weeks of criticisms that his campaign was off to a sluggish start.
Trump is slated to be in South Carolina next Saturday to make announcements related to campaign hires at an event his aides have described not as a rally but a more “intimate” gathering. Since announcing his third presidential run, Trump has not held any rallies and has remained at his properties in South Florida.
But Trump’s team has said they are at work behind the scenes from the campaign headquarters in West Palm Beach, and the ex-president will soon start making more public appearances, including a speech at the upcoming CPAC conference outside Washington, D.C.
Trump’s team has also asked Facebook to allow him back on the platform after he was thrown off of it following the Jan. 6 insurrection he helped foment. The social media platform has played an important role in fundraising and voter outreach, according to aides, and Meta is set to decide if it will lift Trump’s suspension this month.
In issuing his statement now, the former president places his fellow Republicans in a political corner.
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