(PatrioticPost.com)- Former President Donald Trump’s announcement that he was going to run for the White House again in 2024 was expected for months. As such, it didn’t really go over as planned — with not as much fanfare and even less attention paid to it around the country.
But, the real potential problem for the Trump 2024 campaign isn’t the fact that the campaign announcement was lackluster, according to Politico, but rather that many Republicans haven’t paid him much attention in the time since the announcement.
Earlier this year, it was rumored that many potential Republican presidential candidates would cower and run away if and when Trump announced he would be running again. But, now, that is proving to not happen at all.
Last weekend, many of these potential GOP candidates went to the Republican Jewish Coalition conference, which was held in Las Vegas. One of those candidates — Nikki Haley, who served as the U.N. Ambassador under Trump and said she wouldn’t run if her former boss did — said she was considering a presidential run in 2024 in a “serious way.”
Earlier in 2022, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis was viewed as a possible running mate for Trump. Now, DeSantis is seen as Trump’s main rival in the race. DeSantis hasn’t officially announced his candidacy yet, but his camp already has plans to start running ads on TV in the crucial primary state of Iowa this week.
Politico wrote that Trump was even reinstated on Twitter last week after Elon Musk bought the company and took it private. But, the day after the reinstatement was announced, the conservative network that Trump once counted on for support, Fox News Sunday, talked more about the debacle over tickets for the upcoming tour of Taylor Swift than it did about Trump.
Bob Vander Plaats says this is all bad news for Trump, and he knows a thing or two about politics. He serves as an evangelical leader in the state of Iowa, which is the first caucus in the primary season, and he also served as the national co-chair for the 2016 presidential campaign of Senator Ted Cruz.
He told Politico:
“The people talking about [Trump’s campaign announcement] in my circles, it’s almost like it didn’t happen. That, to me, is what is telling, where people believe we probably need to move forward, not look in the rearview mirror.”
Trump held onto control of the GOP even after he lost re-election in the 2020 presidential race. Many in Washington still bent to whatever he said and wished.
And while he had a lot of success getting certain GOP candidates through to the General Election in the midterms earlier this month, many of his candidates failed miserably against their Democratic challenges.
Now, many of the top Republicans aren’t afraid to stand up to Trump. Politico reports that some of these people aren’t even paying Trump any attention at all — with some siding with DeSantis already.
