Donald Trump told Newsmax on Wednesday he’s not ready to announce whether he’ll run for president again in 2024, but he hinted at plans for a comeback.
The plans: Newsmax host Greg Kelly repeatedly pushed Trump on his political future, at one point asking, “It’s a no-brainer, you’re going to run for president in 2024, right? Why wouldn’t you run?”
- While Trump demurred that it’s “too early to say” about 2024, he touted recent polls showing Republicans rallying behind him following his acquittal on an impeachment charge for allegedly inciting the Jan. 6 Capitol riot.
- “I’m looking at poll numbers that are through the roof,” he said. “Let’s say someone gets impeached, typically your numbers would go down … like a dead balloon. But the numbers are good, very high,”
Trump also revealed he’s considering building his own social-media network after being banned by Twitter and Facebook.
- “If you look at what’s going on with Twitter, I understand it’s become very boring and millions of people are leaving. They’re leaving it because it’s not the same and I can understand that … It’s become very boring; we don’t want to go back to Twitter,” he said.
- “There is also the other option of building your own site. Because we have more people than anybody. You can literally build your own site.”
In addition to Newsmax, Trump called into One America News and Fox News on Wednesday for his first TV interviews since losing the 2020 election, which he continued to allege was stolen from him.
- The occasion for cable news blitz was the death of Rush Limbaugh, whom Trump awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom at the State of the Union last year after the conservative radio legend’s cancer diagnosis.
Next up: Trump is slated to make his first post-presidential public appearance on Sunday at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Orlando.
- “Trump plans to send the message next weekend that he is Republicans’ ‘presumptive 2024 nominee’ with a vise grip on the party’s base,” Axios reported on Monday, citing “top Trump allies.”
- The former president’s sky-high popularity with Republicans is bolstered by a database of tens of millions of names and $75 million in the bank for his leadership PAC, Save America, Axios noted.
- “Trump effectively is the Republican Party,” Trump senior adviser Jason Miller said. “The only chasm is between Beltway insiders and grassroots Republicans around the country.”
