In recent weeks and months he has been hinting that he would. “I will very, very likely do it again,” Trump told attendees at a rally in Iowa earlier this month. He plans to announce his candidacy at an event at 9 p.m. ET at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida, while Republicans are still reeling from voters’ rejection of several of their key race candidates — many of whom had been endorsed and even elected. from Trump. Some Republicans accused Trump of boosting a series of extremist candidates who were ultimately rejected by independents and did little to motivate grassroots voters. “The party needs to get over Donald Trump,” retired Republican Sen. Pat Toomey said after the election. Democratic Lt. Gov. John Fetterman defeated Republican Mehmet Oz in the race for Tomei’s seat. Former Massachusetts Gov. Charlie Baker, a Republican, also suggested that keeping Trump in the GOP hurt their chances for a “red wave.” “There is significant influence from the former president, and I think that influence probably hurt the party and hurt the party’s chances on Election Day,” Baker told CNN. Trump has also been criticized by his former vice president, Mike Pence, after the January 6, 2021 attack on the US Capitol that led to a rift between the two. Asked by ABC News if he thinks Trump should be president again, the former vice president said it’s up to the American people, but “I think we’ll have better options in the future.” Pence is a possible presidential candidate in 2024. Some Trump allies urged the former president to wait until the Dec. 6 runoff election in Georgia between Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock and Republican challenger Herschel Walker, CBS News reported, but Trump ignored them. He thought it would look weak if he just announced an exploratory committee and not his campaign, a senior adviser told CBS News last week. On the day his announcement was expected, even one of his closest allies, GOP Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, said he didn’t think Trump should announce his candidacy for the White House just yet. “I just think we have to finish 2022 before we talk about 2024,” he told reporters on Tuesday. He said he thinks Trump “has a decent chance of coming back — maybe a good chance — depending on how the country plays out next year.” But first, he added, referring to the second Walker-Warner Senate race, “I’d rather put Georgia behind us.” While Trump’s influence in the party remains strong, the failed races of several Trump-endorsed candidates, Florida Gov. Ron DeSandis’ dominant performance last week and Republicans’ failure to capture the Senate have raised some doubts about the prospects of former president for 2024. He also enters the fray with personal and professional legal battles that have yet to be resolved. And that was the week the January 6th House Select Committee asked him to testify about his actions around January 6th, 2021, during the attack on the US Capitol by thousands of his supporters. He sued the select committee in an attempt to block the committee’s subpoena. Committee Chairman Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Mississippi, and Vice Chairman Liz Cheney, R-Wyoming, told Trump in a letter that the committee has “collected overwhelming evidence, including from dozens of former appointees and your staff, that you personally orchestrated and oversaw a multilateral effort to subvert the 2020 presidential election and prevent a peaceful transition of power.” Fin Gomez, Robert Costa, Major Garrett and Alan He contributed to this report.
