With stops in New Hampshire and South Carolina, former President Donald Trump’s 2024 presidential campaign was supposed to quiet skeptics and ward off potential rivals but has so far failed to do so.
In a state filled with political heavyweights, some eyeing presidential runs of their own, Trump unveiled a South Carolina campaign leadership team stacked with influential allies, from Gov. Henry McMaster (R-SC) to Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), intended to put any future opponents on notice.
Yet the maneuvers did little to bolster confidence in the former president’s prospects.
“He’s trying to simulate something. It’s almost like this [attempt at] channeling 2016, and it’s just not working,” said a former adviser. “The spirits aren’t with him.”
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Instead of delivering Trump the momentum that helped power his wins through the first in the nation Republican primary states as he barreled toward the 2016 nomination, the rollout appears to be buoying his potential rivals.
Trump is expected to face a field of challengers for the 2024 nomination, a point of comparison for aides eager to draw parallels with the former president’s insurgent 2016 campaign. He split the field in the race, another point supporters emphasize and that the former president appears to be encouraging.
Trump told reporters aboard his plane that Nikki Haley, a former South Carolina governor and Trump official, had called him to say she was considering a bid. Trump said he encouraged it despite her one-time promise not to run against him, according to Politico.
Haley, who notched third place in a poll of Republican primary voters in New Hampshire this week, could make her announcement as early as next month, a report by the Dispatch said.
It’s not just Haley who is showing signs of strength.
Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) leads Trump by 12 percentage points in the same University of New Hampshire survey, 42% to 30%. While DeSantis has been largely consistent in the poll since 2022, Trump shows a decline.
The governor emerged as Trump’s strongest potential rival as Florida Republicans swept to victory in the midterm elections, defying the party’s lackluster results and several of the former president’s high-profile endorsements.
But while Trump might be hoping for a repeat of his earlier successes, a Republican campaign operative said that while he easily notched early state wins in his last two presidential bids, he faces considerable headwinds today.
“In South Carolina, in 2016, he flew through the primary,” said a former Trump campaign operative. “There was no real competition for him at all.”
As Trump carves out his state-by-state strategy, there are obstacles today that may be harder to overcome, this person said.
“They want younger, they want less baggage, they want to put him in the rearview mirror,” said the source, calling this sentiment pervasive among the state operatives and power brokers who will prove critical to setting up a strong ground game in South Carolina and beyond.
“This comes down to a pissing match between Henry McMaster’s people and machine and the old Nikki Haley machine, which she kept intact,” the source said, with the dynamic thrust into further disarray if Sen. Tim Scott (R-SC) enters the race as expected.
“The donors are completely split in South Carolina. The power brokers are split. The base will be confused,” this person added. “It’ll be a mess.”
Haley evinced some of the dynamic weighing on the political establishment when she called for a generational shift in a recent interview with Fox News’s Bret Baier. “We have lost the last seven out of eight popular votes for president. It’s time we bring in a new generation,” Haley said.
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The push comes at a moment when Trump, who will be 78 at the time of the 2024 election, could find worries about his age more difficult to overcome.
The former president is already seeing access to him limited by aides who fear the downside of an unscripted moment.
Trump’s phone sends straight to voicemail calls from numbers that are not in his contacts, a change that occurred after the former president “created some political heartburn for Republicans” with an off-the-cuff interview during Kevin McCarthy’s (R-CA) fight for the House speakership, according to a report in the New York Times.