WASHINGTON — In announcing his candidacy Tuesday night, former President Donald Trump has reverted to a familiar tactic — meeting weakness with hubris.
“In order to make America great and glorious again, I am tonight announcing my candidacy for president,” Trump said. “I am running because I believe the world has not yet seen the truth glory of what this nation can be.”
Trump has been here before, perceived by opponents as vulnerable and by allies as distracting or worse, only to reemerge with the help of his loyal base. The question this time is whether Republican leaders, furious after three disappointing elections in which the GOP underperformed, will have the stomach and the wherewithal to thwart Trump.
“He’s obviously weaker today than he was a week ago,” said Whit Ayres, a Republican pollster. “The real question is how much weaker and we don’t know that.”
Trump’s staying power has become an enduring problem for his party as he wields outsized sway in Republican primaries while proving a drag in general elections.
Most losing presidential candidates leave center stage, at least for a time. Former president Jimmy Carter, another one-term president, retreated from partisan politics. After being defeated in the closely contested 2000 election, Democrat Al Gore threw his energy into environmental activism. Mitt Romney, who lost the 2012 presidential contest, remade himself as a senator. Only one president, Grover Cleveland, served two non-consecutive terms, more than a century ago.
Trump, after inspiring an angry mob to storm the Capitol following his 2020 loss to President Biden, continued to press the lie that he won the election. He made fealty to that lie a litmus test for candidates in Republican primaries. Yet, many of the high-profile candidates he endorsed in key swing states were rejected by voters last week. It was a stunning string of setbacks for a party that was hoping to take advantage of a favorable electoral environment.
“With inflation a 40-year high, crime out of control in the major cities, the border still porous and Biden approval at historic lows, Republicans should have run away with these elections,” Ayres said.
By refusing to accept his 2020 defeat and then pressuring his vice president to overturn the result, Trump also delayed the traditional process in which losing parties take stock of their policy positions and tactics in hopes of regaining voters’ trust. The Republican Party, which failed to win control of the Senate and is likely to win the House by only a narrow margin, is instead engulfed in internal turmoil over who is to blame and who should lead the party in each chamber.
Republicans see a golden opportunity to unseat President Biden, turning 80 on Sunday and dogged by dismal approval ratings. Biden has said he is all but certain to run, stating last week that he would likely make a final decision in January, after meeting with family.
Trump’s advisers urged him publicly to wait to announce his candidacy until a Senate runoff election next month in Georgia between Sen. Raphael Warnock, a Democrat, and Republican Herschel Walker, a Trump acolyte.
Exit polls from last week showed why: 58% of voters said Trump was a factor in their votes, an unheard of influence for a former president. Among Georgia voters who said Trump was a factor in their vote, Warnock won 57%-41%. Walker won 55%-42% among people who said Trump was not a factor.
Many voters appeared to agree with Biden and other Democrats that Trump’s ideology represented a threat to democracy. In the national exit poll, 86% of voters said the future of democracy was an important factor in their decision, with a majority of those voters choosing Democratic candidates. Ardent backers of Trump’s election lie, like Arizona gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake, lost.
The Club for Growth, an influential conservative organization that has at times backed Trump, on Monday weighed in against the former president’s reboot, releasing a poll showing Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis defeating Trump in several early primary states.
“Republican primary voters recognize Trump’s insults against Republicans as hollow and counterproductive, and it’s taking a significant toll on his support,” the group’s president, former Republican Rep. David McIntosh of Indiana, said in a statement.
Internal politics are not Trump’s only hurdle. He also faces multiple civil and criminal investigations, including federal probes into his role in the Jan. 6 insurrection and his refusal to turn over presidential records after leaving the White House. Critics have suggested that Trump’s early announcement is calculated to help him avoid potential charges.
Trump is betting that he can defeat potential criminal charges in the political arena the way he’s beaten back other investigations, including two impeachments, by portraying himself as the victim of the establishment.
But former prosecutors say Justice Department officials are not likely to be influenced by Trump becoming an official candidate.
Andrew Weissmann, a lead prosecutor in Robert S. Mueller’s special counsel’s office, said there is no precedent for Trump’s situation, and his presidential campaign may put pressure on Attorney General Merrick Garland to appoint a special counsel. Even so, Weissmann said it will be Garland who will ultimately have to decide if Trump should face criminal charges.
“You don’t insulate yourself from being charged or the timing of it,” said Weissman, a law professor at New York University.
Trump’s announcement is also not likely to affect a lawsuit by New York’s Democratic attorney general that alleged Trump and his company engaged in widespread financial fraud.
His ability to win the GOP nomination will hinge largely on whether he keeps his base. A YouGov poll taken after last week’s elections showed DeSantis narrowly defeating Trump, 41%-39%, among Republican voters in a hypothetical primary. But that outcome will depend on many factors, including DeSantis’ decision to run and the size of a potential field. Trump defeated 16 opponents in 2016, taking advantage of the splintered nature of the party and the inability of his opponents to unite.
The last time, Trump also had the advantage of surprise — and the excitement of novelty.
“I’m the first to admit that South Carolina insiders really missed it,” said Matt Moore, who led the South Carolina Republican Party, which holds one of the earliest primaries, during the 2016 election. “Something amazing was happening, based on crowd sizes and support for Trump. But it’s hard to capture lightning in a bottle twice. That was a wild time.”
