Donald Trump is officially back in the political cauldron in the final quarter of 2022, having made a rather early announcement about his candidacy for the 2024 presidential race, hoping to freeze out any potential usurpers to his status as the presumptive Republican nominee.
This does not appear to be quite as effective as Trump had hoped, however, with a rather sizeable number of prominent Republicans beginning to make rather overt hints about their own potential candidacy.
At this weekend’s Republican Jewish Coalition conference, a parade of ambitious Republicans hit all the notes that politicians eyeing future campaigns for the White House typically do. Their tones and messages varied — few called out Trump by name — but collectively they made clear they are not going to back down to the former president after a third consecutive poor election with him at the helm.
Mike Pompeo, Trump’s hand-picked secretary of State and CIA director, warned that for Republicans to win elections, they can’t simply “go on Fox News or send tweets.” Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, who ran Trump’s transition, said Republicans were losing because “Donald Trump has put himself before everybody else.”
And that wasn’t all:
Nikki Haley, Trump’s U.N. ambassador who said last yearshe wouldn’t run if her former boss did, has apparently changed her mind. She used her Saturday evening speech here to say she was looking at running in a “serious way,” and to call for “a younger generation to lead across the board.”
Pompeo took things just a bit further as well, suggesting that Trump may have been partially responsible for the Republican Party’s uninspiring performance during the ’22 midterms.
Trump is facing serious legal and political trouble as well, with a number of probes currently exploring alleged misdeeds by the former President.
