By way of New Hampshire and South Carolina, former President Donald Trump is trying to spice up his campaign after his “lackluster” launch by taking aim at Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, spewing falsehoods, and promising to “complete the unfinished business of making America great again.”
“I don’t think we have competition this time, to be honest,” Trump told the New Hampshire Republican Party in Salem, New Hampshire. “We are so far ahead in the polls.” A January 24 poll by Morning Consult showed Trump as favorite, with 49% of the vote, and DeSantis trailing him, with 30% of the vote; however, a January 26 Granite State poll showed DeSantis ahead of Trump, by 12 points. DeSantis has not yet announced that he intends to run in 2024.
In an interview with the AP after the South Carolina speech, Trump continued blasting DeSantis while taking credit for the Florida Governor’s gubernatorial victory. “If he runs, that’s fine. I’m way up in the polls. He’s going to have to do what he wants to do, but he may run,” Trump said. “I do think it would be a great act of disloyalty because, you know, I got him in. He had no chance. His political life was over.”
On Saturday, Trump made his first campaign appearances in two months in two states with early presidential primaries. His first stop was in New Hampshire, where he boasted he won the state’s primary twice and also falsely claimed, “we also won two general elections.” (But he actually lost both, the first in 2016 to Hillary Clinton by 0.4 points and the second in 2020 Joe Biden by seven points.) He visited Columbia, South Carolina later that day.
The former president also seemingly tried to address mounting criticism that he has been quiet—even frequently called “boring”—since his initial announcement. “He is in a weird bunker and doesn’t want to go anywhere. Even the inner circle is worried he’s getting no traction at all,” a former Trump administration official told Vanity Fair earlier this month, adding: “Money is a real issue.”
Trump seemingly tried to put these rumors to rest on Saturday. “They said, ‘He’s not doing rallies, he’s not campaigning. Maybe he’s lost that step,’” Trump said in New Hampshire. He later said in South Carolina that people have been “forcing” him to do rallies, to which he explained in usual Trump fashion, “we have huge rallies planned, bigger than ever before.”
Trump also criticized Biden’s policies at the southern border, and reiterated his own harsh stances on migration. “I think of the United States. Every day is April Fools Day,” Trump said. “We have open borders when they should be closed. It’s April Fools Day… We have prisons—people from mental institutions and terrorists—being dumped into our country when they should not be accepted. April Fools Day, right? Who would do that?”
Interestingly, he played to both sides of the primary states’ new calendar. To New Hampshire voters, he accused Biden of “disgracefully trashing this beloved political tradition” of keeping the state primary in the first slot, whereas in South Carolina, he embraced the new calendar, calling the state “first in the South” and hailed it as “a very important state.”
“Together, we will complete the unfinished business of making America great again,” Trump promised South Carolinians.
Trump is still the only GOP contender to have formally announced a White House bid. Aside from DeSantis, a number of other Republicans are expected to jump in the race, including former Vice President Mike Pence, Trump’s U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley and former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.
Kelly Rissman
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