Trump biographer and New York Times best-selling author Seth Abramson says even though the odds increasingly look like they’re against the former president’s 2024 run, Donald Trump has a plan to win the next presidential election.
In response to Trump’s candidacy announcement on Tuesday night, a number of prominent Republicans and GOP mega-donors have backed out of supporting the former president, casting doubt over Trump’s ability to win the Republican nomination, let alone another election.
However, Abramson believes otherwise. In anticipation of Trump’s 2024 bid, the author penned a lengthy Twitter thread on Tuesday, describing what he believes to be the six points that Trump is banking on to secure the presidency for a second term.
The key assumption Trump is running on, according to Abramson, is that 2024 will be a re-match against President Joe Biden—a reasonable expectation given that most sitting presidents run for a second term and that Biden seems set on defeating Trump for a second time.
Biden has yet to formally announce a bid for re-election, but he has repeatedly expressed his interest to do so. Back in March, Biden said he’d be “very fortunate” to have “that same man” running against him in 2024. And then earlier this month, the president told reporters at the White House that “everybody” wants to see him run in the next election. Asked what he thought of voters who didn’t want to see him on the ballot again, Biden said, “Watch me.”
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Assuming that Trump and Biden go head-to-head again in two years, Abramson said Trump will continue to position himself as the “national/state-by-state leader against Biden”—a foil that Americans have bought into, according to what have been hypothetical surveys from independent and nonpartisan polling firms.
The third and fourth points that Trump will bank on should be set in stone now that the Republicans officially have enough seats to flip the House. The congressional chamber was called in the GOP’s favor late Wednesday night, paving the way for Republicans to dictate the legislative agenda for the next two years and likely block Biden’s plans for the second half of his presidency.
With Republicans in control, Abramson predicts that the new GOP majority will help build the case for Trump’s 2024 campaign by “spreading disinformation, misinformation, slander, libel, rumor, innuendo and calumny about Biden, driving up his negatives, weakening his 2024 campaign, and doing free oppo[sition] research for Trump—with subpoena power.”
And with Representative Kevin McCarthy, a Trump ally, poised to take the gavel as the next House Speaker, Abramson says the GOP will ensure that it does “absolutely nothing” to improve the U.S. economy in an effort to further drive down Biden’s approval ratings and lower his chances of re-election.
With a House working in his favor, and a presidential opponent that will be up against the tough challenge of beating his longtime rival, Abramson said the groundwork for Trump is already being laid.
Then, “If [Trump] comes up just short, Electoral College-wise, he relies on the 1 to 3 GOP-led state legislatures he’d need…to simply *hand* him the 2024 election in their state under the color of false claims of fraud,” the author said.
It’s a move that the former president already attempted to use in the fake electors scheme that involved seven swing states that did not vote for Trump in 2020.
The final piece to Trump’s plan, according to Abramson, is that any legal challenges to the former president’s potential efforts to try to overturn the 2024 election will go to the Supreme Court he created—a court that is the most conservative-leaning since the Civil War. And because SCOTUS decisions are final, Trump will get the rulings he wants and no other course of action can change those.
“Trump’s 2024 campaign is both serious and dangerous,” Abramson wrote. “If you are counting on the GOP to stop him, stop hoping—he will instantly threaten to bolt the party (thereby destroying it) if he is not handed its nomination.”
He added that with Biden being “universally” considered as a vulnerable incumbent, “Trump is far and away the gravest threat to a Biden reelection—and to democracy—in all of American politics.”
Newsweek reached out to Trump for comment.
