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Donald Trump, the former US president, tried to get his spluttering White House bid off the launchpad on Saturday, declaring himself “more angry” than ever as he became the first candidate to hit the 2024 election campaign trail.
Trump swung through New Hampshire, which holds the first-in-the-nation Republican primary, and was due to head to South Carolina, looking to shake off concerns about a lacklustre campaign and “Trump fatigue” among voters.
“We need a president who’s ready to hit the ground running on day one and boy, am I hitting the ground,” he told the New Hampshire state Republican party’s annual meeting. “They [the media] said, ‘He’s not doing rallies! He’s not campaigning! Maybe he’s lost that step.’ I’m more angry now and I’m more committed now than I ever was.” The remark elicited applause and cheers from the audience.
Trump formally launched his run for the White House more than two months ago with an address at his Mar-a-Lago club in Florida that was widely derided for its absence of sparkle or swagger.
Such is the humbling nature of America’s primary system that on Saturday the one time president, who used to fly in luxury on Air Force One with the world’s most awesome military at his disposal, found himself speaking from a rudimentary wooden lectern at a high school auditorium in Salem.
Later he was due to introduce his South Carolina campaign leadership team at the state capitol in Columbia, an unusual choice for a man who first ran for office as anti-establishment outsider pledging to drain the swamp.
Both events contrasted sharply with the rollicking rallies in which Trump tends to thrive, suggesting an effort to show Republicans that he can be a more disciplined and conventional politician when he chooses. It is an uphill climb after four years of tumult and tweets in the White House culminating in the deadly January 6 insurrection at the US Capitol.
But some things about Trump, now 76, don’t change. He entered the New Hampshire event to the sound of singer Lee Greenwood’s “God Bless the USA” and began with his customary dubious claim that there were thousands of people outside the packed venue. He quickly mocked Democrats with nicknames such as “Crazy” Nancy Pelosi and “Cryin’” Chuck Schumer.
Despite the advice of many Republicans to move on from his “big lie” that the 2020 election was stolen from him, he could not resist an early swipe. “As someone who’s won the New Hampshire presidential primary not once but twice, and by the way, I believe we also won two general elections, OK, if you want to know the truth, and I believe it very strongly in plenty of other places also.”
The remark prompted some approving whoops from the audience. Trump went on to tick off familiar subjects and dust off old anecdotes, from energy independence to Hunter Biden’s laptop. “We’re going Marxist,” he said, before decrying the participation of transgender people in women’s sports. He championed “gas stoves” and “gas cars” over their electric counterparts.
He also claimed he would seek to criminalise the action of future presidents who took a less hardline approach to immigration. “Within hours of my inauguration we will restore every border security measure of the Trump presidency – we had it so good – to quickly achieve the most secure border in US history again, just as we had two years ago, and I’ll ask Congress to establish criminal penalties for any future administration that releases millions and millions of people that you don’t want in our country.”
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Some opinion polls have shown Trump more vulnerable among Republicans than any time since 2015, with Ron DeSantis, the governor of Florida, emerging as his principal rival. But the former president casually denied that he faces serious competition in the primary. “We are so far ahead in the polls … We’re gonna win and we’re gonna win very big.”
New Hampshire and South Carolina are seen as potential kingmakers since they are among the first to hold their nominating contests. In New Hampshire, Republican Governor Chris Sununu has said he is having conversations about a primary bid, and many high-ranking Republicans there – including those who supported Trump previously – say publicly they are looking for an alternative.
In South Carolina, where Trump will appear alongside Governor Henry McMaster and Senator Lindsey Graham, there will be a number of notable absences Senator Tim Scott, who has himself been floated as a potential Republican presidential candidate.
Rick Wilson, a cofounder of the Lincoln Project, an anti-Trump group, believes that Saturday’s events will put pressure on rival candidates to show their hand. “Trump knows that and because of that sense they’re missing the boat, that sense the base will start paying attention to Trump again, you see Kristi Noem attacking Ron DeSantis and Nikki Haley making noises on Fox and all these other not so subtle pre-game signals of what’s to come.”
Wilson added: “All the other candidates that want to be president on the Republican side have to build from scratch. They all have to start at zero. They all have to build up a campaign organisation, a staff, a team. They all lack a certain degree of name recognition and star power. Even DeSantis is not a well known quantity outside of a very narrow circle of Republican mega-donors. As we watch this whole thing shamble into position, you will see Trump being able to start to roll up some of these early states.”
Wilson remains convinced that Trump will win the Republican nomination. “That will not be a great thing for the party or for the other people but with the structural strengths that he has with the base – and a bunch of other candidates in the race dividing up the non-Trump vote – it’s over before it starts. We’re going to end up with a with a less exciting primary than people think.”
But there are unique uncertainties around the unique situation of a 76-year-old twice impeached one-term president trying to win back the White House. Frank Luntz, a pollster who has advised numerous Republican campaigns, takes the opposite view from Wilson: he believes that Trump is all washed up.
“How much Trump has fallen is a big deal and how much DeSantis has gained is a big deal,” Luntz said. “DeSantis is so far ahead of where Barack Obama was against Hillary Clinton [in the Democratic primary in 2007] because that’s the closest parallel.”
He predicts that DeSantis will be the Republican nominee in 2024. “I used to think that Trump was the prohibitive favourite but, now that he’s below 50% and the first vote is still a year away, he’s bleeding support.
“I talk to Trump people. We did a focus group on him a few weeks ago. They all still appreciate all that he did. They still think he was one of the greatest presidents in American history. But there’s too much drama and too much controversy and they’ve had enough. The conclusion from them is: Mr Trump, thank you for your service, this country is grateful, but it’s time to move on.”
