Trump doesn’t sound like he wants to run in 2024
No heart.
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His critics said he was “low energy.”
His supporters said he sounded like his same old bombastic self.
Ultimately, it all depends on personal interpretation.
But one thing that can be of former President Donald Trump’s address Sunday at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Orlando, Florida, is that he simply did not sound like a man who wants to run again for reelection in 2024. Perhaps he will, but there was a certain forcefulness missing from the address that many suspected would reveal the former president’s intentions.
Yes, there was also the usual chest-thumping and bravado.
"It is far from being over," the former president said of the "incredible journey" that he said he and his followers began in 2015. "We will be victorious, and America will be stronger and greater than ever before."
Yes, Trump rolled out a few new attacks, singling out Republican lawmakers, including Sens. Mitt Romney of Utah and “Little Ben Sasse” of Nebraska and the “warmonger” Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming, who voted in January to convict the former president on articles of impeachment brought after the deadly Capitol riot.
Trump also spent plenty of time attacking President Biden.
“None of us even imagined just how bad they would be and how far left they would go,” the former president said, adding that the Biden administration is “anti-jobs, anti-family, anti-borders, anti-energy, anti-women, and anti-science.”
“In just one short month,” he added, “We have gone from ‘America First’ to ‘America Last.’”
Yes, the former president predicted Democrats will suffer “withering losses” in the 2022 midterm elections, adding further that “a Republican president will make a triumphant return to the White House” in 2024.
“And I wonder who that will be?” Trump asked his euphoric audience.
Yes, he even teased a possible 2024 run with a line well-designed to delight his followers and enrage his opponents, saying, "I may even decide to beat them for a third time,” stating for the thousandth time that he is the legitimate victor of the 2020 presidential election.
But Trump also only ever hinted at a 2024 run.
The former president also put to rest the rumors that he may launch a new political party, saying, “We have the Republican Party. It's going to unite and be stronger than ever before.”
More importantly, there was something else missing Sunday from his address. A certain directness and clear-eyed ambition were absent from his remarks, something suggesting that he has his heart set on retaking the White House. He is surely the crowd-pleasing bomb-thrower he ever was, but that is mostly how he appeared Sunday in Orlando: An entertainer, not a man invested in the idea of running for president. This was no former President Barack Obama at the Democratic National Convention in 2004 or former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie at the Republican National Convention in 2012.
This was just — Trump being Trump.
Perhaps one way to interpret his CPAC speech is to think of it not in terms of what he wants to accomplish for himself but for his children, many of whom apparently have political aspirations of their own.
After all, it was Trump’s former White House chief of staff, Mark Meadows, who said this week that CPAC would outline the plan “for the next administration” and that “the people at the top of that list all have Trump as their last name.”