Donald Trump looks like he is going to be sued by just about everyone these days. Can the former president bounce back from all of the recent scandals?
(Subscribe to Our YouTube Channel Here. 19FortyFive publishes original videos every day.)
Former President Donald Trump’s third consecutive presidential campaign is barely a few weeks old – and off to an atrocious start.
Donald Trump announced his candidacy on November 18th – becoming the first major political figure to declare his candidacy for the 2024 election.
And since November 18th, Trump has endured a slew of setbacks.
Donald Trump Campaign 2024 Off to a Tough Go
Here’s a rundown of everything the Trump campaign has had to deal with since Donald Trump declared his candidacy on November 18th.
The House of Representatives concluded their eighteen-month investigation into the January 6th riots by making a criminal referral of Donald Trump to the Department of Justice.
The criminal referral has no legal weight but marks the first time in US history that the House has ever made a criminal referral of a former president. If Attorney General Merrick Garland chooses to prosecute Trump, it will again mark a historic first.
Trump’s company was also found guilty of tax fraud. Speaking of taxes, Democrats finally secured the release of Trump’s long-sought after federal tax returns. The documents are dense, naturally, and will take time to examine properly – but the process is underway.
Trump’s hand-picked Georgia senate candidate, Herschel Walker, lost in a run-off election to Democrat Raphael Warnock. Georgia was reliably red for a generation, but Walker was an epically bad candidate who essentially threw the race through his own incompetence. Walker’s loss capped off a midterm season in which Trump’s battleground candidates were trounced, losing all but one race.
Trump, as per usual, has also been making waves on social media since he launched his campaign. Specifically, Trump called for the “termination” of the Constitution; and Trump called his former Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao “Coco Chow.”
The social media posts have not generated Trump’s most significant scandals since taking office, however – that distinction belongs to the Thanksgiving dinner he had at Mar-a-Lago with Kanye West and Nick Fuentes, two Holocaust denying antisemites.
The steady flow of terrible, terrible news has chipped away at Trump’s favorability rating.
A new poll shows that Donald Trump is viewed favorably by only 31 percent of voters – his lowest number in seven years.
Trump Campaign Not Doing Much to Correct Course
Trump has barely left his Mar-a-Lago estate since announcing his candidacy. As for upcoming events? There is just one coming up.
“What campaign?” asks political analyst Larry Sabato. “No rallies. No infrastructure that I can see.”
To date, the Trump campaign is “disjointed, haphazard, unfocused, and still focused on the past, and his grievances, rather than the future, which is what attracted a lot of Republicans to him in 2015,” said Whit Ayres a Republican pollster.
The Trump campaign’s rough start seems to be squandering any head start that announcing early may have generated. While Trump’s political rivals, namely Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, has not declared his candidacy yet, Trump is losing ground. New polls show that DeSantis is favored over Trump, even amongst voters who like Trump’s policies – suggesting that voters are growing tired of Trump’s antics and scandals and lawsuits.
Trump is a uniquely resilient politician. If anyone is capable of sustaining the barrage of bad news Trump has faced since announcing his campaign, it’s Trump.
But no one is invincible.
Donald Trump will need to turn things around sooner rather than later.
The problem is: Trump’s problems are far from resolved; several may escalate before resolving.
MORE: Is Donald Trump a ‘Cognitive Mess’?
MORE: Should Joe Biden Really Run in 2024?
MORE: Ron DeSantis May Peak Too Early
Harrison Kass is a Senior Defense Editor at 19FortyFive. An attorney, pilot, guitarist, and minor pro hockey player, he joined the US Air Force as a Pilot Trainee but was medically discharged. Harrison has degrees from Lake Forest College, the University of Oregon School of Law, and New York University’s Graduate School of Arts & Sciences. He lives in Oregon and regularly listens to Dokken.
