Former President Donald Trump kicked off his 2024 White House bid with stops Saturday in New Hampshire and South Carolina, events in early voting states that marked his first campaign appearance since announcing his latest race more than two months ago.
“Together we will finish the unfinished business of making America great again,” Trump said at an evening event in Columbia to introduce the South Carolina leadership team.
Trump and his allies are hoping that the events in the states with a lot of power to choose candidates will provide a show of strength behind the former president after a slow start to the campaign that has raised many questions about his commitment to running again.
“He said, ‘He’s not doing rallies, he’s not campaigning. Maybe he’s missing a step,'” Trump said at the New Hampshire GOP annual meeting in Salem, his first event.
However, he told an audience of party leaders, “Now I’m angrier and more loyal than ever.” In South Carolina, he further dismissed the speculation saying that “we have a rally planned, bigger than ever.”
While Trump has spent the months since his announcement mostly at a Florida club and on a nearby golf course, his aides insist he has been busy behind the scenes. The campaign opened its headquarters in Palm Beach, Florida, and has hired staff. And in recent weeks, supporters have reached out to politicians and elected officials to secure support for Trump at a critical juncture as other Republicans prepare for their own expected challenge.
In New Hampshire, Trump promoted his campaign agenda, including immigration and crime, and said his policies would run counter to those of President Joe Biden. He cited the Democratic move to change the election calendar, with New Hampshire being the key seat, and accused Biden, who is a fifth-place winner in New Hampshire in 2020, of “destroying this beloved political tradition.”
“I hope you’ll remember that during the general election,” Trump told party members. Trump himself twice won the primary, but lost the state each time to the Democrats.
Later in South Carolina, Trump said he planned to make the state’s presidential election “first in the South” and called it “a very important state.”
In his speech, he criticized the criticism of Biden and the Democrats for disparaging comments about transgender people, mocking people who promote the use of electric stoves and electric cars, and recalling his efforts during his presidency to increase oil production, strikes on trade deals and crackdowns. decline in migration at the US-Mexico border.
The GOP challenger
While Trump remains the only declared 2024 presidential candidate, potential challengers, including Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, former Vice President Mike Pence and former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, who is Trump’s ambassador to the United Nations, are expected to begin their campaigns . in the coming months.
In South Carolina, Governor Henry McMaster, US Senator Lindsey Graham and several members of the state’s congressional delegation attended Trump’s event at the Statehouse.
Trump’s team has struggled to garner the support of South Carolina lawmakers, even some who had enthusiastically supported him before. Some have said that more than a year out from the primary ballot it’s too early to make endorsements or wait to see who else is in the race. Others say it’s time for the party to pass on Trump to a new generation of leaders.
South Carolina House Speaker Murrell Smith was among the legislative leaders awaiting Trump’s arrival, although he said he was there not to make an official endorsement but to welcome the former president to the state in his role as speaker.
Otherwise, dozens of supporters crammed into the ceremonial lobby between the state House and Senate, competing with reporters and camera crews for space between marble-topped tables and a life-size bronze statue of former Vice President John C. Calhoun.
Dave Wilson, president of the conservative Christian nonprofit Palmetto Family, said some conservative voters may be worried about Trump’s recent comments that Republicans who oppose abortion without exception have cost the party in the November election.
“It gives pause to some people in the conservative ranks of the Republican Party about whether we need this process to work,” said Wilson, whose group is hosting Pence for a speech in 2021.
But Gerri McDaniel, who worked on Trump’s 2016 campaign, rejected the idea that voters were ready to move on from the former president. “Some of the media keep saying he’s losing support. No, he’s not,” he said. “It’s only going to be bigger than ever because there are so many people who are angry about what’s going on in Washington.”
The South Carolina event is in some ways off-brand for the one-time reality television star who usually favors large rallies and has tried to cultivate an outsider image. The rally was expensive, and Trump added a new financial challenge when he decided to start his campaign in November — earlier than expected. It makes him subject to strict fundraising regulations and prohibits him from using the leader’s well-funded political action committee to pay for the event, which can cost millions of dollars.
Trump’s campaign, in its early stages, has created controversy, especially when he had dinner with Holocaust-denying white nationalist Nick Fuentes and the rapper formerly known as Kanye West, who made several antisemitic comments. Trump has also been widely mocked for selling a series of digital trading cards depicting him as a superhero, cowboy and astronaut, among others.
He is the subject of a series of criminal investigations, including one on the discovery of hundreds of documents with classified marks in the Florida club and whether he obstructed justice by refusing to return them, as well as state and federal investigations into efforts to revoke them. 2020 election results, which Biden lost.
However, early polls show that he is the favorite to win the party’s nomination.
“The gun has been fired, and the campaign season has begun,” said Stephen Stepanek, chairman of the New Hampshire Republican Party. Trump announced that Stepanek will be a senior adviser to his campaign in the country.
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Kinnard reported from Columbia, South Carolina, and Colvin from New York. Associated Press writer Michelle L. Price in New York contributed to this report.
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