If you would have asked me last week if former President Donald Trump were going to run again in 2024, I would have placed the odds at 99%. After all, when he says things like, “I’ve already made that decision,” it sounds like a done deal.
But after a couple recent conversations with people in D.C. familiar with Trumpworld, now, I am not so sure.
Jeremy Stahl touches on some of the reasons people are saying Trump might not run here. “My second reason for thinking Trump won’t run is that there are numerous financial incentives in the other direction — including one big one tied to Trump’s legal woes,” Stahl writes.
“That is: The Republican National Committee continues to pay his sizable legal fees and has said it will only do so if he is not a candidate for president, as it ‘has to stay neutral’ in any contested Republican primary. You see, paying for a candidate’s legal bills would break that neutrality. And there’s another financial incentive for Trump to hold off on declaring his candidacy, which is that if he becomes an official candidate for president, he loses control of all but $5,000 of the more than $100 million war chest he has stockpiled in the Save America PAC.”
These both echo what I am hearing. Trump is in no rush to start paying his own legal bills, especially when it is becoming increasingly likely that those bills are about to go way up.
And while Trump has been a proven fundraiser in the past, he appears to be slipping recently. All the more reason to retain access to the $100 million in his PAC.
I’m not convinced Trump won’t run in 2024. But I’m a lot closer to 50%-50% now than I was a week ago.
