As President Trump continues to rely on unfounded claims of voter fraud and conspiracy theories to keep his dream of a second term alive, some of his closest allies are facing a reckoning of their own when it comes to their political futures.
Some in Trump’s orbit, such as Vice President Mike Pence and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, have been touted as potential 2024 presidential candidates, but the duo is among several who are being forced to walk a tightrope of backing the president’s claims, all while weighing up personal ambitions.
There is also the specter of Trump launching a 2024 run, perhaps as soon as Joe Biden’s Inauguration Day, which would hit the pause button on any other aspirational Republicans’ chances.
“He will be the prohibitive front-runner, especially if he can maintain media attention from Mar-a-Lago,” Alex Conant, a Republican political consultant, told the New York Times. “Nobody is going to want to be the first candidate to announce they’re running against him. Can you imagine the tweetstorm that he’ll launch against his first competitor? Any candidate that visits an early state next year will be overwhelmed with questions about their loyalty to Trump.”
Regardless of whether he actually runs for president again, Trump is a force to be reckoned with and will likely dominate Republican politics for years to come.
“Unlike Bush, unlike Reagan, unlike any of our former presidents, he will be an ongoing presence,” Michael Steele, a former chairman of the Republican National Committee-turned-adviser for an anti-Trump group, said. “He wants the party to continue to be consumed by him and his madness.”
Even those who don’t harbor 2024 ambitions appear to be showing signs of wavering from the MAGA experiment, like Attorney General Bill Barr, whose Justice Department charged this week that there was no evidence of widespread voter fraud.
Almost immediately, word surfaced Trump wanted to boot Barr out. Trump’s contempt for criticism and his normalization of character assassinations for anyone who dares speak against him has made it near impossible for some Republicans to strike out on their own.
“Trump is extremely popular… and he can make or break a career,” one Atlanta-based Republican strategist told the Washington Examiner. “How he handles Biden’s inauguration will be worth noting.”
But Trump’s refusal to accept that Biden beat him has made mainstream Republicans with their reputations still intact question just how far they are willing to go to support the outgoing president.
And that, some worry, could be the biggest roadblock for Republicans trying to chart their own paths to the White House.
Nikki Haley, former United Nations ambassador and one of Trump’s most loyal cheerleaders, has remained relatively quiet as Trump has raged over voter fraud.
Instead of rushing to his side as she has in the past, Haley is using her clout to campaign for Georgia Sens. Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue, who are locked in tight runoff races against Democratic challengers Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff. The winners of the runoffs will determine which party holds power in the U.S. Senate.
Oddsmakers see Haley, the former governor of South Carolina, as a likely 2024 candidate. Earlier this year, she topped a Washington Post list of women most likely to become the first female president.
“Haley brings wide appeal to various demographics in America,” Gambling.com political betting analyst Joe Short said. “She has also worked as the United States’s ambassador to the United Nations, meaning her political standing on the international stage is far greater than most.”
How she plays the next several weeks could determine her White House hopes.
The same is true for Pence.
As Trump’s most loyal backer, Pence has also refrained from following his boss down the rabbit hole.
In the first two weeks following the Nov. 3 election, Pence ducked the spotlight and stayed quiet while Trump fumed. When he went to Canton, Georgia, to stump for Loeffler and Perdue, he was careful not to anger Trump supporters, who have become a critical part of the GOP’s coalition, by admitting Biden had won.
But with only a handful of weeks left before Trump’s nightmare becomes a reality, Pence will start “to position himself as the titular head of the loyal opposition,” Barry Bennett, a Republican strategist who worked for Trump’s 2016 campaign, told NBC News. “What happened in the House tells us that the president’s policies were quite popular. His personality, obviously, was not helpful with some voters. But if Pence can run on the policies and not have the baggage of the image problem, he’ll do quite well.”
Other names floated for a possible 2024 presidential run include Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, Arkansas Sen. Tom Cotton, Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley, White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, Nebraska Sen. Ben Sasse, South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott, Donald Trump Jr., and first daughter Ivanka Trump.
