Trump Pals Say Afghanistan Cinched 2024 Run Against Biden: ‘He Smelled Blood’

Tommy ChristopherSep 7th, 2021, 8:02 am
 
WESLACO, TEXAS - JUNE 30: Texas Gov. Greg Abbott addresses former President Donald Trump during a border security briefing to discuss further plans in securing the southern border wall on June 30, 2021 in Weslaco, Texas. Gov. Abbott has pledged to build a state-funded border wall between Texas and Mexico as a surge of mostly Central American immigrants crossing into the United States has challenged U.S. immigration agencies. So far in 2021, U.S. Border Patrol agents have apprehended more than 900,000 immigrants crossing into the United States on the southern border. (Photo by Brandon Bell/Getty Images) US President Joe Biden makes his way to board Marine One before departing from the South Lawn of the White House in Washington, DC, on July 1, 2021, heading to Surfside, Florida, where he is expected to visit the site of the collapsed condominium tower. (Photo by MANDEL NGAN / AFP) (Photo by MANDEL NGAN/AFP via Getty Images)

Brandon Bell/Getty Images, Mandel Ngan/AFP/Getty Images

Several of former President Donald Trump’s confidants say that President Joe Biden’s political misfortunes around the Afghanistan withdrawal have convinced Trump to run again in 2024 — while others say he was already going to run, and still others say he hasn’t made up his mind.

Over the past month, Trump certainly has been more voluble and showed no hesitation about jumping all over Biden with both feet when it came to criticizing the Afghanistan withdrawal — one which Trump engineered and predicted would result in a rapid takeover by the Taliban.

And there have been overt signals from some quarters that Trump will run again. Jim Jordan said so in an ostensibly secret recording, and former Trump senior adviser Jason Miller did as well in a Cheddar interview.

But in a new Politico piece, Trump confidantes and other purported insiders point in every direction at once. Some say that Biden’s handling of the withdrawal, and the attendant slide in the president’s approval ratings, energized and solidified Trump’s plans for 2024. But several others said that Afghanistan had no effect, and Trump was always going to run again:

The pace notably picked up in mid-August as Biden struggled to gain public approval for his handling of the U.S. exit from Afghanistan (Biden has said he was following Trump’s planned withdrawal), “he started bleeding, and Trump is like a shark. He smelled blood,” said one confidante with whom Trump has recently spoken. But another cautioned that “he was running before the Afghanistan debacle. It’s nothing new.”

And a third point of view represented in the Trump confidant extended universe is that he still hasn’t made his mind up:

One person who has discussed Trump’s plans but declined to comment on the record to speak more freely said that “he really hasn’t decided, but we all think he’ll run … he wants to get in a position to where it’s a turnkey operation once he says yes. So he’s maximizing his position … the super PAC is ostensibly to help win back the House and the Senate. If he does that, it makes his position stronger.”

Still others say that Trump’s decision will likely be informed by whether Republicans retake the House or the Senate in 2022.

As Politico notes, none of these positions conflict with the clear goals of Trump’s recent offensive: to raise money and raise Trump’s profile.

Tags: