Maggie Haberman Opens the Door to Trump Sitting it Out in 2024: ‘We Don’t Know’ Whether He’s ‘Actually Running’

The New York Times‘ Maggie Haberman raised the possibility that former President Donald Trump might not run for office again — despite many political observers considering it a foregone conclusion and the man himself repeatedly teasing it.

Haberman appeared Sunday on Inside Politics for a panel discussion on Florida Governor Ron DeSantis (R) and his national tour to rally support for Trumpian political candidates. The tour has prompted renewed questions about whether DeSantis will run for president in 2024, so Haberman was asked “does he really have a lane” to do that.

“He definitely has a lane,” Haberman answered. “The question is whether he’s sharing it with Donald Trump and whether or not he actually wants to be in a cage match with Donald Trump, and I’m not convinced that he does.”

We don’t know whether Donald Trump is actually running. Everybody around him says he’s running. It is advantageous to Donald Trump to talk about running at a time when prosecutors are looking at him. You have to put that aside. But let’s say in a world that he does run, they would be sharing that lane. And depending on which DeSantis adviser you talk to, you hear ‘that’s okay, he’s going to do his own thing,’ or he’s not really sure he wants to — or his advisers are not sure — if he wants to go ahead and do what Ted Cruz did in 2016.

Even though Trump has stopped short of declaring whether he will make another bid for the White House, he has strongly expressed interest in doing so multiple times, and there have been reports about him wanting to announce his candidacy prior to the midterms. The FBI’s search for classified documents at Mar-a-Lago has generated a great deal of public uproar over the last two weeks while also raising new speculations of when and if Trump will announce a new campaign.

Abby Phillip followed up by outlining the possibility of DeSantis running by presenting himself as Trump-like, but without the former president’s baggage. Haberman continued, however, by speaking of how Republicans have been consolidating around Trump again ever since the Mar-a-Lago search.

“DeSantis is one of the first people to put out a statement [defending Trump],” Haberman pointed out. She further opined “that was not politically advantageous for DeSantis” if he decides to compete with Trump.

Watch above, via CNN.