It has been a little over three months since former President Donald Trump announced that he plans to run again in 2024.
How is his campaign going so far?
After some small events earlier this month, Trump’s campaign ramped up this week when he visited the site of the East Palestine, Ohio, train derailment.
“I am your voice,” he said in a Friday Truth Social post about the trip. While he was there, Trump reportedly blamed President Joe Biden – who beat him in the 2020 election – for the incident.
“Essentially, he laid this problem at the feet of the Biden administration and said that this wouldn’t have happened had he been president,” said POLITICO reporter Adam Wren in an interview this week with Audacy’s KCBS Radio in San Francisco. “And, you know, he was broadly embraced in the town.”
Biden, who recently visited Ukraine to mark the one-year anniversary of Russia’s invasion, fielded questions from reporters Friday about whether he would also travel to East Palestine.
“This time, I’m not,” he said, adding that he had done a Zoom meeting after the derailment and subsequent fire.
Biden also addressed criticism about how the administration handled the incident, saying that personnel were there within “two hours.”
“The idea that we’re not engaged is just simply not – not there,” he said. “And, initially, there was not a request for me to go out, even before I was heading over to Kyiv. So, I’m keeping very close tabs on it. We’re doing all we can.”
It’s not yet clear what impact Trump’s visit will have on his polling numbers. Marist released data this week from a poll conducted Feb. 13 to Feb. 16 that found Trump was facing “a majority of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents who continue to think the GOP has a better chance of winning the Presidency with someone else as the party’s nominee.”
At the same time, Marist found that Democrats were “warming” to the idea of Biden running again. Although the president has not officially announced that he will run, First Lady Jill Biden “gave one of the clearest indications,” that he will in an Associated Press interview published Saturday.
Quinnipiac poll results released Feb. 16 showed that Trump was still in the lead compared to 13 other potential Republican candidates with 42% of the vote.
However, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis was not far behind with 36%.
DeSantis has not formally announced that he will run for president in 2024, but he did “hint” at it Monday, according to The Hill. A three-day retreat for DeSantis supporters held over the weekend was attended by some faithful Trump supporters such as Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wisc.), according to a POLITICO report.
“The event, billed as a celebration of the ‘Florida blueprint,’ precedes a likely DeSantis presidential bid that would pit him against Trump,” said the outlet.
There have been some official announcements from other Republican challengers, including former South Carolina governor Nikki Haley. She had just 5% of the Republican vote, per the Quinnipiac poll.
Overall, Trump’s campaign thus far is surprising because it “is starting to look quite conventional,” according to a Saturday article in The Hill.
“People think they know what to expect of Donald Trump in 2024. They are wrong,” said Michael Caputo, a longtime friend and adviser to Trump who was cited by the outlet. “They recognize the caustic social media messages, they recognize his tactic of giving a nickname to every competitor. But they ain’t seen nothing yet.”
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