At a recent rally in Texas, Donald Trump spoke about Hillary Clinton and how the 2020 election was allegedly stolen from her through voter fraud.
“The 2020 election was rigged and the whole world knows it,” Trump claimed, despite all of those claims being widely debunked. The US Supreme Court, with a conservative majority thanks to the judges put in office by Trump himself, has dismissed a lawsuit that sought to annul the electoral results in four disputed states.
If this rhetoric sounds familiar, it’s because the message at Trump’s rallies today consists of bits and pieces he’s been using since he first ran for president, like the hate speech against Hillary Clinton, and the conspiracy of electoral fraud that he has focused on since his defeat in 2020.
“He’s doing what he’s always done: playing with his base and telling them what they want to hear,” said Brandon Conradis, a journalist for the political news site The Hill and former DW writer. “He keeps repeating his familiar sayings.”
Pardon the Capitol attackers
Trump also brought out a new single successful, if you will, during his rally in Conroe, Texas, last weekend. The former president spoke out more forcefully than ever in favor of the insurgents who stormed the US Capitol in Washington on January 6, 2021.
“If I run and if I win,” he said, referring to the 2024 presidential election, “we will treat those people fairly starting January 6. We will treat them fairly. And if pardons are required, we will give them pardons because they are being treated very unfairly.
“When Trump says provocative things like this, what he craves above all else is attention,” Michael Cornfield, an associate professor of political management at George Washington University, told DW.
In the violent attack on Capitol Hill, an angry mob interrupted the session of Congress that was about to formalize the electoral victory of Joe Biden. Five people were killed and more than 700 have since been charged.
Republican leadership reaction
In the days since Conroe’s rally, numerous big-name Republicans have spoken out against Trump’s idea of pardoning those who stormed the Capitol. South Carolina senator Lindsey Graham, a well-known Trump ally, said he hoped the perpetrators “go to jail and experience the harshness of the law, because they deserve it.”
New Hampshire Governor Chris Sununu was also adamantly against the idea. “Of course not,” Sununu told CNN when asked if the Capitol attackers should be pardoned. “Oh my God. No.”
But high-profile Republicans, observers say, are not the target group for Trump’s controversial remarks anyway.
“Trump doesn’t care” about criticism from the upper echelons of his party, journalist Conradis explained to DW. “He’s appealing to his base, and those who stormed the Capitol are definitely part of it. Those are the most die-hard supporters who are going to vote for him no matter what.”
Trump is a ‘showman’
Keeping his supporters close will be crucial if Trump decides to run again in the 2024 presidential election. Statements beginning with “If I run and if I win” certainly suggest another Trump candidacy is a likely scenario.
“Obviously, anything could happen, but the way things are right now, he definitely wants to come back and he’s laying the groundwork,” Conradis said. “He doesn’t want people to forget about him. He loves the stage lights, he’s a showman and wants media coverage.
Cornfield is less sure. “He is an actor with an important political position and a political past. But his political future is very much up in the air,” he said.
In any case, if Trump decides to run again, they would have a good chance. In a poll published by The Hill in late January, Trump won 57 percent of the vote in a hypothetical 2024 Republican primary, with 8 candidates, first place by a wide margin. In second place, with 12 percent, is Florida Governor Ron DeSantis.
Trump has also amassed an impressive war chest. In the second half of 2021 alone, he raised $51 million, bringing his total fundraising to $122 million, according to federal records. Many of those dollars came from small-time donors, “regular Americans,” as Conradis put it. “That in itself shows the support he still has.”
Cornfield points out that Trump has only spent a portion of this money endorsing candidates at the local and state level in the midterm elections this November. Normally, explains the Political Science professor, someone who wants to run for president would spend much more that way. But he thinks Trump is saving the money for something else.
“He’s up to his neck in lawsuits, and that could get worse,” Cornfield said. And a good legal defense is expensive.
“I could win again”
Of course, Trump could also hope not to face any judges at all if things go his way. “I don’t want to be too cynical, but one of his main motivations for running again is that he will argue that because he is running for president, he is immune from prosecution,” Cornfield said.
Whether that twist works is another story. For now, it is unclear if Trump will try to return to the White House. However, if he does, the Democrats would face a serious opponent. “Trump is still the same person elected in 2016,” Conradis said. “That’s why he could win again.”
