2024 GOP checks their posts, mostly avoiding conflict with Trump



CNN

As a former president Donald Trump He heads to Texas on Saturday for his first major campaign rally, but most of his potential 2024 rivals have their handbrake on.

Trump will appear in Waco just a week after he predicted his own arrest in connection with business of money since 2016. Since then, anticipation has risen over a potential indictment by a Manhattan grand jury, and Trump warned early Friday of “potential death and destruction” if charges were filed against him, though no action was taken this week.

This latest melodrama for the former president is set at a challenging time for the rest of the 2024 GOP presidential field, which is largely frozen in place as scores of would-be challengers travel the country to test their messages while also seeking to avoid conflict. with Trump.

However, the former president is on his own schedule and, along with his allies, used his own announcement of a pending indictment to test the loyalty of his fellow Republicans.

“We must all speak out against the political persecution of President Trump,” said the member of the House of Representatives from Colorado. Lauren Bobert tweeted over the weekend. “Now is not the time for silence.”

What Trump and his supporters eventually heard was a field of potential adversaries rushing to their defense—another sign that the former president’s grip on the Republican Party remains solid.

Former Vice President Mike Pence, who has at times been highly critical of Trump for the latter’s role in the January 6, 2021 Capitol riots, backed him almost immediately after Trump’s prediction last week.

“The fact that the Manhattan District Attorney is making indictment of President Trump his top priority, I think, just tells you everything you need to know about the radical left in this country,” Pence told ABC News last Sunday. “It just looks like a politically motivated prosecution here.”

Former governor of South Carolina. Nikki Haley, who was Trump’s ambassador to the United Nations, remains the only other candidate with an established national profile to officially enter the race. She also supported Trump after he announced his pending arrest, saying the potential case against him was “more about revenge than justice.”

Meanwhile, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who has designed the warrior image ahead of his own pending campaign, is still months away from the announcement. While he took a more blunt and scathing tone this week when discussing Trump’s legal troubles, it came as he faced the fallout from his own rambling, controversial series of remarks about the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

South Carolina Sep. Tim Scott, another potential candidate, fended off questions about Trump and whether he is concerned about the behavior at the heart of the silence case. Instead, he turned his anger on journalists and President Joe Biden.

“You know, one of the things I would say is that red-on-red violence, so to speak, is what the media loves,” Scott said on Fox New on Thursday. “The path to socialism lies through a divided Republican Party. One thing we need to do is focus on the real issue: President Biden.”

Making it even more difficult for DeSantis to cut support for Trump while activating his own conservative base, his other potential rivals — led by Haley and Pence — are increasingly portraying him as a carbon copy of the former president.

The main difference is that they can pursue DeSantis without fear of reprisals from Trump or his supporters.

Pence targeted DeSantis over the Florida governor’s war with Disney, which he targeted after the company opposed state GOP legislation banning certain sexual orientation and gender identity instruction in the classroom, which critics called “Don’t Do It.” Law “Say Gay”.

The former vice president argued that DeSantis’ removal of Disney’s special tax status went too far and that such intervention violated his principles as a “limited government Republican.”

Both Pence and Haley also insisted that “rights reform” in the form of cutting benefits for older people in an attempt to fight what they called the financial crisis would be on the negotiating table if they were elected. This stance separates them from Trump and DeSantis—at least rhetorically—who have both vowed not to touch popular programs like Medicare and Social Security.

For his part, DeSantis has shrugged off pro-establishment Republicans, instead trying to land subtle blows on Trump. Asked about rumors of Trump’s impending indictment, DeSantis on Monday said he was “not interested in being part of some artificially created circus by District Attorney Soros,” referring to Democrat Alvin Bragg and billionaire liberal donor George Soros.

But after that, he conducted excavations that irritated Trump and his top advisers.

“I don’t know what it’s like to pay a porn star to keep silent about some alleged affair,” DeSantis said, drawing laughter from some members of the press. “I just, I can’t talk about it.”

Trump immediately responded by posting a series of personal attacks on DeSantis on social media.

“Ron DeSanktimonius will probably find out about FALSE ACCUSATIONS AND FAKE STORIES sometime in the future when he is older, wiser and more famous, when he is unfairly and illegally attacked by a woman, even “underage” classmates (or maybe a dude! ),” Trump wrote. “I’m sure he’ll want to fight these losers just as much as I do!”

But his skirmishes with Trump, which continued after DeSantis landed a few more punches during an interview with Piers Morgan, may have done less damage to the Florida governor than his continued pivots towards Ukraine.

After a flurry of criticism from prominent Republicans for initially describing Russia’s war in Ukraine as a “territorial dispute” in a statement to Fox News host Tucker Carlson, DeSantis subsequently insisted to Morgan that he was only talking about the longer part of the conflict centered on eastern Ukraine and Crimea.

“These are tough fights,” DeSantis said of the region, “and that’s what I meant. And so I didn’t think that Russia had a right to it (the land), and so if I made it more clear, I could do it.”

However, by Thursday, DeSantis returned to a more populist stance, saying in an interview with Newsmax that he “cares more about the security of our own border in the United States than I do about the Russia-Ukraine border.”

The skirmishes over Ukraine drew rebukes from Pence and Haley, as well as foreign policy hawks like the South Carolina senator. Lindsey Graham, Florida Sep. Marco Rubio and former Wyoming State Representative. Liz Cheney, who at various times either ridiculed or scorned DeSantis’ comments.

“When the United States stands with Ukraine in their fight against Putin, we are following the Reagan Doctrine and supporting those who fight our enemies on their shores so we don’t have to fight them ourselves,” Pence said in a statement. “There is no room in the Republican Party for Putin apologists.”

The widespread backlash highlighted DeSantis’ uniquely difficult path to the nomination. When he endorsed Trump’s position in his initial remarks, the party establishment and anti-Trump conservatives were quick to denounce him.

But since DeSantis largely shares an electoral base with the former president, taking a clear stand against Trump would be politically untenable.

It’s a challenge he will need to tackle – and tackle – as the race gets tighter and the wait for candidates and action in Trump’s court cases comes to an end.