Columnist facets out revealing moment at Trump’s tournament

He is back on the trail. 74 days since announcing his third bid for the White House. Former President Trump has made his first 2024 campaign stop yesterday. His appearances in New Hampshire and South Carolina come as questions have been raised about.

What has been so far which is a very slow moving campaign. Concerns that he addressed head on and said he's not campaigning. This is like about a month ago when he announced well I said, you know, I got two years. They said he's not doing rallies. He's not campaigning.

Maybe he's lost that step. We didn't I'm more angry now and I'm more committed now than I ever was this. For the record, he announced closer to two months ago. But while the small scale of his events yesterday were a far cry.

From his traditionally large rallies, what he chose to talk about would be very familiar to you. We're going to restore election integrity do we have to? We have a woke military that can't fight or win. They're sending people.

That are killers, murderers. They're sending rapists, and they're sending frankly, terrorists or go to New York. Nobody ever gets prosecuted. I'm the only one they go after. We have men being encouraged to compete against women in sports. The wind turbines are all made in China.

Alex Burns of Politico is back with us on the panel. And so are the wind turbines killing off the bird population. Which is a favorite of Trump's. So, Alex, this is clearly an attempt to kind of jumpstart his campaign,.

But it was still kind of low energy. Yeah, it really was. And I do think, Abby, in that clip that that you just played is a really revealing moment where he says, you know, they say that he's lost that, but don't worry, I'm still really angry.

You're saying it's not really the point here, right, that I don't think anybody doubts that Donald Trump is a pretty angry man? I think what they question is whether he is fully engaged with the task of running for president, the answers that he obviously is not.

And also whether he has something to say that's really relevant to this moment. Right. That can really connect with first the Republican primary electorate and then much more importantly, the broader American public and when you hear him.

Talking about how it's so unfair, how he's getting investigated in New York, how the wind turbines kill birds, I don't think he did wind turbines cause cancer at this event, but I'm sure we will hear that one again. He just sounds like a guy.

From a different time, right? A guy who sort of trying to do the 2016 thing, but at a smaller scale and with less sort of organic enthusiasm around it. And what I will say just in the vein of putting an asterisk.

On everything I just said as I covered his campaign launch back in 20, 15, and I remember for a couple of months after that there was a, you know, fascination with the spectacle of it all.

But the sort of persistent question of is he serious, is he really running? Is he really going to go for it? And in the end he did. Yeah, I don't think we can really make any broad judgments based on what's happening right now. But it does seem to me, David,.

That he is responding to the environment which is that other people are thinking about running. He responded to two of them yesterday as well. Nikki Haley called me the other day to talk to me. We'll talk to her for a little while. But I said, look,.

You know, go buy your heart if you want to run. She's publicly saying, I would never run against my president. He was a great president. Florida was actually closed for a very long period. I remember it closed the beaches.

And everything else. You know, they're trying to rewrite history. By they, he means Ron DeSantis. Right. It is interesting because he is he's clearly searching. I think Alex, for what you're describing as sort of.

Like a message of sorts that isn't just let me revisit the greatest hits. And there's no doubt, Abby, to your point, that he's trying to fill the void right now because he's the only declared presidential candidate.

And so he wants to set the terms of debate for Haley and DeSantis and and and start making sure that it's all playing out on his terms. I'm not sure that that will be the case, but that is clearly his hope. What is also different and I just think we can't.

He is a twice impeached former president who is facing a ton of legal peril right now in multiple investigations that by its nature, no matter how much he wants to dismiss, it makes him a different Donald Trump in this moment,.

Entering this third campaign than we've seen him before. And what exactly is the pitch to voters here? I mean, I guess the pitches that America was great when he was president and he's going to make it great again. I mean, that he has kind of been.

Rehashing a lot of his old hits, policy-wise at least, you know, when you listen to what he's saying. But I mean, I do think there are too many questions still about whether or not, you know, I was Chris what you said, Alex,.

Because I think that there was a lot of skepticism when he first ran. And I, I have a skeptical now, too. But the one thing that keeps me still parsing is, is that, you know, nobody else has entered the field yet. There was a lot of enthusiasm ahead of the midterms.

When I was out talking to voters for Ron DeSantis. People thought he could legislate that. He had a lot of Trump ideas, but he could sort of speak to them in a more eloquent way. Ron, Atlanta has not officially entered. Other people.

Are still waiting in the wings. And so at least for now, I mean, there does seem to be this hesitation within the Republican Party to see where he goes. There's absolutely a hesitation on the fact of those other challengers and uncomfortable.

Even with the reality of a diminished Trump, that he's still not an easy person to run against. But I think another thing has really stuck out for me about this version of the Trump campaign, because there has been real energy on the grassroots Republican side.

Over the speaker fight and over of replacing Ronna McDaniel as RNC chair. And Donald Trump was on the wrong side of both of those things. He is not only perspective from the perspective of the Republican grassroots.

And so not only are we talking about the candidate who who is rehashing kind of old fights, but in the way that the movement he has inspired has transitioned, particularly since the midterms that was seen as universally disappointing.

He is not speaking that same language right now. And so you not only have a Donald Trump disconnect, what we know with the kind of Republican establishment figures who blame him for those midterms candidates elections.

You also have a disconnect between Donald Trump and the Republican grassroots right now, which is currently organized which are currently been motivated by things where he was on these complete opposite side. Well, I want to get back to something.

That we were just discussing, which is why aren't there more Republicans putting their name in the hat? Bob Vander Plaats, an Iowa conservative activist, told Politico that I think it's going to be one of those deals of who's going to break first,.

Who, who's going to be the first announced candidate once that person gets in. You'll see others follow suit. So who will it be? Will it be? Are they all waiting for decent just to get in? You know, it.

Reminds me of one of those sort of old martial arts movies where like the bad guys run at Bruce Lee one at a time, and he just hit the wall. And there is a collective action problem here, right? The first person to get in is going to.

Find themselves in this brutal firefight with Donald Trump. None of them really has the firepower to go up against him, except maybe Ron DeSantis who seems like he's going to take his time and let Florida's legislative session play out. I do think there's a real risk.

On the part of the other candidates of overthinking this. Right. And trying to find exactly the right time to get in win at the at the end of the day, if you want to beat Donald Trump, you should probably get in there and beat Donald Trump. There's no good solution to this.

Because you get into early. You'll probably get a nickname. You'll just be out there, your neck out there for him to attack. I totally agree with that. At the same time. It's not like the Trump playbook is a mystery. Right? We all know the.

Complex thing to figure out something else to do about it. All right.

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