By Ross Douthat
Jonathan Ernst/Reuters
The defiant timing of Donald Trump’s announcement of his candidacy for president in 2024, dropping amid Republican recriminations over their midterm disappointments, is an admission of weakness poorly disguised as a show of strength.
The intended flex is obvious: The early announcement is meant to cow potential rivals, force them to come off the blocks explicitly running against him, seize the media spotlight, run up endorsements and fund-raising totals, and hopefully elevate the former president in national polling.
It’s also intended as a pre-emptive political strike against any potential indictment that might be awaiting him, assuring Republican primary voters that the Biden Department of Justice is coming after him only because it wants to keep him from the White House.
Even before the midterm results, though, it was a sign of Trump’s potential weakness that such calculation was even necessary. If the former president were as strong as he wished everyone to imagine him to be, he could have afforded to wait in Mar-a-Lago, accepting supplicants, while any pretenders exhausted themselves with futile campaigning and the people clamored for their once and future king.
