Trump kicks off 2024 bid with ‘intimate’ rally in South Carolina after stop in New Hampshire

Donald Trump will finally hit the campaign trail Saturday when he heads to Salem, New Hampshire and Columbia, South Carolina on a one-day, two-state tour more than two and a half months after announcing his third straight run for the White House. .

While some say the former president’s 2024 campaign has been slow to get started, others feel refreshed by his approach this time around, saying it’s a better strategy to curry favor with the party as he competes again for a second chance at the White House.

Before holding his first campaign rally of 2024, Trump heads north on Saturday morning to make an appearance at the New Hampshire Republican Party’s annual winter gathering.

In the afternoon, the former president will be joined at his rally at the South Carolina State Capitol by Republican Senator Lindsey Graham and Governor Henry McMaster, both key allies in the state’s third primary race.

Saturday’s event has been called more low-key than his 2016 and 2020 campaign rallies, with at least three aides saying the rally will be more “intimate” than before.

It’s unclear if Trump is taking a new approach overall or if his team is just managing expectations preemptively, as enthusiasm for Trump appears to be waning within the GOP with multiple polls showing voters might prefer a different republican candidate and his nominee in 2024.

Trump could pick some legitimate South Carolina primary challengers such as former state governor Nikki Haley, who also served under Trump as US ambassador to the United Nations, and junior Republican Sen. Tim Scott have been named as possible candidates for 2024.

Once again, the presidential primary field is expected to be quite full with at least a few dozen names making the rounds.

‘There is an opening to a new generation of Republican leaders, that does not mean that the president cannot win. I don’t think it’s a foregone conclusion’, New Hampshire Republican Mike Dennehy told NBC News.

The former adviser to the late presidential candidate, Sen. John McCain, said Trump is not a favorite for the nomination this year.

“He’s going to have to earn it,” Dennehy said.

Some say Trump could use more involvement in so-called “retail politicking,” advice he appears to be taking after rejecting that approach in 2016 and 2020.

Retail politics is a term that refers to national candidates who attend local events to address voters on a smaller, more individualized basis.

This form of campaigning would be a signal to party leaders, and to those who have distanced themselves from Trump in recent years, that the former president respects voters and the political process.

“He kind of broke the mold,” Dennehy said. “He was not a candidate who would hold town hall meetings or walk the streets talking to small businesses.”

“If he’s smart, I think he cuts it down a bit, brings it out to people more, walks the main streets, throws some smaller house parties.”

But Democrats are not convinced that Trump has changed his stripes overnight and say his radical ideology is facilitating a party where the most sensible candidates cannot succeed.

‘In his bid to consolidate support and scare off competitors, Donald Trump reminds everyone just how extreme the MAGA agenda was, from paving the way for the most extreme abortion bans, to giving away tax rebates to the biggest corporations and ultra rich, and adopting the most fringe policies and divisive rhetoric,’ Democratic National Committee spokesman Ammar Moussa said in a statement on Friday.

“The rest of the GOP 2024 field is striving to be just as extreme and this is just the beginning of their MAGA grassroots run,” he added.

New Hampshire and South Carolina are battleground states for politicians seeking that party’s presidential nomination, and are among the states politicians turn to when they start their campaigns every four years.

The first state in the nation where a primary contest is held is the Iowa caucus, followed by the primary in New Hampshire, the election in South Carolina, and then another caucus in Nevada.

The four states are closely watched and serve as indicators of how well a primary candidate may fare in the rest of the nation.

In 2020, President Joe Biden performed poorly in the crowded Democratic primary race in both New Hampshire and Iowa, but was later able to gain ground in South Carolina when Rep. Jim Clybrun endorsed the now-President.

Despite Trump winning South Carolina by 14.9 percent against Hillary Clinton in 2016 and by 11.7 points overall against Biden in 2020, support for the former president appears to be slipping.

A South Carolina Policy Council Survey released this week shows that 37 percent of Republican voters in the state want to see Trump as the Republican nominee compared with 47 percent who want to see someone else win the job.

Also, a head-to-head matchup with Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis showed Trump losing by almost 20 points.