Donald Trump would speak on Saturday during an event of the Republican National Committee held in his Mar-a-Lago resort, amid a weekend of summit and dinners in the former president’s corner of Florida.
The Republican is chasing Trump to court – and paying for the use of his property – appears to be very lucrative. According to the Washington Post, participants in the 400-person feast planned for Saturday paid more than $ 100,000 each to attend.
Trump is still a draw on the right. Nevertheless, the debate continues over his place in a party that led to a victory in one presidential election, but then shepherds to defeat the other while losing the House and Senate after four years of chaos and two accusations .
His spokesman, Jason Miller, told the Post he is still “the biggest name in politics”.
A leading presidential historian has worked against this and told the Associated Press that Trump, where he once “was like Zeus … shoots tweets like thunderbolts from above”, now just “little peeps from the mouse of Mar-a-Lago” released.
As Republicans begin to slash their choice of presidential candidate for 2024, senators, governors and other figures are haunting fame and making big donors.
An unnamed participant in events over the weekend in Florida, an adviser to a top donor, told Politico the focus was on limiting Trump’s influence in winning back suburban voters who left him for Joe Biden.
“The thing that every donor has in mind,” is the person quoted, “is how much swing Trump should have.”
However, Trump is consistently at the top of the polls of Republican voters.
He is also fervently condemned for endorsements. In Florida, he presented Marco and endorsed Marco Rubio, a senator and former presidential rival who many thought was provoking a challenge from Trump’s daughter Ivanka.
There is also a lot of searching for public appearances. Amy Kremer of Women for America First, a conservative group holding an event at another Trump property, its golf course in Doral, Florida, told the Post: ‘We’d love to see him. If he comes to talk to the group spending the weekend here, it’s going to be great. If he comes to play golf and people are watching him … that would be great too. ‘
Some observers, however, believe that Trump’s grip is slipping, not least because he lost access to Twitter, his most powerful communications platform, because he spurred the attack on the Capitol.
Trump’s power is “decreasing by the day,” Alex Conant, a Republican consultant, told the AP. ‘If you’re the President of the United States, it’s very easy to get involved in every news cycle. But once you leave office, it needs to be more strategic. ”
Conant said Trump should have announced a book, interviewed for the first time or delivered speeches. Instead, he decided to release short tweet-like statements sent by email to journalists. Trump has said he is developing his own social media platform, but he also said his statements work better than online messaging.
In the AP, Miller maintained Trump is still “the biggest news generator in American history” and said, “There has never been any kind of media interest in the post-presidential careers of Clinton, Bush or Obama.”
Ari Fleischer, a White House press secretary under George W. Bush, disagrees. Although Trump’s growing up ‘in the Republican Party, he said, and’ it was not like any previous president in the amount of oxygen he sucked … he increasingly looks like many former presidents in the amount of oxygen he now has gain.’
Harold Holzer, director of Hunter College’s Roosevelt House Public Policy Institute, said: ‘I do not think it is unnatural for coverage to decrease. I’m sure it’s hard for his ego, given … how much ink he’s generating, but it’s not unnatural for a former president to get less attention. ‘
Douglas Brinkley, a presidential historian, was louder.
“I think he lost momentum when he was pulled off the platforms,” he said. “Politics is about momentum and he has none now. Where he used to shoot tweets like Zeus, it was like a thunderstorm from above. Now these are little peeps from the mouse of Mar-a-Lago. ”
One election result this week showed Trump’s influence on key election battles: voters in the small town of Mettewa, Illinois, re-elected a mayor who ran an enrollment campaign after Trump pardoned him in a gambling investigation.
Casey Urlacher, the brother of former Chicago Bears star Brian Urlacher, has pleaded not guilty to federal charges of recruiting bettors in exchange for reducing their losses. After the president pardoned him, he beat Jess Ray – by 151 votes to 105.