His first campaign stops reveal a candidate unsure of what his base wants
BY PHILIP ELLIOTT/SALEM, N.H.
BY THE TIME FORMER PRESIDENT DONALD Trump left a Salem, N.H., high school auditorium on Jan. 28—his return to the campaign trail after an unusually sleepy start to his 2024 campaign—he had ricocheted off many of his standbys: indulging conspiracy theories, nursing conservatives’ fears about race and gender, and offering an alternative reality to his successor’s record. The hour-long diatribe suggested President Joe Biden should have thrown his son Hunter under the bus, that members of the Taliban did not fight at night because they lacked “binoculars,” and that wind turbines knock planes out of the sky.
For a fragile front runner facing criticism over the shaky opening to his latest bid for the White House, Trump’s initial showing did little to calm the skittishness among Republicans and some former supporters that the candidate himself acknowledged.
“They said, ‘He’s not campaigning. Maybe he’s lost a step,’” Trump said, mocking his critics. “I am more angry now and I am more committed now than ever.”
Maybe, but words—even hyperexaggerated and errant ones—aren’t deeds. Trump’s drop by with the New Hampshire GOP’s annual meeting didn’t prove his critics wrong. Nor did his next stop, in South Carolina, where he unfurled a pack of high-wattage supporters at the state capitol but offered no more steady or reassuring a performance.
“Together we will complete the unfinished business of making America great again,” Trump said in Columbia, S.C.
YET TRUMP ISN’T starting as a blank-slate national candidate grounded in a slogan. His image is pretty well baked at this point. A meager 5% of Americans, according to a CNN poll conducted Jan. 19–22, said they don’t have an opinion about the lone President who was impeached twice and whose actions after the 2020 election culminated in a deadly attack on the U.S. Capitol. Trump may want to run as a traditional candidate with the strong support befitting a former President, but that isn’t in the cards for him.
For his numerous potential Republican challengers, Trump’s showing at his first campaign stops should not have spooked anyone from the race. Sure, Trump can still butcher political red meat with the best of them; he can slag his foes without a flinch; call the modern Democratic Party a tribe of socialists, Marxists, and communists; and disparage Black Lives Matter demonstrators as criminals. But mentions of Hunter Biden’s laptop seemed to land with a thud, and members of the audience appeared to g
