Trump running for president in 2024: So, is he toast or what?

Donald Trump declared his candidacy for president—like, for the term that would start in January 2025—on Tuesday night at his Mar-a-Lago resort/home/country club thing in West Palm Beach, Florida. In fact, however, Trump was still president basically five minutes ago, Biden just got done signing the last few elements of his first-term agenda into law, and the Democratic Party was largely returned to power in the midterms—in part, arguably, because the most noteworthy and backlash-causing political news events of the past two years were the Jan. 6 riot and the Dobbs decision overturning Roe v. Wade, for which voters generally blame Republicans rather than Democrats. The speech also simply did not “meet the moment” in that Trump did not mention the ongoing discussion as to whether he is toast, a lost cause, and/or dead meat in the Republican 2024 primary. Reasons to believe Donald Trump is toast: • Midterm candidates that he supported—and particularly those who echoed his claims about the “stolen” 2020 election—lost several key races and generally did worse than Republican candidates who did not associate themselves with the MAGA movement. • These core supporters have heretofore proven impervious to “elite signaling” about Trump’s undesirability or unelectability, even after Jan. 6 when those signals were being emitted by relatively MAGA-friendly Republicans like House minority leader Kevin McCarthy and South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham.