Former President Donald Trump’s anticlimactic “major announcement” Thursday has even his most diehard followers questioning his 2024 reelection campaign.
SO WHAT
Has the Trump train finally run out of steam?
THE ANNOUNCEMENT
A day after teasing the big news, Trump revealed he is launching an official line of “limited edition” NFT trading cards, priced at $99 a pop.
“My official Donald Trump Digital Trading Card collection is here! These limited edition cards feature amazing ART of my Life & Career! Collect all of your favorite Trump Digital Trading Cards, very much like a baseball card, but hopefully much more exciting,” Trump wrote in a post to Truth Social.
- The money earned from the sale of the digital cards will not go to the former president’s 2024 presidential campaign but will instead be pocketed by Trump himself under a licensing deal, The New York Times reported.
THE REACTION
After speculation that Trump would announce a return to Twitter, a running mate or a long-shot bid for speaker of the House, the former president’s sales pitch fell flat with “MAGA” leaders.
- “Whoever advised him on that, I’d fire them immediately,” said Michael Flynn, a former national security adviser to Trump, on Thursday.
- “I can’t do this anymore. He’s one of the greatest presidents in history, but I gotta tell you: whoever – what business partner and anybody on the comms team and anybody at Mar-a-Lago – and I love the folks down there – but we’re at war. They oughta be fired today,” former Trump White House strategist Steve Bannon said.
- Right-wing provocateur Baked Alaska, who faces up to six months in jail for his participation in the Jan. 6 Capitol riot, tweeted, “i can’t believe i’m going to jail for an nft salesman.”
THE 2024 RACE
Some on the right have begun to question Trump’s commitment to returning to the White House, with recent polls showing declining support among GOP voters and media reporting on the former president’s lack of activity of late.
- “He doesn’t want to run,” conservative commentator Stephen Miller tweeted. “He thinks he has to because he lost but he doesn’t want to.”
- “Feels like he’s given up on becoming president again and is simply going to squeeze those fat boomers for everything they’ve got left,” heterodox political scientist Richard Hanania said in a tweet.
OK, but: “The more recent controversies have hurt, aides to Mr. Trump have acknowledged, but they said those will fade as others have in the past,” The Wall Street Journal reported Thursday.
