Donald Trump will announce a run for the Republican presidential nomination in 2024 “any day now”, the Ohio congressman and prominent Trump supporter Jim Jordan reportedly said in Iowa on Thursday.
A spokesman for Jordan denied he made the comment to The Undercurrent, a liberal website.
The reporter who said he did, Lauren Windsor, tweeted a still of Jordan talking and wrote: “We can’t both be right. See for yourself, video coming tomorrow … stay tuned.”
The still was taken from a similar angle to that with which Windsor recently caught the Wisconsin senator Ron Johnson admitting there was no voter fraud in his state at the 2020 election, and that Trump simply lost.
Still, Trump refuses to admit that and while repeatedly lying about electoral fraud has repeatedly stoked speculation that he will mount an attempt to take back the White House. In his first four-year term, he was impeached twice amid unprecedented scandal, rancour, chaos and, at its end, outright insurrection against the peaceful transfer of power.
Jordan, as it happens, is one of a number of senior Republicans sweating over moves by the House committee investigating the deadly 6 January assault on the US Capitol, including a request that phone companies preserve records which may shed definitive light on who talked to Trump and when that day. Kevin McCarthy, the House Republican leader, is also under scrutiny – and has threatened phone companies with retribution if they comply.
As it also happens, Jordan hinted at an imminent Trump announcement elsewhere during his Iowa trip. Speaking at a Dallas county Republican party dinner in West Des Moines on Thursday night, KCCI Des Moines reported, Jordan said he spoke to Trump on Wednesday.
“I’m convinced he’s going to, you know, he’s thinking about this fine governor you have [Kim Reynolds] as part of that amazing ticket,” Jordan said.
A GOP official later said Trump would travel to Iowa, the first state to vote, very soon. Earlier this week, Trump told rightwing radio host Todd Starnes he would soon stage more political rallies, adding: “We’re going to Iowa. We’re going to Georgia. We’re going to some others.”
Such is Trump’s grip on the Republican party, a second presidential candidacy would likely blow other hopefuls, Governor Ron DeSantis of Florida and former Trump UN ambassador Nikki Haley prominent among them, out of the political water.
Trump’s supporters are doing their best to be prepared. On Thursday, ProPublica came out with a striking report about efforts, driven by former White House strategist and far-right gadfly Steve Bannon to “seize control of the GOP from the bottom up”.
In short, Bannon, who Trump pardoned on federal fraud charges, thinks Trump lost to Joe Biden “because the Republican party sold him out” and is therefore pushing a takeover of precinct-level Republican operations by Trump supporters.
Such workers can have an outsized effect on how elections are run, including playing a role in polling day operations.
ProPublica said it “contacted GOP leaders in 65 key counties, and 41 reported an unusual increase in signups since Bannon’s campaign began. At least 8,500 new Republican precinct officers (or equivalent lowest-level officials) joined those county parties. We also looked at equivalent Democratic posts and found no similar surge.”
Here’s more on Trump’s plans: