During his speech at CPAC, former President Donald Trump hinted he would run for president again in 2024. But it’s just for show, according to his niece, Mary Trump.
May Trump predicted that his uncle will only “pretend” to run again for president in 2024 in order to raise money before ultimately dropping out of the running.
“I don’t think he’s going to let that grift go quite so soon,” she told MSNBC.
Trump has sought to remain the focus of political attention within the GOP since leaving the White House in January.
The former president teased a 2024 run at the Conservative Political Party on Saturday, falsely telling an audience that he beat the Democrats last year and saying he “may even decide to beat them for a third time.”
Mary Trump, who last year published a highly critical book of her uncle, told MSNBC on Monday that Trump would continue to tease a presidential run in the build-up to the 2024 presidential contest because he had raised large amounts of money from supporters since he lost the election to Biden by falsely claiming that he had won the election.
Trump raised at least $150 million in donations challenging the results of November’s election as it continued to push baseless claims of widespread voter fraud to Trump’s supporters.
Most of the money will be spent on financing the president’s political future, Insider’s Ashley Collman reported.
“I think he’s going to pretend to [run], for sure,” Mary Trump told MSNBC’s Mehdi Hasan.
“Think about how much money he’s made off the big lie over the last few months. He’s made more money since President Biden won the election than I think he has in his entire life. So I don’t think he’s going to let that grift go quite so soon.”
Trump predicted that her uncle would ultimately not run as the GOP candidate in 2024 because he would fear losing.
“There’s no way that he is going to put himself in the position of losing again. The problem is the Republican party seems determined to keep him legitimate, which is the really scary part,” she said.
A number of prominent Republican lawmakers have already begun to talk up the prospect of Trump running as the GOP candidate in 2024 despite losing to President Joe Biden last year.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell this weekend said he would “absolutely” back Trump as the GOP candidate in the next presidential contest, while Sen. Lindsey Graham has indicated that he wants to use Trump’s political profile to secure the House and Senate in 2022.
Sen. Mitt Romney, who voted in February to convict Trump on impeachment charges relating to the Capitol riot, predicted that Trump would win by a “landslide” should he choose to run in 2024.
“I look at the polls, and the polls show that among the names being floated as potential contenders in 2024, if you put President Trump in there among Republicans, he wins in a landslide,” he told listeners to an interview for a New York Times project.
Watch the interview below:
