Trump looks like he’ll run to reclaim the presidency in 2024

WASHINGTON — With each passing day, former President Donald Trump looks more like he is running to reclaim the Oval Office in 2024.

The real question isn’t so much when he’ll start campaigning, but whether he will stop.

Trump has held rallies in key states, including an October gathering in Iowa, home of the first presidential nominating contest, where he told voters “We’re going to take America back.”

He is endorsing candidates for federal and statewide office — sometimes in primaries — and claiming credit when they succeed, as he did last week after Virginia Gov.-elect Glenn Youngkin and newly elected Rep. Mike Carey, R-Ohio, won races.

Trump continues to flood inboxes with near-daily fundraising appeals for his political action committee, “Save America,” which was sitting on $90 million — a veritable fortune in national politics — when it last made a disclosure to the Federal Election Commission in June. And he remains on a quest to discredit GOP officials who might stand in the way of a third bid for the presidency, calling them “Republicans in name only” and worse.

“Very sad that the RINOs in the House and Senate gave Biden and Democrats a victory on the ‘Non-Infrastructure’ Bill,” Trump said in a statement after the House sent a $1.2 trillion infrastructure measure to President Joe Biden’s desk Friday. “All Republicans who voted for Democrat longevity should be ashamed of themselves.”

There’s no question that the former president maintains his grip on the Republican electoral base, and, with it, the ability to influence most of the party’s candidates and elected officials. What remains in some doubt is what, exactly, Trump wants to do with that power, according to GOP strategists.

“I would describe what Trump is doing right now as not not running for president,” said Chris Wilson, a longtime Republican strategist and pollster who worked on Texas Sen. Ted Cruz’s 2016 presidential campaign. “Everything he’s doing could morph into a 2024 campaign quite easily, but it also keeps him in the public eye and with a strong base of political power if he decides to play kingmaker in the primary and do something else instead.”

Indeed, he is making all of the moves of a presidential candidate — and with far more capacity to command national attention than any other potential GOP 2024 hopefuls. Next to Trump, the rest of the field looks downright tiny: former Vice President Mike Pence, former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, Sens. Cruz, Josh Hawley, R-Mo., Tom Cotton, R-Ark., and others.

His universal name-recognition, deep support within the GOP and ability to raise cash all mean that Trump can afford to wait on a formal decision, according to John J. Pitney, a political science professor at Claremont McKenna College outside Los Angeles.

“If he wants the GOP nomination, it’s his for the asking,” Pitney said. “Trump is in a unique position,” which allows him to “content himself with making money, waging legal battles and…