Donald Trump, the 45th president of the United States (2017–2021) ran a successful campaign for the 2024 U.S. presidential election. He formally announced his campaign on November 15, 2022, initially battling for the Republican Party's nomination. While many candidates challenged the former president for the nomination, they did not manage to amass enough support, leading Trump to a landslide victory in the 2024 Iowa caucuses. On March 12, 2024, he became the Republican Party's presumptive nominee. Trump was officially nominated on July 15 at the Republican National Convention, where he chose JD Vance, the junior U.S. senator from Ohio, as his vice presidential running mate. On November 5, Trump and Vance were elected president and vice president of the United States, winning all seven swing states as well as the popular vote with a plurality.
Trump's agenda was branded as populist and nationalist. It pledged sweeping tax cuts, a protectionist trade policy, greater federal oversight over education, more extensive use of fossil fuels, an "America First" foreign policy, an expansion of presidential authority, a reduction of federal regulations, mass deportation of illegal immigrants, stricter law enforcement, an end to diversity, equity, and inclusion programs, and a rollback of transgender rights. While the campaign's official platform was Agenda 47, it was considered closely connected to The Heritage Foundation's Project 2025, a playbook recommending an authoritarian, rigidly conservative state.
Trump's rhetoric, regarded as inflammatory and extreme and featuring disinformation and fearmongering, drew immense media coverage. He sought to establish himself as a political martyr being targeted by the political and media establishment, and that his campaign was one of vindication and a battle between good and evil.
On the campaign trail, Trump faced numerous legal troubles, culminating in four indictments and a felony conviction. Court cases also arose concerning his eligibility to run in the aftermath of the January 6, 2021 Capitol attack, which were eventually resolved. Trump also survived a minor injury in an assassination attempt. Many commentators state that these setbacks helped his public image.
The campaign's success was attributed to an effective media strategy, a distinct appeal to younger, male, and minority voters, and a strong focus on the public's political and economic concerns.
Origins
Background
Donald Trump's 2024 presidential campaign is his fourth, following a brief one in 2000 for the Reform Party's nomination, and two as the Republican Party's candidate, in 2016 and, subsequently, 2020.
As president, Trump lost the 2020 presidential election to Democratic nominee Joe Biden. He and his allies in seven key states denied the results. They allegedly went on to devise a plot to create and submit fraudulent certificates of ascertainment falsely asserting that Trump had won the electoral college vote in those states. In the event that the plot failed to "work out," Trump would plan another presidential run in 2024. On January 6, 2021, a mob of Trump supporters stormed the Capitol to prevent the true election results from being certified. The former President was thereafter impeached for incitement of insurrection, but was acquitted.
The Biden administration succeeding Trump's oversaw the end of the COVID-19 pandemic, a spike in inflation lasting from 2021 to 2023, a surge in crossings at the border with Mexico, and the outbreak of two major wars in Ukraine and in Gaza. While the President began his term with an approval rating well above 50%, it had dropped to just 43% by September 2021, according to Gallup, following the "chaotic" U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan and a gradual rise in inflation from 1.7% in February to 5.4%. His popularity never recovered, and by June 2022, inflation had risen to 9.1%, a 40-year high. Besides worsening inflation, Biden was met by a strong public perception that the border was uncontrolled. When Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, Biden aided Ukraine, and allocated $182 billion in emergency funding. When the Gaza war broke out in November 2023, the President strongly supported Israel. These three issues: global uncertainty, inflation, and the migrant crisis, would be the focal points of the future Trump campaign.
By July 2022, amid the public hearings of the House Select Committee on the January 6 Attack, Trump was reportedly considering making an early announcement of his 2024 candidacy. A contemporary Intelligencer interview with Trump affirmed that he had already made up his mind. Following the August 2022 FBI search of Mar-a-Lago, many of his allies urged that he initiate his campaign even sooner, perhaps prior to that year's midterm elections.
Announcement
Donald Trump announced his candidacy for president on November 15, 2022, in an hour-long address from Mar-a-Lago. It came one week after the midterm elections. The campaign would be based in Mar-a-Lago, in West Palm Beach, Florida. Reporting for Axios, Zachary Basu noted that at the time of the announcement, Trump was the "underdog" and "at the weakest moment of his political career". His candidacy was met with a mixed response from both Democrats and Republicans. He was perceived by many as a weak, beatable candidate, owing to his loss in 2020 and the failure of an expected Republican "red wave" in the 2022 midterms to materialize. This led several Republican officials to oppose his campaign, and several Democrats to welcome it. The conservative New York Post mocked Trump's announcement by relegating it to page 26 and noting it on the cover with a banner reading "Florida Man Makes Announcement". On the other hand, Trump-aligned Republicans embraced the campaign, and many Democrats deemed it a threat to American democracy.
Trump was the first one-term president to campaign for a second non-consecutive term since Herbert Hoover (1929–1933), who, after losing in 1932, made unsuccessful runs in 1936 and 1940.
Fundraising
At its inception, Trump's campaign had over $100 million in funding. Its primary vehicle for fundraising was Save America, a leadership political action committee (PAC), joined by the MAGA PAC and Super PAC. However, his legal expenses from his court cases would absorb much of that funding. In fact, from January 2021 to March 2024, he spent more than $100 million in legal fees from campaign accounts. In 2023, the year of Trump's four criminal indictments, over half of his financial donations were allocated to paying off legal bills.
While running against Joe Biden, Trump overwhelmingly lagged behind his opponent in fundraising. His legal expenses combined with Biden's plentiful financial hauls laid at the heart of this problem. At the start of March 2024, Trump's campaign and Trump-aligned Super PACs had half as much cash on hand as Biden's campaign and Biden-aligned Super PACs. However, Trump's fundraising eventually took a turn for the better, with the former President raising more money than his opponent in April, and beating Biden's total fundraising for the first time. Things again turned sour for Trump's campaign after Biden withdrew from the race. The new Democratic nominee, Kamala Harris, brought in $200 million during the first week of her presidential campaign. In July, Trump's campaign and assorted committees reporting taking in $138.7 million compared to Harris and Democratic committees' $310 million. All in all, throughout their campaigns (specifically, since January 2023), the Trump committee raised $388 million, while that Biden–Harris raised nearly $1 billion.
According to OpenSecrets, Trump's greatest donors were hedge fund manager Ken Griffin (who donated $100 million), pro-Israel activist Miriam Adelson ($132 million), railroad magnate Timothy Mellon ($197 million), and, most notably, businessman Elon Musk ($277 million). Musk was not only the largest individual political donor of the 2024 election, but also the largest individual political donor since at least 2010, excluding candidates funding their own campaigns. He also launched a $1 million a day giveaway for swing state voters. OpenSecrets additionally found that the top seven donors of the 2024 campaign were "solidly Republican/Conservative".
Trump notably mixed his personal business with political fundraising. He promoted $59.99 "God Bless the U.S.A." Bibles, $399 sneakers, $99 "Victory47" cologne, and $99 Trump-branded NFT digital trading cards for his personal, non-campaign accounts. Many campaign funds were also funneled into Trump-owned businesses, in particular his Mar-a-Lago resort and the Trump National Doral Miami.
Eligibility
Trump's eligibility to run for president was challenged. The Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution, Section 3, prohibits current and former federal, state and military officials who have "engaged in insurrection or rebellion" from holding office again, which was pertinent in Trump's case considering his role in inciting the January 6 attack on the Capitol. By 2023, the non-profit group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington and other advocacy groups and individuals were planning state-by-state efforts to keep Trump off state ballots. Court cases sprung up in multiple states.
In December 2023, the Colorado Supreme Court ruled that, under the Fourteenth Amendment, Trump was ineligible from holding office and that his name must be removed from the Colorado Republican primary ballot. This decision was the first of its kind in American history. Later that month, Maine's Secretary of State followed suit and banned Trump from Maine's Republican primary ballot. In March 2024, following an appeal from Trump's campaign, the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously overturned Colorado's Supreme Court ruling, saying that states do not have the authority to disqualify Trump or other candidates from federal elections under the Fourteenth Amendment's insurrection clause.
Agenda and strategy
Agenda
Donald Trump's formal campaign manifesto was Agenda 47. It took the form of a series of videos on his official website outlining his proposals one by one. Seeing that the series was cut short in December 2023, Agenda 47 was primarily targeted to Republican voters during the 2024 primary season. His website's homepage contained a list of 20 campaign proposals.
President Trump's 20 CORE PROMISES
TO MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!
- Seal the border and stop the migrant invasion
- Carry out the largest deportation operation in American history
- End inflation, and make America affordable again
- Make America the dominant energy producer in the world, by far
- Stop outsourcing, and turn the United States into a manufacturing superpower
- Large tax cuts for workers, and no tax on tips
- Defend our Constitution, our Bill of Rights, and our fundamental freedoms, including freedom of speech, freedom of religion, and the right to keep and bear arms
- Prevent World War Three, restore peace in Europe and in the Middle East, and build a great iron dome missile defense shield over our entire country—all made in America
- End the weaponization of government against the American people
- Stop the migrant crime epidemic, demolish the foreign drug cartels, crush gang violence, and lock up violent offenders
- Rebuild our cities, including Washington, D.C., making them safe, clean, and beautiful again
- Strengthen and modernize our military, making it, without question, the strongest and most powerful in the world
- Keep the U.S. dollar as the world's reserve currency
- Fight for and protect Social Security and Medicare with no cuts, including no changes to the retirement age
- Cancel the electric vehicle mandate and cut costly and burdensome regulations
- Cut federal funding for any school pushing critical race theory, radical gender ideology, and other inappropriate racial, sexual, or political content on our children
- Keep men out of women's sports
- Deport pro-Hamas radicals and make our college campuses safe and patriotic again
- Secure our elections, including same day voting, voter identification, paper ballots, and proof of citizenship
- Unite our country by bringing it to new and record levels of success
According to Philip Bump of The Washington Post, Agenda 47 was rarely discussed by Trump as well as the media. He, and others, noted that it was overshadowed by another presidential transition plan closely tied to—in fact, designed for—the Trump campaign, The Heritage Foundation's Project 2025. It planned for massive overhauls to American government, steering it in an uncompromisingly conservative path and relegating much authority to the executive branch. As such, Project 2025 was condemned for unconstitutionally encouraging authoritarianism and moving to turn Trump into a dictator. Trump's campaign officials repeatedly distanced themselves from the plan, stressing that all outside efforts influencing a future presidential transition were "unofficial". Trump himself denied knowing of Project 2025. He went as far as to call some of its proposals "absolutely ridiculous" and "seriously extreme".
Besides The Heritage Foundation, other think-tanks and policy groups aligned with Trump included the Center for Renewing America, the America First Policy Institute, and America First Legal. Trump's preeminent public policy advisers were Steve Bannon, David Bernhardt, Kellyanne Conway, Richard Grenell, Tom Homan, Sean Hannity, Kevin Hassett, Brandon Judd, Keith Kellogg, Larry Kudlow, Robert Lighthizer, Stephen Miller, Stephen Moore, John Ratcliffe, Russell Vought, and Matt Whitaker, though none of them were formally part of the campaign itself. Vince Haley was officially responsible for overseeing the team developing the campaign's policy proposals.
Key officials in Trump's campaign team
- Chris LaCivita, co-campaign manager
- Susie Wiles, co-campaign manager
- Steven Cheung, communications director
- Boris Epshteyn, in-house counsel
- Karoline Leavitt, national press secretary
- Eric Branstad, senior adviser
- Alex Bruesewitz, senior adviser
- Taylor Budowich, senior adviser
- Alex Latcham, senior adviser
- Corey Lewandowski, senior adviser
- Jason Miller, senior adviser, focusing on communications strategy
- Tim Murtaugh, senior adviser
- Alex Pfeiffer, senior adviser
- Brian Jack, senior aide, focusing on amassing endorsements from lawmakers
- Dan Scavino, senior aide