Former President Donald Trump unveiled new details Thursday about what is expected to be the launch of his 2024 presidential campaign amid calls for him to hold off on an announcement.
A press release issued by the former president revealed the time of Tuesday’s announcement and invited the media to be present for the event at his Mar-a-Lago estate.
“President Donald J. Trump, 45th President of the United States of America, will hold a special announcement at the Mar-a-Lago Club in Palm Beach, Florida on Tuesday, November 15, 2022, at 9:00PM EST,” the advisory read.
At a rally in Ohio on Monday, Trump teased that “a very big announcement” was coming at his Palm Beach club and residence. The time of the announcement was not previously known, nor was whether it would be open to the press.
Former Trump adviser Jason Miller told the Associated Press on Thursday that he would be pushing the former president to hold off on an announcement until after Dec. 6, the date of the Senate runoff election in Georgia.
“I’ll be advising him that he move his announcement until after the Georgia runoff,” Miller said. “Georgia needs to be the focus of every Republican in the country right now.”
Trump has also been pilloried by several prominent GOP figures, who argue that the stunning lack of success of the Republican Party in the midterm elections, and Trump-backed candidates in particular, is indicative that a new GOP standard-bearer is needed in 2024.
“I could not support him. I just couldn’t,” Virginia Lt. Gov. Winsome Sears (R) told Fox Business’s Neil Cavuto on Thursday.
“The voters have spoken, and they’ve said they want a different leader,” Sears, a former US Marine, added.
Congressman-elect Mike Lawler, a Republican who won his midterm race, flipping a formerly Democratic district, echoed Sears’s concerns Thursday.
“I would certainly like to see the party move forward. There are a lot of rising stars,” Lawler told the Post.
Former House Speaker Paul Ryan also blasted Trump this week, calling him a “drag on our ticket.”
“I think we’re going to have to do a lot of soul-searching and head-scratching, looking through and parsing the numbers as to why we didn’t perform as well as we would have liked to,” Ryan told Wisconsin TV station WISN on Wednesday.
“I think Trump’s kind of a drag on our ticket,” he continued, adding that Trump “gives us problems, politically.”