Report: Trump Has Been Hibernating at Home for Almost a Month

When Donald Trump was preparing to announce his third run for office, he likely assumed the announcement would spark the beginning of a two-year period in which he would be fêted the world over. Everywhere he went, people would spontaneously break into song and dance, thanking their “favorite president” for stepping up to rescue the country. In towns and villages throughout the United States, parades would be thrown daily in his honor, and not the kind featuring balloons depicting him as a giant, angry baby. No, these would be extremely flattering ones, giving him six-pack abs and hair that doesn’t look like it could blow away in the wind. He’d call into Fox News and they’d tell the audience, “We are in the presence of greatness!” The Republican Party would introduce legislation abolishing the presidential primary, and just give him the nomination. And maybe they’d throw in an addendum that, once he won the general, they’d get rid of the entire electoral process.

Of course, in reality, things didn’t entirely pan out that way. Almost no one in the GOP has come out to support his bid, despite his threats to punish Republicans who don’t endorse him ASAP. Rupert Murdoch’s media empire has spent considerable time and effort telling people he’s a loser. A Yahoo News/YouGov poll released Thursday had Florida governor Ron DeSantis beating him in 2024 by five points. Instead of 24/7 parades, he was hit this week with a guilty conviction for his family business, which a jury said committed 17 different crimes. His own daughter, the one he really likes, wouldn’t even show up to his big announcement and has made it clear she wants nothing to do with his future political endeavors.

And while no one would ever accuse Donald Trump of accurately reading a room or having even the slightest grasp on reality, there’s at least one indication he seems to have an inkling of an idea that his candidacy has not been as well-received as he’d hoped: the fact that he reportedly has barely left the house in nearly a month.

Yes, The Washington Post reports that since kicking off his third White House bid three weeks ago, “Donald Trump has barely left his private South Florida club—except to play golf at his course across Lake Worth Lagoon,” a situation that underscores his current pariah status within the GOP.

Trump’s seclusion within the ornate walls of his club and a series of controversies—from the dinner with antisemites Ye and Nick Fuentes to a social media post suggesting the “termination” of the Constitution—have left him increasingly isolated within his party as he tries to mount a political comeback. [Herschel] Walker’s loss in a Tuesday runoff election became the latest blow, prompting more Republicans to join the chorus faulting him for dragging down the party’s performance in this year’s midterms. “The former president presents our biggest risk of losing for 2024, and conservatives are tired of losing,” said Bob Vander Plaats, head of the Family Leader, an Iowa-based social conservative group. “Even the former president’s announcement is being greeted like it never happened. There’s no buzz amongst my network at all.” The criticism of Trump for hurting Republicans at the ballot box is showing no sign of abating, and grew even louder after [the Georgia loss on] Tuesday. “It’s a formula that doesn’t work,” said Brian Robinson, a GOP operative in Georgia, explaining that the party’s candidates needed to reach voters outside the Trump base. “I don’t think moving forward you’re going to have another primary season where the litmus test is vowing to talk about the 2020 election.”

For its part, Team Trump insists that the fact that the ex-president has basically become a shut-in at Mar-a-Lago is nothing to read into, with The Post reporting that they never planned to follow up his announcement with a bunch of rallies or public events. “We’re still two years out,” the official told the outlet. “There’ll be a time to do events and a time to do rallies.”

And of course, no one should assume that the GOP currently giving Trump the cold shoulder actually means anything when it comes to 2024. While it’s true that few if any people are enthused about his candidacy, that’s more or less what happened when he announced his first run in 2015—before they all got on board. Still, there’s no harm in hoping his Howard Hughes era becomes permanent!

On the other hand, Mitt Romney would like to go on the record that he’d sooner vote for Seamus the roof-shitting Irish setter for president than Trump