Former President Donald Trump sought to have Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump, the two members of his family who joined his administration from 2017-2021, at Mar-a-Lago on Tuesday for his big announcement of his 2024 plans.
Mr Trump has been teasing the announcement for days, while not stating exactly what it will be. But it’s commonly known that he has been preparing to launch a third bid for the presidency for months and has held off on announcing with the hopes of helping Republicans in the midterms.
According to the conservative-leaning New York Post, the two are not likely to show, despite the lobbyings of Ms Trump’s father. The two reportedly do not want to be associated with a third Trump campaign after the ex-president’s disastrous 2020 bid for reelection concluded with a violent siege of the US Capitol.
“Trump thought he could convince Ivanka this weekend to come back and campaign for him as she was the most requested speaker after the president himself last time around … but so far she’s resisting his entreaties and holding firm, as is Jared,” one person the Post described as an “insider” in Trumpworld explained when asked about the dynamic. “They both feel they got burned in Washington and don’t want to go back and expose themselves and their children to another bitter campaign.”
A political reunification with the two would be quite the move for Mr Trump given that both Mr Kushner and Ms Trump complied with requests for testimony from the January 6 committee and told the House committee in separate interviews that they disagreed with the former president’s lies and conspiracies about his 2020 defeat.
Ivanka Trump told lawmakers in one instance that she accepted the refutation of Mr Trump’s claims of fraud from Attorney General Bill Barr, a Trump appointee, while Mr Kushner separately said that he believed pursuing such conspiracies after the election concluded was the wrong choice, adding that he advised the president as much.
Other former members of his administration to testify before the committee have fared less well and fallen out of Mr Trump’s good graces; the ex-president himself is likely to ignore a subpoena issued by the committee until Republicans (likely) retake the House in January, at which point it would need to be re-issued.
Long before his announcement on Tuesday the ex-president had already essentially begun his battle for the 2024 GOP primary nomination; in recent days he has taken to openly attacking Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, his presumed rival in the contest, while denying any responsibility for the poor showing of candidates he endorsed for the House, Senate and several gubernatorial contests in last week’s elections.
