While former President Donald Trump has so far played coy on his plans for 2024, it appears he's trying to keep the support of a very important voting bloc if he were to decide on another White House run.
According to an article from Politico, Trump met with a number of evangelical leaders at his Florida club, Mar-a-Lago, last Friday. Evangelicals in 2016 and 2020 overwhelmingly supported Trump's runs for 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, with an estimated 80 percent of evangelicals casting their ballots for him, according to National Election Pool and AP/Votecast. However, as important as that voting bloc was to him both times, some evangelical leaders seem split as to whether Trump has a "lock" on that support in 2024.
Tony Perkins, the president of the Family Research Council, told Politico he believes that evangelical support for Trump is not a foregone conclusion and will give other options a chance.
"I wouldn't say President Trump has a lock on the support of the evangelical community. I think he has a strong platform to run on—on what he has done—but I still think people are going to be looking for a vision for the future, so he will have to do that alongside the other candidates vying for their support," he told Politico.
Some of those other candidates, the article points out, that Trump is likely to be competing against for evangelical support include his former Vice President Mike Pence as well as Texas Senator Ted Cruz.
However, another big name in the evangelical movement, Franklin Graham, has a very different opinion and believes that if Trump were to run in 2024, they are likely to give their support to Trump.
"I don't speak for evangelical Christians—they're all over the place politically and a lot of them didn't support President Trump, and that's fine. But I think the majority did, and I think they will continue to support him. It's his policies that benefited all of us," Graham told Politico.
Reportedly, those who attended the Friday lunch meeting included Paula White-Cain, James Dobson and the chair of the Faith and Freedom Coalition, Ralph Reed.
In the run-up to the 2022 midterm elections, the former president has endorsed a number of candidates, in many different races all across the country. However, on Wednesday, Trump took back an endorsement of one person.
Trump announced that he was pulling his backing from Mo Brooks. Brooks, currently, a member of the U.S. House of Representatives, representing Alabama's 5th District, is a candidate in the southern state's May 24 Senate primary.
The former reality TV host made the move after Brooks "went woke," Trump's statement said. At a rally last August, Brooks told the crowd that "there are some people who are despondent about voter fraud and election theft in 2020." Brooks went on to tell the crowd to "put that behind you."
On Monday, during an interview with Tucker Carlson, musician and Trump supporter Kid Rock mentioned that, while Trump was in office, he asked for his advice on North Korea.
Newsweek reached out to a Trump spokesperson for comment but did not hear back before publication.
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