“The fact he’s got an indictment hanging over his head is gonna be a problem.”
“My name is Steve. I live in Illinois. I voted for Donald Trump, both in 2016 and 2020. In 2016, it came down to really just wanting to stop Hillary Clinton. In 2020, I voted for Trump because I liked some of his economic policies, I liked his ‘America First.’ I thought he did have the best interests of the country at heart.
“For 2024, I’d rather not see Trump as the nominee because he, I thought, was a sore loser in 2020 when he didn’t concede the election when it was obvious that he had lost. And went into all the conspiracy theories about the election being stolen. I just thought that looked bad. It was very unprofessional, very un-presidential for someone to do that.
“And if he’d have just congratulated Biden and walked off the stage, I think he could have set himself up pretty well for 2024. I think a lot of swing voters, particularly in the blue states, like where I live now are going to be turned off by what Trump did at the end of,2020 at the end of the election cycle there.
“I think that they’re going to be looking elsewhere. I think if the Republicans want to have a good shot at defeating Biden Harris in ’24, that they need to look towards either DeSantis or Tim Scott or a Nikki Haley or somebody else who doesn’t have that sort of baggage or that sort of image that I have to win, I have to be right all the time like Trump has developed over the years.
“Biden Harris would love to see Donald Trump on the ticket because I do think that right now he’s probably going to be the easiest to beat for them. So I’m looking for a Trump alternative who would be kind of like Trump-lite would be the way I guess I would put it. We need to look at who’s the best and the most electable.
“And now I say that, but we’ve also got to keep in mind what our party platform is and what the Republican Party stands for. DeSantis, I think, can be electable. I think he is a good representation of what the party stands for and what the party wants down here at the grassroots level. So I think he would be a better shot at being elected.
“He’s been in Congress and been elected governor twice. I think he can do it if he gets the right running mate and if he can package his message in a way that communicates to the undecided and to the independent voters.”