Donald Trump has a 2024 math problem. And since he is the leading candidate right now for the 2024 Republican nomination, that means the Republican Party has a math problem, too.
The problem is this: The former president is really good at subtraction and division — and really, really lousy at addition.
This is not to say he is bad with numbers. Having worked closely with Trump for several years on things like taxes and budgets, I can assure you he is very good with them. But I’m not talking about numbers. I’m talking about voters. Trump has a knack for subtracting those.
When I was in Trump’s White House, I remember asking him about the political advisability of continuing his long-running feud with Sen. John McCain, even after the Arizona Republican was dead and buried.
“He’s a horrible person,” Trump retorted. I told him I had no special love for McCain, and I had good reasons. He had been the only Republican to vote against me in my Senate confirmation, despite having given me his word that he would support me. Similarly, many Republicans remembered how McCain’s gratuitous thumbs-down on the Senate floor doomed forever any Republican hopes of undoing ObamaCare.
But I put it to Trump simply: There was not a single voter in this country, I told him, who had not voted for him in 2016 but might change his or her mind in 2020 due to his flogging of McCain’s corpse. And there may well be some who did vote for Trump in 2016 who would not do so in 2020 because of it. Especially, say, in Arizona, a state that Trump won by just 90,000 votes in 2016 and then lost by 10,000 in 2020.
That is Trump subtraction, and it’s not an isolated case. I was talking last week with a friend of mine who is a high-ranking Republican from Georgia. “I’ve got a question about 2024,” I said.
He didn’t even wait for me to ask: “You are going to ask me if Trump can win Georgia in 2024. And I am telling you the answer is no. Absolutely not. No chance.”
He then went on to remind me that, in the run-up to the 2022 governor’s election in that state, the former president actually suggested, on more than one occasion, that the Democratic candidate, 2016 and 2018 election denier Stacey Abrams, would make a better governor than the popular Republican incumbent, Brian Kemp.
“People don’t forget that kind of thing where I’m from,” he said.
Trump beat Hillary Clinton by more than 200,000 votes in Georgia in 2016. In 2020, he lost by the now infamous 11,779 votes that Kemp and other Republicans correctly refused to “find” for him.
Subtraction.
Florida could well be next. A combination of Ron DeSantis’s leadership, solid GOP policies in Tallahassee, woeful mismanagement in other states and a beautiful climate for both people and businesses have helped move the state from purple to red. But Trump did himself no favors there when he recently suggested that disgraced former New York Governor Andrew Cuomo (D) did a better job than DeSantis in dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic.
No Republican, either in Florida or outside of it, believes that, just like they don’t believe that Stacey Abrams would have made a better governor than Brian Kemp. Trump probably doesn’t believe it either.
At best, voters may see it as bluster and frustration or just “Trump being Trump.” At worst, they may see it as vindictive childishness, seeking revenge on those whom Trump perceives as disloyal to him, without regard for the well-being of the party or the country.
Trump sees the math differently, of course. He sees “dividing” as a necessary precursor to “conquering.” Or, put another way, he sees division as a way to victory. And certainly, that did seem to play a large role in his stunning victory in 2016.
But it didn’t work for him in 2020, or in the House elections in 2018, or the Senate elections of 2022. Indeed, so far, 2016 looks to be the exception, not the rule.
Whether it is beating up on dead war heroes, slandering popular Republican candidates, (or having dinner with white supremacists at Mar-a-Lago, or calling a reporter a “very nasty person,” or….) Trump keeps finding ways to subtract from his support. Unless he can learn how to add as well as he subtracts and divides, the math seems to point to yet another loss in 2024.
Mick Mulvaney, a former congressman from South Carolina, is a contributor to NewsNation. He served as director of the Office of Management and Budget, director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and acting White House chief of staff under President Donald Trump.