About halfway through his Texas meeting on Saturday night, Donald J. Trump turned to the teleprompter and away from a meandering series of grievances to rattle off a tightly-prepared list of President Biden’s failings and his own achievements.
“Let’s just compare the records,” Mr Trump said as supporters cheered behind him in “Trump 2024” shirts, framed perfectly in the televised recording.
Mr. Trump, who later spoke of “that nice, beautiful house that happens to be white,” has left less and less doubt about his intentions, plotting an influential role in the 2022 midterm elections and another possible White House run. But another round of skirmishes over his approvals, rifts with the Republican base over vaccines — a word Mr Trump left conspicuously unsaid during Saturday’s meeting — and new polls are all showing how his long-standing hold on the Republican Party has come under mounting tensions. state.
In Texas, some grassroots conservatives have been vocally frustrated with Mr. Trump’s support of Chief Executive Greg Abbott, even chasing Mr. Abbott as he took the stage. In North Carolina, Mr. Trump’s behind-the-scenes efforts to shrink the Republican field to aid his favorite Senate candidate failed last week. And in Tennessee, a recent Trump endorsement provoked an unusually public reaction, even among his most loyal allies, both in Congress and in conservative media.
The Tennessee episode, in particular, showed how the Make America Great Again movement spawned by Mr Trump is maturing to the point where it can sometimes exist separately from and even at odds with Mr Trump himself.
Mr. Trump remains, overwhelmingly, the most popular and powerful figure in the Republican Party. He leads the polls in 2024, an unparalleled fundraising force and still capable of filling fairgrounds with huge crowds. But after giving about 100 endorsements in nationwide races, Mr. Trump will face a gantlet of proxy tests of his political strength in the coming months, just as public polls show his rule of GOP voters is not what it used to be. ever was.
“It feels like they’re shifting,” said Patrick Ruffini, a Republican pollster who regularly surveys Mr. Trump’s position in the party. “It’s a strong attachment. It’s one that would most likely win a Republican primary today. But is it the same ironclad, monolithic, Soviet-esque attachment we saw when Donald Trump was the incumbent president? No, that’s not it.”
In a recent Associated Press survey, 44 percent of Republicans said they didn’t want Mr. Trump to run for president again, while a potential GOP rival in 2024, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, has also narrowed the gap in other ways. early snapshots of a hypothetical primary – new signs of potential vulnerability for the former president.
Unlike Trump’s days in the White House, a late January NBC News poll found that 56 percent of Republicans now see themselves more as supporters of the Republican Party, compared to 36 percent who said they were former supporters of Trump.
The Trump first faction accounted for 54 percent of Republican voters in October 2020. The erosion since then has spanned every demographic: men and women, moderates and conservatives, people of all ages.
One of the biggest swings was in a group widely seen as Trump’s most loyal constituency: white Republicans with no college degrees, who went from 62 percent who first identified with Trump to 36 percent.
Frank Luntz, a prominent GOP pollster, said Republican support for the former president is moving in complex ways — both intensifying and waning at the same time.
“The Trump group is smaller today than it has been in five years, but it is even more intense, passionate and brutal towards its critics,” said Mr. Luntz. “As people slowly drift away — which they are — those who are still with him are even stronger in their support.”
Trump faces further complications from a comeback, including an ongoing Georgia investigation into his attempt to pressure state officials to reverse the election and a New York investigation into his business practices.
Betting on Mr Trump’s hold on the GOP has been a loss-making proposition, to pundits and Republican rivals alike, for the better part of a decade, and he retains broad support in the party apparatus itself. As the Republican National Committee holds its winter meeting in Salt Lake City in the coming days, the party’s executive committee is expected to discuss behind closed doors whether it will continue to pay some of the former president’s personal legal bills.
Even some Trump-skeptical Republican strategists note that some softening of support has come after a year in which Mr. Trump did not try as hard as he could to grab the public’s attention.
He was back in the spotlight at Saturday’s Texas rally, an event that had the feel of a music festival, featuring anti-Biden chants of “Let’s go Brandon!” spontaneously break out. However, amid the “Trump Won” flags, some conservative activists grumbled about Mr Abbott’s approval and criticized the early Covid-19 lockdowns and the governor’s management of the border..
On the podium, Mr. Abbott himself faced shouts of “RINO” – for “Republican in name only” – and some boos, which he overwhelmed by leading the crowd in a chant of “Let’s go Trump!”
In his comments, Mr. Trump appeared to be guarding his far right flank when he stated that, “if I run and I win,” he would consider pardoning people who took part in last year’s January 6 attack on the Capitol.
One major split that has developed between Mr. Trump and his base is over vaccines. He’s been mocked on past appearances — both when he urged supporters to get vaccinated and after saying he’d gotten a booster shot himself — and he’s now focused on opposing federal mandates, all the while trying to push the take credit for the speed of the arrival of vaccines.
Trump specifically avoided the word “vaccine” on Saturday, referring only to “Operation Warp Speed” — his administration’s attempt to produce a vaccine.
Jennifer Winterbauer, who has “We the People” tattooed on her forearm, came to the Trump rally — her sixth — days in advance, and slept in her truck to be one of the first in line. She said she believed Mr Trump was “sent by God to save this country”. Still, she disagrees with him about the vaccine.
“I don’t think he should be promoting it,” she said. “I’ve had Covid and I’ve had the flu, and the flu was much worse.”
Vaccination and Covid policies have also been the subject of lingering tensions with Mr DeSantis, who declined to say whether he received a vaccine booster. Mr Trump said “ruthless” politicians are dodging such questions.
Mr. Ruffini questioned Mr. Trump versus Mr. DeSantis last October and again this month. Then, Mr. Trump led by 40 percentage points; now, the margin is 25. But among the Republicans who knew both men, the gap was only 16 points, and even smaller, just nine points, among those who loved them both.
“His voters are looking at alternatives,” Ruffini said of Trump. While there’s little evidence of any desire for an anti-Trump Republican, Mr Ruffini said, there is openness to what he called a “next-generation Trump candidate.”
At the Texas rally, David Merritt, a 56-year-old private contractor in a cowboy hat, described himself as “more of a Trump man” than a Republican. But what if he didn’t run in 2024?
“Probably Ron DeSantis would be my next pick,” said Mr. Merritt. Because he most resembled Mr. Trump of the Republican candidates.
In Washington, Republican congressional leaders have diverged widely in their approach to Mr. Trump.
Representative Kevin McCarthy of California, the leader of the minority group in the House, was concerned, and sat with Mr. Trump in Mar-a-Lago for about an hour last Tuesday to talk about House races and the political landscape, according to people who familiar with the meeting. Mr McCarthy is believed to be keeping Mr Trump close as he tries to win the majority for his party and the speakership for himself this fall.
In the Senate, Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the minority leader, is not on good terms with Trump, and his allies continue to sue Maryland Governor Larry Hogan, an outspoken anti-Trump Republican, to run for president. the Senate.
In addition to polls, Mr. Trump has repeatedly held up his “nearly spotless track record” of primary approvals as a barometer of his power. When Lou Dobbs, the pro-Trump media personality, asked Mr. Trump last week if the GOP was still behind him, he replied, “Well, I think so. Anyone I support pretty much wins.”
In North Carolina, Mr. Trump promoted the Senate candidate he supported, Rep. Ted Budd, by convincing Rep. Mark Walker to leave the primary and run again for the House. Walker threatens to split the pro-Trump vote and aid a third candidate, former Governor Pat McCrory, a more traditional Republican.
On Thursday, Mr. Walker announced that he will remain in the Senate race anyway.
While Mr. Trump’s approvals have been haphazard at times, despite ongoing efforts to formalize the process, few have withdrawn faster than his support for Morgan Ortagus, who was an aide to former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and was once named as a possible white House press secretary.
Ms. Ortagus, with her family in tow, met with Mr. Trump in Mar-a-Lago last Monday and discussed a Tennessee House seat for which she is not even an official candidate yet, according to three people familiar with the meeting. ; the next night, Mr. Trump had endorsed her unannounced run.
“Trump got this all wrong,” said Candace Owens, a prominent figure in the pro-Trump media. wrote on Twitter.
Ms. Owens supported Robby Starbuck, a rival candidate with ties to Trump’s activist movement. Georgia Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene was also quick to back Mr. Starbuck, and Florida Representative Matt Gaetz, typically a staunch ally of Trump, promoted one of Mr. Starbuck’s videos.
Gavin Wax, an outspoken pro-Trump activist and president of the New York Young Republican Club who criticized Ortagus and Abbott’s notes, said the political environment now allows for such grievances to be voiced. “It’s a lot easier to create this division when he’s out of the office,” said Mr. wax about mr. Trump.
“He’s still the best dog by far, but who knows,” said Mr. Wax. “It’s one of those things where a million cuts — it’s going to do damage eventually.”
J. David Goodman contributed reporting from Conroe, Texas.