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Some of former president Donald Trump’s most vocal — and most infamous — supporters are making clear they are decidedly not on board with his decision to launch a third presidential campaign after he announced his candidacy for president at his Palm Beach, Florida residence on Tuesday.
Mr Trump went ahead with his announcement just a week after many candidates he endorsed in high-profile races for senate seats, governors’ mansions and Secretary of State offices failed to win their respective contests in the 2022 midterm elections, costing Republicans control of the Senate when the 118th Congress convenes in January.
Three Trump-endorsed senate candidates lost to their Democratic opponents, including ex-television doctor Mehmet Oz, whose defeat by Democrat John Fetterman cost the GOP the seat they needed to retain to have a chance of retaking the upper chamber.
Conservative columnist Ann Coulter, who once penned a book in support of the ex-president with the title In Trump We Trust, set the tone for many of his onetime supporters when she took to Twitter on Veterans Day to urge him not to announce his candidacy.
“You had your chance, with a Republican House and Senate. You handed domestic policy to your son-in-law and Gary Cohn. You handed foreign policy to your son-in-law and a country that gave your son-in-law $2 billion,” she wrote, adding that Mr Trump should “shut the f*** up, forever”.
Writing on Telegram, the white nationalist podcaster Nick Fuentes called Mr Trump’s announcement speech an “epic fail” and complained that the ex-president failed to bring up what he described as “big tech censorship” in his remarks.
One of the pro-Trump figures who helped organise the protests that turned into the January 6 attack on the Capitol, far-right influencer and “stop the steal” promoter Ali Alexander, wrote on his own Telegram channel that Mr Trump had appeared “tired” on Tuesday.
Another far-right influencer, Human Events owner Will Chamberlain, wrote on Twitter that Mr Trump’s speech was “low energy”.
“This is not 2016 Trump,” he said. “He sounds … old”.
This article was amended on 21 November 2022. It previously said that the vast majority of Trump-endorsed candidates had failed to win their seats in the midterm elections, but this was not the case.
