Can Trump Change His Stripes?

It isn’t clear how many people actually tuned in to hear Mr. Trump throw his hat in the ring some 700 days before the next presidential election. The major broadcast networks and MSNBC didn’t carry the more than one-hour speech, CNN dropped out after the announcement itself, about halfway through, and Fox pulled back for analysis around the 45-minute mark.

A self-created liability for Mr. Trump is that no one can take anything he says or does at face value. There’s always an angle in there somewhere. One theory is that he thinks making himself a presidential candidate will deter the various prosecutor posses now chasing him.

My contribution to low thinking would be: Let the online Trump fundraising begin. Mr. Trump spoke repeatedly Tuesday evening about “our movement” and said: “I am your voice.” The famous Trump base is many things, but for sure it is Mr. Trump’s personal ATM.

During his presidency, millions of us got two or even three emails a day, generally amid battles with the Beltway, asking to send $10 or $25. One measure of Mr. Trump’s 2024 prospects will be the fundraising totals he reports relative to his earlier campaigns.

At more than 60 minutes, the only thing Mr. Trump left out of his announcement speech was the kitchen sink. But with Mr. Trump, the kitchen sink always matters. What he didn’t say was notable.

There was no reference to “Ron DeSanctimonius.” Or the recent, bizarrely repellant Truth Social post—“Glenn Young Kin (now that’s an interesting take. Sounds Chinese, doesn’t it?).” Other than some mockery of

Joe Biden,

Mr. Trump made no disparaging comments about his likely opponents, a departure from routine practice.

But most interesting of all were the unmentioned Republicans he seduced and abandoned—Mehmet Oz,

Doug Mastriano,

Don Bolduc,

Blake Masters,

Adam Laxalt,

Kari Lake,

Scott Jensen,

Tudor Dixon

and

Tim Michels.

What all these candidates had in common was their willingness to assent to some version of Mr. Trump’s view that the 2020 election was rigged or stolen. But in his presidential announcement, Mr. Trump’s two-year obsession with the 2020 election was barely mentioned.

Instead, Mr. Trump changed his stripes, transforming himself into a solidly issues-oriented candidate running on taxes, deregulation, energy independence, education, traditional schooling, military strength and on and on. Incidentally, his call for tariffs, notably on China, is Joe Biden’s trade policy.

Most of the agenda Mr. Trump embraced in his speech was largely what the Republicans he opposed in the midterms would have run on, such as Senate candidates

David McCormick

in Pennsylvania and

Chuck Morse

in New Hampshire.

The one thing we learned after last Tuesday’s results is that independent voters by wide margins abandoned GOP candidates aligned with Mr. Trump’s Stop the Steal effort. Let me put it this way: If Republican candidates had run in the midterms on an agenda like that described by Mr. Trump Tuesday, with the backward-looking 2020 dispute (aka “democracy”) out of the picture, the party arguably would control the Senate now.

Maggie Hassan

and

Catherine Cortez Masto

would have lost. In his announcement speech, Mr. Trump threw his failed rigged-election acolytes off the train, while he himself moved on to a more responsible agenda. That takes real gall.

The paramount issue in 2024 has become winning not only the presidency but also governing majorities in the Senate and House. Some conservative commentators who know better enable the impression that Mr. Trump is a unique, magical being, like a figure in mythology. The reality is that many of the legislative accomplishments listed by Mr. Trump in his speech were herded and voted through

Mitch McConnell’s

Senate and

Paul Ryan’s

House.

What lies ahead? Will a Trump 2022-24 candidacy have coattails, or will it be the ball and chain of the midterms? The one thing Mr. Trump doesn’t do in his elections is landslides. Or waves.

The crude argument for Mr. Trump winning the nomination is that, as in 2016, his 30% base will divide the opposition. He wins by showing up. That’s depressing. Republicans were on the verge, at last, of an invigorating presidential debate among Ron DeSantis,

Glenn Youngkin,

Mike Pence,

Tim Scott,

Nikki Haley,

Mike Pompeo—the list of next-generation conservative leadership goes on. Instead, we’re getting the final season of “The Apprentice.”

Write henninger@wsj.com.