Former President Donald Trump will hold two more campaign-style rallies in the coming weeks — one in Georgia and one in Iowa — as speculation continues to grow that he will make yet another run for the White House in 2024.
Trump’s Save America PAC announced Tuesday night that the 45th president will hold a rally in Perry, Ga., approximately 100 miles south of Atlanta, on Sept. 25. A few minutes later, the organization announced that Trump would speak in Des Moines, Iowa on Oct. 9.
The events will be the fourth and fifth rallies Trump has held since leaving office in January. He previously drew crowds in Ohio, Florida and Alabama — where he was briefly booed by some audience members after recommending they get vaccinated against COVID-19.
Trump’s visit to Georgia will mark his first appearance there since Republicans lost both of the state’s US Senate seats in a pair of special elections in January, handing Democrats full control of Congress and the White House.
The former president, who in November became the first Republican candidate to lose the Peach State in a presidential election since George H.W. Bush in 1992, has repeatedly claimed without evidence that his defeat was the result of voter fraud and harshly criticized Georgia election officials, including Republican secretary of state Brad Raffensperger, for not supporting his allegations.
Last month, former NFL running back Herschel Walker announced he would enter the Republican Senate primary in Georgia to challenge incumbent Democrat Raphael Warnock next year. Walker, a former Heisman Trophy winner at the University of Georgia who was encouraged by Trump to enter the race, is perceived as the heavy favorite to win the GOP nomination, though some observers have questioned whether he will hold up under the pressure and scrutiny of a general election campaign.
Trump’s visit to Iowa is likely to draw extra media interest, given the state caucus’ traditional status as the first presidential nominating contest. Though Trump lost the Iowa GOP caucus to Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) in 2016, he became the first Republican president to win the state twice since Ronald Reagan.
The question of whether Trump will run has dominated early speculation about the makeup of the Republican primary field. Though the former president has declined to say definitively whether he will seek the presidency again, most polls show he would handily defeat any challenger from within his party.
Trump’s potential comeback effort may have received another boost Tuesday when Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis — seen by some as a more ideal Republican standard-bearer than Trump in 2024 — told reporters that speculation he would seek the White House is “purely manufactured.”
A person close to Trump who was contacted by The Post last week said that the former president is more likely to throw his hat back into the ring than not, but added, “I don’t think any announcement is imminent.”