Former President Donald Trump’s 2024 kickoff speech received less-than-stellar reviews ― and not just from his critics on the left. Many on the right panned the speech with a callback to the phrase Trump used to dispatch former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush in 2016: “low energy.”
In The Washington Post, conservative attorney George Conway ― husband to Trump insider Kellyanne Conway ― called Trump’s 2024 campaign an effort to protect himself from prosecution and predicted it would fail.
“Too many Americans would crawl on broken glass to vote against him, no matter who his general election opponent may be,” he wrote. “They have seen enough.”
The National Review, the conservative publication that has repeatedly flip-flopped on Trump, published an editorial with a one-word headline: “No.” The editors slammed his delusions, lies and conspiracy theories, and called the announcement “an invitation to double down on the outrages and failures of the last several years that Republicans should reject without hesitation or doubt.”
But the tone of the speech had many wondering what had happened to Trump’s vigor as he babbled for more than an hour. The event was so dull that many of his own supporters were looking for the door.
Former White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham and two other members of Trump’s communications team ― Sarah Matthews and Alyssa Farah Griffin ― tweeted:
Others on the right also piled on: