IN-DEPTH: Looking at a Trump–Biden Rematch in 2024

'One thing that is remarkable about this election cycle is the many events that under normal circumstances would be defining.'

Presidential nominee Joe Biden participates in the first presidential debate against U.S. President Donald Trump at the Health Education Campus of Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio, on Sept. 29, 2020. Scott Olson/Getty Images

As the list of potential candidates for the 2024 presidential election grows longer, the two who are getting the most attention are current President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump. With the 2024 primary scheduled to begin in less than a year, The Epoch Times reached out to voters and experts to get their thoughts on who might win, and why.

‘A Scary Matchup’

Linda Linton, a 60-something IT project manager who lives in eastern North Carolina with her husband David, believes a Trump versus Biden redux “would be a scary matchup.”

While she prefers Trump over Biden, Linton doesn’t think Trump can win in 2024 “simply because of his personality.”

“It’s the only reason why Biden is in office today,” Linton told The Epoch Times. She believes that most of those who cast ballots for Biden in 2022 weren’t voting for him as much as they were voting against Trump. While Linton supports Trump, she isn’t a blind follower. She considers his personality abrasive and cites “things he’s done in his personal life.”

Trump is “probably not someone I would want to have over for dinner,” Linton said. However, when it comes to his policies and his ability to handle immigration and foreign affairs, she is convinced “he was great for our country.”

Sadly, Linton feels the animus against Trump’s personality enabled a man who “campaigned from his basement” and “has what seems to be an obvious mental decline” to become a world leader.

‘The Most Contentious Election Cycle in American History’

Tim Sharp, a former America First candidate for the Florida House of Representatives, believes that a Trump–Biden 2024 contest will appear to be a “hotly contested matchup,” but only on the surface.

“My personal experience from knocking on doors and speaking to thousands of constituents in multiple states tells me that it is not as close as what the media or polls may say,” Sharp told The Epoch Times. He added that he has “yet to meet anyone anywhere in America” who can tell him their quality of life is better under the Biden administration than it was under the Trump administration.

Sharp, who now lives in Cookeville, Tennessee, believes the liberal media, aided by their influencer partners in social media, will play a major role in the 2024 election cycle.

While the legacy media reports only negative stories on Trump, Sharp noted how the Biden administration has coordinated with social media titans like Twitter, Google, and Facebook to influence the public perspective. The current administration has also engaged with liberal social media influencers, many of whom have been compensated by PACs to produce digital content.

The Washington Examiner reported on April 9 that the Biden administration has four White House digital staffers who will coordinate with social media influencers for the 2024 election cycle, to “praise Biden’s accomplishments and agenda to their followers” on Instagram and Twitter, according to the article.

“My personal opinion is that 2024 will be the most contentious election cycle in American history,” Sharp said.

Trump Is ‘Narcissistic’; Biden Is ‘Not Mentally There’

Michael Gavin is retired from the U.S. Navy. The resident of Winter Haven, Florida isn’t sure Biden or Trump will be the final 2024 candidates.

“I think there are more things that are going to play out,” Gavin told The Epoch Times.

He doubts the Republican establishment will give Trump support. Like Linton, he thinks Trump’s abrasive personality is a liability. “He sounds a bit narcissistic,” Gavin said. “But I think that’s just his way of hitting back.” Then there are the legal challenges.

Gavin said Biden’s greatest strength is one of Trump’s greatest weaknesses: the media.

Biden’s greatest weakness is himself. “I don’t think he’s mentally there,” Gavin said.

‘To Hell in a Handbasket’

Carla Johns, a stay-at-home mom in Brooksville, Florida, believes “Donald Trump will win, hands down, because everyone is fed up with our economy.”

Americans are “sick and tired of inflation,” Johns told The Epoch Times, adding that the economy was stronger under Trump and gas was under $2 a gallon.

“He was making us thrive. We need a businessman in office, not another politician. Biden has taken the nation to hell in a handbasket,” Johns asserted. She said she believes Washington is currently run by a cadre of Obama puppets but quipped, “Trump doesn’t play well with others.”

‘Messaging on Behalf of the White House’

Michael Thompson of Fort Myers, Florida, agrees that social and legacy media play “a heavy role in messaging on behalf of the White House.” Thompson is a real estate broker and Chairman Lee Co. Republican Party.

“Most Americans don’t keep up with politics, so they generally believe that they are told,” Thompson told The Epoch Times.

Thompson, formerly with The America Project, now serves as Chairman of the Lee County [Florida] Republican Executive Committee. He suggested that Americans are becoming more aware of the standard liberal playbook, with the result that formerly successful endeavors are starting to backfire. Most notable is how Trump is “getting an enormous boost” from what Thompson calls Alvin Bragg’s “legal attack.” In this case, he said, even the legacy media and top Democrat politicians are saying, “There’s no there there.”

Thompson said that from the weaponization of the Department of Justice and the FBI to the silencing of conservative voices on social media and conservative news outlets, Americans are seeing the unjust treatment of those who disagree with the Biden agenda.

In addition, Thompson said, it is now affecting them personally.

“The recession is hurting hard-working Americans like never before,” Thompson said. “Gas, groceries, and taxes are all up and crippling the American Dream for millions of Americans.”

Thompson also cited Biden’s national security failures. Over 7 million aliens have crossed the border illegally since Biden took office, he said. Moreover, “the impact of drug overdoses from fentanyl and cocaine is literally killing hundreds of thousands of Americans every year.”

From the pushing of critical race theory and the LGBT agenda in schools and the military to COVID-19 power grabs, Thompson says Americans are tired of the Biden agenda.

Still, he believes that Biden will ultimately win in 2024.

“Why?” he asked rhetorically.“Because no matter how many millions of Americans vote for Trump, the Democrats will drag out the counting of the ballots until they have enough to steal the 2024 election, like they did in 2020. No one was held accountable in 2020 or 2022. Why would anyone expect anything to change in 2024? Until Republicans fix the voting issues in Michigan, Pennsylvania, Georgia, Arizona, and Nevada, I don’t anticipate Republicans ever winning the presidency again.”

‘Good at Rigging the Game’

Mark Meckler also believes that “If the election were held right now, the numbers favor Joe Biden.”

“The reason why I say that, and the reason why I am concerned about it, is because it’s hard to imagine there are any ‘undecided’ voters in America,” Meckler told The Epoch Times.

Meckler is the president and co-founder of Convention of States Action, described as “the largest nationwide movement seeking to call the first-ever Article V Convention of States.” In 2009, Meckler founded Tea Party Patriots, the largest of the Tea Party organizations in the country. Partnering frequently with the Trafalgar Group, Meckler has conducted numerous polls gauging America’s sentiments on a variety of topics ranging from the Trump indictment, who’s to blame for the border crisis, rising inflation, and the motivation behind the FBI raid on Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence.

While both candidates are well known, Meckler argues that “the electorate is more polarized than ever before so it’s difficult to imagine any people coming over to Trump’s side” who aren’t already there. “That makes me nervous,” he said.

Meckler stressed he isn’t saying Trump can’t win. However, he did say there are a few factors that give him concern. One factor is that the polls give Biden a slight edge. While March surveys by Yahoo News/YouGov (pdf) and Quinnipiac (pdf) did favor Biden by two points, the Real Clear Politics average through April gives Trump a slim 1.7-point advantage.

Meckler also said, “Democrats are good at rigging the game,” especially with regard to their collaborative partnership with the legacy news media, which he says is “absolutely rigged against Donald Trump.”

Another concern is the “rigging of the election and election fraud.” For Meckler, election fraud has less to do with voting machines and more to do with “the way the media and the police state rigged the election against Donald Trump.”

“You have the Hunter Biden laptop story and other things the American public needed to know about the Biden crime family syndicate, and I think it is a crime family, that will all be suppressed,” Meckler insisted, adding that “what will be played up is anything they can find that might be negative about Donald Trump. The media complex, the corporate complex, the police state complex, [are] all rigging this against Donald Trump. Then you have polling that makes them about equal right now and it makes for an uphill battle for Donald Trump.”

While some reports say the Trump indictment has turned public opinion in his favor and unified his base, Meckler sees it more as an advantage over DeSantis than over Biden.

As Meckler explained it, while polling shows most voters believe the indictment against Trump is politically motivated, the majority also say “it’s a good thing that Trump is being prosecuted.”

A poll released by CNN on April 3 showed that, while 76 percent of those surveyed said they believe politics played a role in the Trump indictment and 52 percent said politics played a major role, 60 percent still said they approved of the decision to indict him, with 37 percent saying they strongly approve.

“I was stunned that people who think the Trump indictment is political still think he should be prosecuted,” Meckler said. “That speaks to the polarization of the current state of politics.”

‘In Trump’s Favor is Biden’

Kevin Slack, Ph.D., an associate professor of politics at Hillsdale College and author of War on the American Republic: How Liberalism Became Despotism, notes that, “None of us have a crystal ball and we are a long way from the election.”

“One thing that is remarkable about this election cycle is the many events that under normal circumstances would be defining,” Slack told The Epoch Times. “We have seen that the FBI meddled in the last election by working with big tech companies to censor information hostile to the current president,” he said.

Then there’s the “chaotic and humiliating withdrawal from Afghanistan, new information about the government’s mishandling of the pandemic, the unprecedented raid of a former president’s home by the FBI,” and “the equally unprecedented indictment of that same president in a separate case.”

On the global scene, there’s “a proxy war with Russia in Ukraine,” and “ever more hostile relations with China.”

Slack also cited “the increasing likelihood” that Hunter Biden “conducted criminal activity with foreign actors, possibly for the benefit of the president.”

“An average of polls currently shows Trump over Biden by 1.7 percent, but all of the events I’ve listed ebb and flow with an increasingly short news cycle,” Slack surmised, adding “and it’s hard to say what, if anything, will stick.”

He also suggested that it’s “debatable whether a Trump–Biden election would be a simple rematch.”

“In Biden’s favor is the Democrats’ well-funded ground game of harvesting votes that can secure victory even for impaired candidates like John Fetterman,” Slack concluded. “In Trump’s favor is Biden, whose presidency might be the most Leftist the country has ever seen, especially in pushing the divisive teachings of systemic racism and transgenderism.”