Former Trump White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany suggested former President Donald Trump should hold off on his expected announcement of a 2024 White House campaign until next month’s Georgia Senate runoff election is finished.
A number of forecasters on Wednesday morning said the race between Sen. Raphael Warnock (R-Ga.) and GOP candidate Herschel Walker will advance to a Dec. 6 runoff election. Neither candidate got more than 50 percent of the vote, although Warnock led by a small margin.
“I know there’s a temptation to starting talking about 2024—no, no, no, no, no,” McEnany, a Fox News hire, said on the network. The 2022 midterms are “not over,” she added, saying all “Republican energy needs to go to grinding the Biden agenda to a halt, and that could go straight through the state of Georgia.”
A day before the midterms on Tuesday, Trump told a rally in Ohio that he will make a “major announcement” on Nov. 15. Some believed he would be announcing another presidential campaign.
McEnany noted that another possible GOP contender such as Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-Fla.), who easily won reelection in Florida, should also hold off on an announcement before Dec. 6.
“He’ll make that decision, he’ll make his own decision,” McEnany said. “If I’m advising any contender, DeSantis, Trump, whomever, no one announces 2024 until we get through Dec. 6.”
Several other races, however, are still being counted. In Nevada, GOP candidate Adam Laxalt is currently leading Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto (D-Nev.), while Republican Blake Masters is trailing Sen. Mark Kelly (D-Ariz.).
If both Laxalt and Masters lose, Democrats will have the Senate majority, making the Dec. 6 runoff irrelevant for control of the Senate. Pennsylvania GOP candidate Mehmet Oz conceded to Democrat John Fetterman in Pennsylvania, and Republican J.D. Vance defeated Rep. Tim Ryan (D-Ohio) for Ohio’s Senate seat.
McEnany also suggested that DeSantis, after easily defeating Democrat Charlie Crist, should campaign in Georgia to boost Walker when she was asked on the Fox News program about whether Trump or DeSantis should head to the Peach State.
“I think we’ve got to make strategic calculations,“ the former White House press secretary said. ”Gov. DeSantis, I think he should be welcome to the state, given what happened last night. You’ve got to look at the realities on the ground.”
Runoffs in Georgia elections are somewhat common. When Warnock was facing off against Sen. Kelly Loeffler (R-Ga.), another Republican in that race, then-Rep. Doug Collins took about 20 percent of the vote and sent Loeffler and Warnock into a January election that Warnock ultimately won.
